A transition from Dota to League of Legends: Part 1

I've been playing Dota 2 and Heroes of Newerth for about three years now. Once I had gotten my Dota 2 key I dropped HoN because I didn't agree with S2 Games direction with the game. Over the last two weeks I've been playing LoL exclusively and Dota has taken a back seat.

My favourite role in Dota was mid. I always felt it was my stronger role because it plays to my strengths. I consider my two primary strengths are as; a decision maker and aggressive ganker. What I mean by 'good decision maker' is that I can see a situation and make a good decision on what to do about it. This plays into my strength as a ganker because not all ganks are good ideas, and choosing the right moment to initiate your gank is key to playing that role. This quality in my play-style has been developed by my competitive fighting game career as it is a a key attribute to success within the genre.

My favourite heroes to play in Dota are mainly intelligence based. Queen of Pain, Leshrac and Zeus are my top three. Venomancer would replace Zeus but I rarely mid with him and prefer to play him as an aggressive support hero. My hero choices transition from my HoN days because all these heroes are in HoN under different names (Wretched Hag, Torturer, Thunderbringer and Slither).

Before I started playing LoL I did a bit of research. This is another habit from fighting games as a lot of content is revealed before a new game is release. I like to have an information advantage before picking up a new game so I can avoid making common mistakes. I was keen on playing an AD carry but soon found the role to be quite boring.

After a conversation with a friend who plays LoL, he suggested I played to my strengths which is in the mid role. I looked over the statistics for champion picks in high level competitive play to get a better idea on who is strong. Bare in mind this isn't always a good tactic because these current strong champs could be the opposite of your play-style. I kept that in mind while researching them. January's popular picks were; Ryze, Kayle, Katarina, Lux to name a few. Ryze and Kayle are cheap and I bought some RP to buy Katarina because I remembered playing her were I first tried LoL a very long time ago.

I discovered that all three were heroes I enjoyed. In my earlier levels I found Katarina got more difficult to play as the game progressed. Towards the end of the mid game I found myself becoming the primary target, regardless of my positioning or delayed initiations. As soon as I went in, I got squashed. This became frustrating and now I realise that her clean up potential shines more than her gank potential late game. Kayle is just a power house and was very easy to pick up as an AP or AD carry. There is not much to say about her.

Before I played Ryze I bought Twisted Fate and Brand. I'm struggling to decide which is my favourite champion, Ryze or Twisted Fate. They both shine in crowd control and burst but their major flaws are mobility, especially TF. I played Brand a lot because his R reminded me of Lich's ultimate from Dota. Brand was a lot of fun to play. I enjoyed the AoE burst and poking potential with E and his passive. However his flaws were easy to spot. His R, isn't that great. Unlike Lich, his ultimate had no fear factor and the damage felt mediocre. It felt very poor in comparison to Lich's version. His final flaw was, Ryze is just so much better. As soon as I played Ryze I refunded my Brand.

As I write this article I am only level 13. It's a slow grind up to 30 but I'm enjoying myself. It's nice to have something to work towards unlike Dota. I'm looking forward to level 20 because I've saved up a lot of IP for tier 3 runes. Whilst playing with my level 30 friends I've found that I can hold my own against other players who potentially have runes and full mastery trees. This holds a promising future for me as a LoL player as my fundamentals from Dota have transitioned well. My pet peeves with LoL have gone (no denying really bothered me but thats another story). Yesterday I bought Nidalee and Karthas to experiment with. Once I close in on level 30 I'm looking to trying Ahri and Orianna.

League is on its way to becoming my main moba. With friends interested in forming a clan and a fresh new game for me I look forward to what the future holds.