YMMV / Dota 2

• Alternate Character Interpretation: The Narrator seems to regard the Courier as a being of pure evil.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The grand final game of The International 4 tournament between Newbee and Vici Gaming has Newbee disposing of Vici Gaming in less than 90 minutes despite the match being best of 5. Much less than the standard grand final match of 3 hours.
  • In a sense, the grand final game of The International 2017 between Team Liquid and Newbee. Team Liquid, marching bravely through the lower bracket (in which a single loss means they're going home), facing Newbee that already disposed their Chinese countrymen without any difficulty. In the hope of a nailbiting, awesome match instead we had a lousy series in which Liquid thoroughly trounced Newbee in a 3-0 victory (the first 3-0 grand final match in TI history, no less). Admittedly, Liquid were playing like gods with very good drafts throughout the series, but still.
  • The International 2019's Grand Finals. After a highly-engaging back-and-forth Game 1, with Team Liquid winning after a very late buyback by OG's ana, OG would proceed to absolutely decimate Liquid in the next three games, wherein TL would get a bit of a lead, only for OG's power spike to just overwhelm them in brutal fashion. As much as Liquid had a phenomenal performance in the Main Stage, making the entire lower bracket run all the way to the Grand Finals, OG were just nigh-untouchable all the way to their second (and back-to-back) TI win.
• Audience-Alienating Era: The 6.83 era is considered to be the dark days of Dota 2 because it has a rubberband mechanic greatly limiting your strategies to simply defend from the high ground, artificially Padding the average game length in the process at up to an hour with obnoxious heroes like Sniper and Troll taking up the spotlight as they benefit from the mechanic the most and a near-universally despised Year of the Beast event thanks to its completely unstable servers, its pay-to-win feature, and its hijacking of the normal matchmaking to the point that the playerbase starts declining until 6.84 is released and the playerbase and the reception began recovering.
  • After the game moved to 7.00 following the much beloved 6.88, the game underwent a change so big it wouldn't be matched until 7.33 almost four years later. 7.00 introduced hero talent trees, buildings called shrines scattered around the map, and an item backpack. Talents in particular became a sore spot for the player base as some would feel it was moving away from the simple elegance Dota maintained to the competition, while others would laugh how its copying Heroes of the Storm's talent system. Not to mention the initial talents for heroes were painfully generic, with many of them having simple GPM, respawn reduction, or exp talents though they would all be phased out for more unique ones as the patches came along. Perhaps notably for veterans of the original mod it marked the End of an Age as the patch introduced Monkey King, the last hero designed in Warcraft Dota, meaning subsequent heroes were all of Valve's design rather than the community's.
• Awesome Ego: Wraith King is pretty much made of this. Probably a contributing factor to how the change from Skeleton King to Wraith King was received better than most changes of this caliber.
• Award Snub: For a certain definition of "award". One of the stretch goals for the TI4 Compendium was a contest to give a remodel to a hero chosen by the players. Naturally, comments arose about heroes with, for want of a better term, "ugly" character models, with Viper and Slardar being two of the more prominent choices. As a result, more than a few eyebrows were raised by the announcement that the remodel was won by Faceless Void.
• Base-Breaking Character: There are over a hundred heroes in the game, but for years, the Techies were by far the most divisive and controversial. This is due to how, prior to an extensive rework that completely changed most of their abilities, they were a Mechanically Unusual Class whose mere presence in a game completely changed how each team had to approach every action they took, frequently resulting in extraordinarily long and drawn-out matches thanks to their unparalleled ability to defend objectives with their bombs and mines while contributing little to teamfights. Many players absolutely detested the old Techies as well as anyone who picked them, with "Techies picker" being used as an insult and justification for reporting someone. However, others applauded how unique their playstyle was, viewing them as an example of how each Dota 2 hero has its own special identity. Then there are those who enjoyed their griefing and trolling potential. Version 7.31 granted detractors their wish by reworking them into a hero that needs to be active on the actual battlefield while their non-remote mine is turned into their ultimate.
• Broken Base: This is a MOBA community so it is no surprise that changes will rarely be universally accepted upon.
