10 ways how PVP in ESO is not like Dota2

Digerati

I feel like this was one of those cheesy clickbait articles... I think my adblock must be working well...

10 ways a pumpkin is not a flower....

OurOwn

Op why are you comparing a moba to a mmo?

dsalter

jhharvest wrote: »

So I've been thinking about the PVP in ESO. I have also been musing on how it is different from Valve's battler. Here are what I think are the 10 major differences:

1) In Dota2 balance is everything.
It's a competitive game that's played for millions of dollars in prize money, so it's obvious that it has to be balanced on every level. In Dota2 balance comes from small tweaks that come with every patch. There is no sudden '50%' reduction here, but tiny changes that get implemented gradually.

The other key difference is how players are able to track different heroes' performance: there are websites that track the win statistics and builds for every hero from hundreds of thousands games weekly. For example Dotabuff (https://www.dotabuff.com/heroes/trends). This way it is trivially easy to point out which heroes are stronger or weaker in the current patch.

Solution for ESO: Release detailed statistics on class and skill performance compared against Cyrodiil rank, character level and K/D ratio.

2) In Dota2 you can pick a new hero every game.
Games in Dota2 last usually between 30 minutes and an hour. Every game you get to pick a new hero. In ESO players have to invest hundreds of hours to fully level up and kit out their character, so picking a new class is much more difficult and time consuming. This exacerbates any issues around class imbalance.

Solution for ESO: Respec shrine for changing class and race.

3) In Dota2 skills can't be spammed.
There are two mitigating factors against spamming skills in Dota2. Firstly the game has cool downs. I understand this is a design decision in ESO to remove this artificial limitation so this is obviously not applicable. The second limiting factor is that in Dota2 mana regen and maximum pool is generally speaking very low: even without a cool down, the average hero could only cast 2-3 spells before running out of resources.

This has the added benefit of making hitting enemy heroes with normal attacks a very valuable asset. Group coordination is very important in Dota2 to bring down the opposing team.

Solution for ESO: Restrict magicka regen. Increase cost for stamina skills.

4) In Dota2 healing is mostly through regen.
There are only a handful of skills that directly heal. The heroes with these skills are therefore highly valued. Even so, the healing skills will hardly ever bring your HP to full. For example the main healing item in the game, Mekanism, heals 250 HP every minute when the average health pool is between 800-2000 HP. Even with this relatively small healing, it can change the course of a battle entirely.

Instead of direct healing spells, HP recovery usually comes from various sources of regeneration and in some cases from life steal. Some heroes have passive abilities that give life steal, but this can also be itemised.

Solution for ESO: Nerf healing? Obviously this would only work if damage levels were much, much lower.

5) In Dota2 Invisibility has strong counters.
Few heroes in Dota2 have built in invisibility / stealth mechanics, but every hero can buy an item that grants temporary invisibility but this requires sacrificing one of your 6 item slots. This balances out the benefits that invisibility can bring. Furthermore, invisibility has strong counters.

One of the main ways to guard against stealth attacks is Sentry Wards. Think of the Alliance war skill Lingering flare. But the key difference between a sentry ward and flare is the duration. A sentry ward reveals invisible units in a relatively large area and lasts 4 minutes. This makes it a useful investment, instead of the utterly feeble Lingering flare. The other common invisibility breaking item is Dust of Appearance, that reveals units in a large radius and prevents them from using invis for 12 seconds, so it's basically Detect Potion.

Solution for ESO: Create an armour set that grants invisibility. Buff Flare considerably.

6) In Dota2 there is no CC break / immunity.
Skills that give stun or incapacitate enemy heroes are very strong in Dota2. There are extremely few skills that give immunity against effects (I believe 2 heroes out of 110?), but every hero can use one of their six item slots to get an item that grants temporary immunity. This emphasises hero positioning during fights, using skills efficiently and in the right order and often just building enough HP on your hero so you can survive being hard CC'd for a short duration.

Solution for ESO: Make CC rarer and make immunity after CC shorter.

7) In Dota2 there are very few instakill gank combos.
Generally speaking a single hero in Dota2 cannot kill another hero, even when attacking them from stealth. There are a few exceptions, but these can be often defended against with the sentry wards that reveal invisible units in the area. Instead the game emphasises team play and there are a few more strong team skill combinations that require good timing to pull off. These team combos can decimate most of the enemy team when executed correctly.

Solution for ESO: Balance max damage values for single characters and skills.

8) Mobility is more equal in Dota2.
Few heroes in Dota2 have built in mobility options, like Sorcerer's Streak in ESO. Furthermore the use of these blink skills is limited by the cool down and smaller resource pools as previously mentioned. But all heroes can buy a mobility item that grants a blink, called Blink Dagger (surprise, surprise!). This gives any hero the ability to perform a short range teleport like Streak. The balancing factor is that it cannot be used if your hero has taken damage within the last 3 seconds, and of course it has a cool down.

Solution for ESO: Balance Streak further, implement an armour set that grants Streak.

9) Dota2 has more counters to strong damage dealing skills and spells.
Dota2 has more status effects than in ESO. Most importantly there is silence, that prevents hero from casting spells, and maim, which prevents a hero from using physical attacks. These can be used to counter particular heroes that have strong spells or very strong weapon damage. Obviously these can't be CC broken either, except with the use of very rare skills or the expensive item that grants temporary magic immunity.

Solution for ESO: Implement silence and maim as effects on some support skills.

10) Dota2 has no Purge.
There is no skill that can remove all status effects from your whole team. Generally speaking skills and items that remove status effects are rare. This ensures that dots, slows, silence etc. do what they're supposed to do, unless the enemy sacrifices a lot to dispel it.

Solution for ESO: Remove Purge (and possibly change some class skills as well).


Okay, that was long. Anyway, these were some of my musings on the differences of Dota2 (a competitive high-stakes PVP game) and ESO. Would these changes make ESO a better PVP game? Dunno. Probably not on their own.

unfortunately DOTA2 logic doesnt apply well in MMO's due to there being no matches, also sentries are only 2 minutes now, the more you know

Anak14

Seriously....this is ESO not Dota2. Don't complain. Go play Dota if you like it so much

AfkNinja

Anak14 wrote: »

Seriously....this is ESO not Dota2. Don't complain. Go play Dota if you like it so much

He doesn't want it to be DOTA2, he's merely using the balance from DOTA2 to suggest balance changes in ESO. He makes a couple of good points too.

LoreRiley

Too bad this isnt Dota.
Although this game can try balancing like them