Dota 2 lol graphic comparison battlefield

A comprehensive comparison of Dota 2 and League of Legends

MOBA games have been around for a long time, but Dota 2 and League of Legends are the first to regularly pull numbers like the 329,977 concurrent users on Dota 2 and the ” over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West” League of Legends server.

You’d think that with the sheer popularity of MOBA games, they’d be easy to break into, but that’s usually not the case. Fortunately, this guide is here to help! This article should help you understand the basic concepts that are common to both games as well as the overarching differences.

Already a veteran, but looking to make the switch to LoL or Dota? Find out just what makes the two games so incredibly different.

Start Here

Both Riot’s LoL and Valve’s Dota 2 are free-to-play games. League of Legends is available here and Dota 2 is available here .

Be warned, both of these games have pretty steep learning curves, but it shouldn’t take long to grasp the basics.

Glossary

Basic Gam eplay

If you’ve ever played any sort of RTS, then the basic layout of LoL and Dota should be at least somewhat familiar. These are top-down games where you control your champion or hero alongside four other players in five-on-five fantasy action.

Left-clicking selects units while right-clicking moves your character or attacks. League of Legends uses Q, W, E and R for your main abilities with D and F reserved for summoner spells. Items are assigned to 1-6 by default. Dota 2 does things a little differently with the number keys reserved for control groups—similarly to StarCraft—and Z, X, C, V, B and N bound to your item slots. Some champions with more than four abilities also require the use of other keys like D and F.

Last hitting—delivering the killing blow to a minion—is likely the most fundamental skill you’ll have to learn to play either game. Last-hitting minions is your primary means of accruing gold. Wait until the minion gets low enough for you to kill it with a single attack before you hit it. You’ll still earn a slow trickle of gold over time, but killing a few extra minions can be the difference between buying the item that you need or missing out on XP for nothing.

It’s raining bloody gold!

LoL and Dota 2 do differ in how they reward players for killing players. In both games, killing an enemy player grants gold to everyone who participated in the kill. In League of Legends, the amount of gold a player is worth depends on how many times they’ve died without getting a kill and whether or not they’re on a killing spree. Dota 2 adds to this by punishing the dead player by throwing away some of the unreliable gold that they’ve earned. Reliable gold is awarded for kills while unreliable gold is gained over time and for killing minions.

The distinction between the two types of gold is reason enough to declare that Dota 2 is a far more punishing game. At the same time, getting kills is quite a bit more rewarding than it is in League of Legends because you gain reliable gold while causing an enemy to lose gold. Not only is it easier to make mistakes in Dota 2, but it’s also harder to come back from them.

Every single match of Dota 2 or League begins with the laning phase. This generally lasts from the time that minions spawn to anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes into the game. During this time, carry characters spend their time trying to last hit as well as possible. The goal of laning phase is to earn as much gold as possible while harassing your opponent.

Battles are more frequent and abrupt in Dota 2. Once a team commits to a fight, enemies will be stunned and spells will be unleashed. It usually only takes a second or two for the first casualty in a fight. During a game, it’s not uncommon to see first blood claimed only a few minutes in. Fights in Dota 2 are quite a bit like food fights—you look around to make sure no one’s watching, then let loose a few cups of pudding or an Arcane Bolt or two.

League of Legends is a little less chaotic. The first kill might take place 10 minutes into a match, but that isn’t to say that the game is any slower paced. You’ll be casting your spells far more often than you do in Dota 2 because of LoL’s emphasis on skillshots and low mana costs. Laning is usually a matter of last hitting while throwing out a spell or two to try and push your opponent out of lane.

The later section of both games is reserved for team fighting and coordinated pushes to try and reach the enemy base. As the end of the game approaches, teams usually start to stick together to knock down towers and eventually the base structures—the melee and ranged barracks in Dota 2 and the inhibitors in LoL which strengthens creep waves. Destroying the nexus or ancient is the only way to end the game without forcing a surrender vote.

The ancient—eye of Sauron?—doesn’t react well to being attacked.

Champions/Heroes

Although you’re given control over a single character in both Dota 2 and LoL, the two games have different ideas of what constitutes a hero or champion.

Playing dodge ball with the ground is a lot more fun than it sounds.