  • There's the classic MOBA debate of whether there should be a surrender option. The closest thing to it is the "Game is now safe to leave" feature that kicks in when someone leaves the game. The side favoring a proper surrender option says it's better to just surrender to an assured loss and move on, while the other says the option would ruin the game's sense of competitiveness and make the potential for comebacks even worse than it currently is^note For what it's worth, Dota's primary competitor has a surrender option, but good luck getting enough people to agree to it, regardless of how unwinnable things are.
  • In April, Valve introduced a mute system where players above a certain report threshold lose the ability to communicate with the rest of their team. The main dev site was embroiled in a flame war. It was semi-remedied when Valve let them use the Chat Wheel to convey basic ideas such as "Missing Mid" into chat and limited the number of pings they could use in a row (usually out of spite to the mute), although the mute system still harms team communication and anyone can report anyone for anything they want.
  • The game's 2 main play styles teamfighting, and split Pushing, respectively refered to by their critics as Deathballing and Rat Doto. This is especially brutal between players of pushers like Nature's Prophet and Broodmother and those of initiators like Magnus and Enigma, whose favorite heroes are really good at one and meh at best at the other. Those two styles are nerfed as a result.
  • Players often debate over the game's cosmetic items. Nearly everyone agrees that having only cosmetic-based microtransactions is a good thing, but then there are disagreements about what kind of cosmetic items should be added. One camp believes that items should stick to the hero's base aesthetics, and avoid deviating too much from their default color scheme and silhouette. Others feel that if an item doesn't noticeably alter a hero's appearance, it isn't worth spending money on. Over time, the game has gradually moved towards the latter camp, to much controversy: this is best illustrated by Ursa's Alpine Stalker set, which makes him look like a cowboy (though the remaster of the set for the game's 10th anniversary notes that it's meant to be a Bavarian outfit) and was widely criticized upon release until it was pulled from the game; nowadays, many players point out that it looks tame compared to some available sets. With every release of new items, expect to see a group of players complaining about them looking gaudy, or making a hero look too much like another, while others say that these complaints are exaggerations.
  • The decision to rework Techies' skillset entirely starting from 7.31. On one hand, it was an accepted change from a hero who was infamous for dragging down pub matches as well as giving Techies far more viability other than being a one-dimensional trapper that allow the hero to be a popular pick in competitive matches. On the other hand, players felt that it has lost its unique identity that sets it apart from other heroes in favor of becoming a generic support disabler as part of the game's increasing tendency to homogenize heroes entirely into teamfighting.
• Character Tiers: While there isn't exactly an "Official" tier list, there is general consensus on the quality of most heroes. Cries of anguish from teammates when they see someone pick Techies in a pub is the most evident example of this. It's worth noting that these can vary widely depending on the latest patch, region, skill level, and even individual games as a draft unfolds. In the competitive scene there are about 10-15 top picks at any one time, a wider roster of about 30-50 that are picked up often but not always, 20-30 who will are picked rarely, and at least 10-15 heroes are seen as inferior to other options or only useful in gimmicky drafts. Averted now that the metagame is largely seen as very balanced, as seen in The International 2017 (started from the qualifier), 111 heroes are picked. The unlucky two heroes are Shadow Demon and Techies (even then, Techies aren't available in Captain's Mode anyway).
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Done by the Bots. Depending on the AI difficulty levels, after Practicing with Bots for a few times, you may notice that the AI will generally pick only a certain subset of heroes and never experiment with other heroes. This may reflect how real-life players stick to their strongest heroes, but it's more that they're limited by the fact the "Bot Guy" who coded the bots had long since left the Dota 2 team for other projects at Valve and never coded bots for more complicated heroes.
  • Bots are generally seen as useless beyond a certain level of mechanical skill anyway, as they are unable to react to the subtle nuances of the game that humans do. There's a few fanmade patches floating around to remedy this for those who want to avoid the notorious player base. In 2017, there is a feature play player-created Bots that are way smarter than default bot, averted this. Then comes OpenAI...
  • There's also something to be said about real players who go for the same item builds and skill builds every time they play a hero, disregarding whenever a different build would far better suit the match at hand. For example:
    • Rushing Hand of Midas on all heroes. This reached truly ridiculous levels in the 7.00 era, where it's easier to count the heroes that don't have Hand of Midas on their recommended items list, even after a string of nerfs.
    • Getting Poor Man's Shield on every single melee hero. The item was initially intended for Agility carries (which start the game very weak on principle) to counteract harassment in lane... except, eventually, literally everyone started getting one and turning the early game into a slog; this got bad enough that the item was removed from the game completely in 7.07. It was replaced in this regard by Ring of Aquila, whose cheap, efficient stat boosts and aura made it an early-game must-have until it was also removed in 7.20. After that, it was Stout Shield that became a guaranteed pickup for every single melee hero to help ward off harassment, to the point where the item was removed and its damage block given to every melee hero as an innate bonus.
    • Always building Jack of All Stats heroes like Vengeful Spirit, Abaddon, Tusk, Omniknight, etc. as carries, even though there are already multiple carries and no supports on the same team. Admittedly, they can function as decent carries, but running a lineup with no supports whatsoever has never been a formula for success.
  • In pro games, Blink Dagger is purchased on a lot of heroes, including one where it isn't generally considered to be optimal. But the amazing utility of the item means that even when Blink Dagger is sub-optimal it's still impactful.
  • Jungling with your heroes in the early game is usually inefficient compared to laning as experience and gold are earned more slowly there than in lane (except for Enigma, Chen and Enchantress: Enigma farms faster in the jungle and Chen and Enchantress can make use of jungle creeps as minions). However, pub players like to jungle for no good reason other than fear of being harassed and killed by the opposing heroes, which makes no difference if you get ganked and weaken your lanes (or worse, picking a jungler when all lanes are occupied to not have to support), and with every hero that can't be killed by neutrals from level 1 (Legion Commander and Lifestealer being the most notorious examples, but others do exist). It says something when the most popular pub junglers always have higher win rates when played in a lane than when played in the jungle. Pro players tend to only jungle if they have the appropriate hero or their lane is in fact far too dangerous to stay in, and even then they often get out of the jungle to help their lanes instead of AFK farming for over 25 minutes and then complaining the team is behind like in pubs. Patch 7.07 proceeded to hit junglers hard by making neutral camps spawn at 1 minute into the game (as opposed to the previous 30 seconds) and removed the Iron Talon, making it much harder to jungle efficiently. Subsequent patches also rework or remove any abilities that aid in this such as adding a level limit to the to creep available with their abilities but most notably is that Enigma's Eidolon summoning has been changed from requiring a creep to convert to now working like a regular Summon Magic, pretty much killing any possible chance of him being able to jungle.
    • One of the most infamous case of this happens to be Ancient jungling with Necrophos during 6.84. Basically, all you have to do is stand outside the spawn camp of an Ancient, level your Heartstopper Aura, then wait as your skill will slowly degenerate the creeps to death, occasionally stacking in order to up the bounty before becoming online to purchase Aghanims as first item. While viable in low level pubs, in higher level skill caps it is incredibly inefficient, weakens other lanes, and is an easily punishable tactic, either by someone warding the camp or simply ganking him as he has no way of countering them besides dying to the ancients. The hatred and backlash of this tactic is so bad that by 6.85, it is immediately removed so that Heartstopper Aura no longer works on ancient creeps.
  • Pubs tend to stick to some hero picks. Some of the more common picks in pubs include Sniper, Drow Ranger, Ursa, Pudge, Mirana, Wraith King, and Invoker. Learning to counter these heroes is a good way to perform better.
  • Done by Ursa players. Since he benefits very well from lifesteal, Vladmir's Offering was considered a core item on him because it was the only source of lifesteal that worked with his passive skill Fury Swipes (and Skeleton King's Vampiric Aura, but obviously you can't rely on him being on your team every game); lifesteal from other items were considered an orb effect and didn't stack with Fury Swipes (also an orb effect). In 2014, Fury Swipes was buffed so it is no longer an orb effect (and thus can work with every source of lifesteal), making Vladmir's Offering unnecessary, but it continues to be the most common item on him until 2016 when pro players popularise the Mask of Madness Ursa build; and even then the number of pub players who choose Mask of Madness or Helm of the Dominator is still dwarfed by those who continue building Vladmir's Offering.