Champions in League of Legends are more likely to have skillshots and spells that can be spammed. As a result, LoL focuses not only on traditional, attack damage (AD) carries, but also on ability power (AP) carries. Unlike in Dota 2, you can buy items that increase the damage output of your abilities in LoL. The laning phase in League games usually involve quite a bit more ability-based harass. Poking your opponent with a skillshot or target spell is reasonable because of the low mana costs that accompany most spells. Every single champion in this game has four main, character-specific spells along with room for two summoner spells; Flash is one spell that you’ll see all the time because it lets you jump a short distance in the direction of your cursor.

He’s clearly asking for me to push his buttons.

The comparatively lesser emphasis on skillshots doesn’t mean that Dota 2 isn’t a skill-driven game. It makes up for it by having a diverse pool of heroes that are able to build items to satisfy different roles. Dota heroes have much more explosive power with the ability to execute combos that usually leads to battles that last only a few seconds. These powerful spells come at a cost—the mana required to cast these spells is usually high—which prevents them from being used constantly. Another distinguishing factor of Dota 2’s hero pool is the Invoker—playable proof of the wide variety of heroes available in the game. With a total of 14 abilities at his disposal, the Invoker is considered by many to be the most complex character in any MOBA game. Mixing and matching reagents to invoke new spells demonstrates just how versatile and varied Dota 2 heroes can be.

Next page: A quick peek at the map, metagame and itemization options in both games.

Dota 2 lol graphic comparison battlefield

One of the things that makes it hardest for me to transition from League of Legends to Dota 2 apart from the various gameplay differences, is the map aesthetic. Sure the UI is huge and clunky compared to the scalable one in LoL but the map is really what makes it hard for me to play. I can’t read it, I can’t see where I am, everything is so flat and looks the same to me. The only way for me to know where on the map I stand is to look at that tiny little box on the minimap.

This was a problem for me when I tried to play HoN too, but HoN was a hundred times worse at this than Dota 2.

But well instead of being all talk, let me just point out examples and why I think this is happening.

If you take a look at the one on the left (LoL) and compare it to the one on the right (Dota) You can see that the camera seems to be located significantly lower in Dota 2 [dota2strategyguide. com] (compare the boxes on the minimap) from the ground, but the same from the head of the champion

As such, the map in Dota 2 is probably a lot bigger than the one in LoL so the camera has less coverage around the PC even if it’s at the same height.

Solutions:
1: Downscaling the map (Easiest way, no loss of graphical quality either)
2: Upscaling the champions and moving the camera higher (Harder since each champion’s model needs to be upscaled and loss of graphical quality as the textures will look worse if they are upscaled)

If you look at this, you can see that the trees are more clearly defined in LoL than dota, they also have more color variation, this makes them look slightly more cartoony, but it also makes it easier to detect them. The thing with the trees in LoL is also that they are not placed on a walkable path (as in you can’t cut down trees in LoL like you can in Dota)

You will also see that everywhere people are normally going to walk in LoL has a very clearly defined road, whereas in Dota the road is not as clearly defined at all (for instance where that flying thing is there seems to be some sort of road but it blends in so much with the grass it can’t be seen.

Solutions:
1: Thicker roads that are more clearly defined as not being part of the grass, and a higher color variation between the trees and grass
2: I don’t have another idea. Dota 2 lol graphic comparison battlefield

Overall I think it comes down to contrast, and putting less similar colors next to each other. Look here for example

on one side of that road, the road is clearly defined away from the grass which is clearly defined away from the treeline. On the other side we have the road not clearly defined from the grass which is almost exactly the same color, but the treeline is still very clearly defined away from the grass (in other words adding a darker color to the grass next to the road here on that side would solve that problem.

The game looks good, I never had a problem with that, neither game has inferior graphics it’s just that they’re in different style. Dota 2 is in a semi-realistic style whereas League of Legends is cartoony. But bottom line is, I need to be able to see a bigger area around my character to feel comfortable (I even think it’s too low in LoL), and I need to be able to clearly see road from grass from tree to be able to enjoy it. I have no doubt that playing more will allow the graphics to grow on you, but having some sort of option to change the contrast and color vibrance in the game could probably do wonders for “readability” of the playing field and it’s objects.

Lastly; fog of war isn’t dark enough for me to see that it is fog of war and not something in my vision range.

It might also be a cool solution to allow players to use texture pack mods (for the map, not for the characters)