  • Faceless Void: before patch 6.80 he was built exclusively as a Glass Cannon hard carry, but buffs to him in 6.81 made him viable in the offlane as a teamfight initiator. Pros began to pick Void most often as an offlaner building Blink Dagger and Aghanim's Scepter and starting to look for fights as soon as he has his ultimate (and in some cases they chose to go for some late-game insurance if Void's needed to carry still). Although Void saw a subsequent rise in usage amongst casuals, the old carry Void remains as the most common way to build him in pubs. Even after 6.86 nerfed him as a carry (by replacing Backtrack, making the Glass Cannon Void even squishier) and buffed him as an initiator/teamfight controller, and pros stopped playing the old Glass Cannon build entirely, Mask of Madness remains the second-most common item on him after Power Treads.
  • Broodmother's Spin Web ability was changed in patch 7.07: before, she would turn invisible while in her webs; after the patch, this is no longer the case. Despite this, you still sometimes see people planting Sentry Wards around her webs and using Dust of Appearance on her.
  • Movespeed- and castrange-boosting Talents, most commonly found on Support heroes, are rarely picked in pubs, and almost always taken in Divine+ matches and pro games. This is due to positioning being critical for Supports to avoid being caught by mobile enemies and bursted down.
• Crack Pairing: Technically any pairing outside those characters who explicitly are tied together; no hero except Oracle and Monkey King has a response to every other hero (released before them).
  • Faceless Void and Phantom Assassin area moderately popular couple, for whatever reason. Perhaps because they're both naturally evasive?
  • Someone thinks that Faceless Void and Death Prophet is also a good pair.
  • Phantom Assassin and Omniknight are another popular pairing, particularly in the Russian fanbase.
  • Fanart also seem to like pairing Sven with Rylai and the reasoning may be a little more off. They can't be the only blue-colored heroes in the game. Although there are small bases like how Rylai compliments on Sven if they're allies^note That's a lovely shade of blue, Sven., and Sven isn't so big on killing an enemy-Rylai if they're enemies^note I would not kill a maiden, but you forced the issue, it's still pretty crack seeing that they don't even interact in back-story (and Rylai seems to have more links with Ymir) (although gameplay-wise, Sven really benefits on Rylai's support).
  • Not to be one-upped by her sister, Lina also has a Crack Pairing with Batrider. Maybe because they play with fire and Batrider has more 'kill quips' on Lina than any other ladies.
  • Winter Wyvern has one with Phoenix of all people, despite (or perhaps because of) the obvious incompatibilities.
  • Good luck trying to explain how the Juggernaut X Windranger pairing came to be, knowing they have absolutely zero interactions and they're not exactly a common lane duo and yet produced quite a bunch of fanarts pairing them. The tiniest justification is that Juggernaut's Blade Fury have him spin like a whirlwind, something Windranger is more common thematically with. The other thing is the official image that displays them together when you click 'Play Game' in the Rebirth client, but aside of that, it's total crack.
• Creator Worship: IceFrog is widely praised even among League players. He's probably more elusive than the other more social creators, but his commitment on improving Dota all day long with all his own honest visions without stealing earns him the praise of many, he has also stated that he's not doing it for money but for the love of the game development itself. Nerf NOW!! even has a caricature of him featured daily as a sign of this, and many fan videos like to 'include' him somehow as a sign of respect (as an invincible icy amphibian who smacks nerf bats to any recent nerfed heroes).
• Crossover Ship: Not officially, but if the fandom is to make a crossover art between DOTA and League of Legends, Davion the Dragon Knight is inevitably going to be paired with Shyvana the Half Dragon.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Juggernaut, Axe, Nature's Prophet, Death Prophet, Tusk, Techies, Lina, Crystal Maiden, Storm Spirit, Bristleback, Monkey King, Kunkka and Tidehunter, all have announcer packs. While every hero has their fans, some other universally liked heroes include Rubick and Shadow Fiend.
  • Heroes that are pretty manly also tend to be universally liked, such as the aforementioned Axe, as well as Sven and Skeleton/Wraith King.
  • Techies were the most anticipated and demanded hero by the fanbase. "Added Techies", is a fairly common joke patch note in the fandom. Though many others are just a quick to point out that "Give Techies" was more of a joke than a genuine desire for their mines to be hidden everywhere on the map. They were finally going to be released after The International 2014, just without the 'Goblin' moniker. And they immediately got their announcer pack.
  • Meepo, to the point that he was buffed from an overly-difficult borderline Joke Character to one of the single most powerful and rewarding heroes in the game.
  • After their stories were reworked into sister-rivals, both Lina and Rylai started to dominate the DOTA fanworks.
  • Despite his grotesque appearance, Pudge is one of, if not THE most popular hero in Dota 2, consistently remaining the game's most picked character. This is thanks to his playstyle which revolves around his very satisfying-to-land Meat Hook ability, which allows Pudge players to regularly pull off impressive plays. Having an Awesome Aussie accent provided by John Patrick Lowrie (who previously provided the accent for The Sniper) also helps boost his popularity.
  • Ilexa, the creep girl from Monkey King's lore comics, quickly won the hearts of the Dota community thanks to her cuteness. Not bad for a character that isn't even in the game.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With its primary competitor game, League of Legends. The stereotypical Dota player claims that League is an inferior rip-off title with watered-down gameplay to please the braying crowds, and its fans are clearly inferior players who couldn't take a real game. Meanwhile, League fans commonly argue that the changes made in the transition make for a better, more stable game, and the Dota fanbase are just a bunch of conceited snobs who want new players to stay out of their game so they can feel special. The fact that both games are infamous for their unpleasant fanbases adds an extra layer of vitriol when they start arguing over which is worse. Additionally, there's an old feud regarding DotA-Allstars.com forum's owner, Pendragon, going over to League and shutting it down, while using its address to advertise the new game. Most fans have moved on or never heard of it, but tempers flare between those who haven't and still hold strong opinions on it. Hilariously enough, even a number of League fans thought that what Pendragon did was a dick move for advertising.
  • Also has this with fans of Valve's other franchises, due to the amount of attention the DOTA series got compared while Half-Life and Portal follow-ups languished in Development Hell and due to the game being in a completely different genre than what long-time Valve fans liked the company for in the first place. This has lessened with the release of Half-Life: Alyx showing Valve's willingness to revisit their other series, but fans still turn their nose up whenever yet another Dota project is announced.
• Fan Nickname: Lots of 'em.
• Fanon: There are some fan-exclusive thoughts going on between characters that has never been confirmed clearly by Valve. For instance, fans think that Windranger is flat-chested, and like to land her with A-Cup Angst jokes when her size was usually left ambiguous.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Slark/Naga Siren is a popular couple among fan artists.
  • Fanart like to pair Sven with Rylai despite how 'crack' it seems (see Crack Pairing), and put him up with Juggernaut as Heterosexual Life-Partners despite having even less quips to each other. CM even mentions Sven with friendly manner in her Announcer pack. At least the Sven-Juggernaut rivalry gets cemented when Juggernaut Arcana is added and it's revealed that Sven did have a hand to unleash the spirits behind Juggernaut's mask.
  • There's also a camp who likes pairing the aforementioned Juggernaut with Windranger... if WR is not being paired with her Lovely Angels Foil Drow Ranger, a more common pair. The Juggernaut-Windranger pair has kinda died out after the reveal that Juggernaut used to have a fling with... Templar Assassin.
  • Pairing Winter Wyvern up with either Dragon Knight or Jakiro (or both) is fairly popular, for somewhat obvious reasons, though the latter became more than a little awkward when it was revealed by a lore writer that Winter Wyvern is Jakiro's mother.
• Game-Breaker: As balance patches come and go, sometimes what seems like a small change can hugely affect the overall prowess of heroes, especially in the competitive scene where skill levels and team compositions can magnify specific advantages. Other heroes will become popular for a month or two as they seem unstoppable, then gradually fade away again as the metagame adopts their counters. This is standard practice for Dota, and has been the case for years.
  • Some heroes are more than fad-picks in the competitive scene, though, and tend to be dealt with more thoroughly in the balance patches. Oftentimes, they end up coming back into the meta someway or another. The most notable examples are Io, Batrider, and Dark Seer, who remained staple picks despite continual tweaks (though currently only Io still sees a large amount of play despite by far being nerfed the hardest and most frequently).
  • While many carry heroes require farm to become effective, a handful have very potent spells to help them out in early teamfights. This led to a period throughout 2013 where the dominant support heroes (Gyrocopter, Naga Siren, and Alchemist being the standouts) were designed to be carries, as they had the utility of regular supports with the added ability to turn into damage dealers later in the game. With nerfs to the early potency of these carries and dedicated support heroes overall got more buffs to help compensate for this, support carries have more or less disappeared until 2014 where they made a return. IceFrog has since gone the opposite direction with Gyrocopter in 6.83, with buffs suggesting a more supportive role.
  • Huskar + Dazzle/Oracle = instant win button after 25 minutes if your enemy doesn't pick a counter. This combo is so brainless it enables low-tiered team to defeat top tiers, such as the memorable defeat of fan-favorite OG by underdog TNC in The International 6.
  • Many builds in Ability Draft mode can be absolute game breakers due to letting you mix and match abilities that are very obviously not designed to be used by the same hero (usually with hilarious results), but special mention should be given to Meepo's ultimate, Divided We Stand. Countless videos demonstrated how horribly imbalanced it was in combination with skills stronger than Meepo's usual kit before Valve removed him from this mode in the 6.81 patch.
  • Other easily abused Ability Draft skills include:
    • Batrider's Sticky Napalm (inflicts damage whenever the target is damaged by another of your spells or attacks) combined with a spell that deals small amounts of damage rapidly (such as Pudge's Rot or Dark Seer's Ion Shell).
    • Earthshaker's Aftershock (stuns and damages nearby enemies whenever you cast a spell) combined with a spell that has a very short cooldown (most famously, Storm Spirit's Ball Lightning, which has zero cooldown, and Medusa's Mana Shield, which can be toggled on and off repeatedly) can easily keep someone permanently stunned.
  • Thanks to a series of buffs to Helm of the Dominator and a rework that caused it to become a viable item for a wide number of heroes, 7.00 promoted the humble Satyr Banisher to this status, thanks to its Purge ability - a 5-second slow, starting at 100%, on a 3-second cooldown. Combined with the fact that they can spawn in either medium or large camps, and you have an easily-accessible creep that can keep the enemy perma-slowed by at least 60% while removing any buffs they might use to get away. And since, as mentioned before, Helm of the Dominator has become almost as ubiquitous as Hand of Midas, you'll be dealing with it a lot. It didn't take long for Purge's maximum slow to be reduced to 50%, accompanied by a string of nerfs to Helm of the Dominator (increasing its cost, reducing its stat bonuses, and causing Dominated creeps to award much more gold when killed) which finally killed off the item almost entirely.
  • Earthshaker is the most picked hero in TI 7, and with good reasons. Despite his Fissure was nerfed to not blocking creeps way back then, the skill is still having big impacts in game, as the practical use of the spell is still too wide. Then we have Enchant Totem, a very cheap AOE stun with low cooldown, enabling ES to chase and continuously stun a hapless foe. But the largest offender is his Echo Slam that doesn't have a cast time for such a strong AOE skill which means he can use it even just for cancelling enemy's TP or channeling. He's the MVP on two iterations of TI Grand Final after all, what with his infamous "6,000,000 Million Echo Slam" in 2015 and "10,000,000 Million Echo Slam" in 2017. Of course he's nerfed afterwards in version 7.06f.
  • Poor Man's Shield, the early-game best friend of carries and offlaners alike. Blocking 20 damage on every hero attack is massive in the laning phase, making the holder essentially immune to harassment by any enemy that doesn't have sufficient ability damage to be a threat. Combine that with the Iron Talon, and safely last-hitting becomes trivial. Because of how hard it is to punish a PMS holder in lane, the item was eventually removed from the game entirely along with Iron Talon, making melee heroes vulnerable to harassment once more.
  • Aether Lens, when first introduced, was the dream item of every spellcaster ever. It offered bonus mana, extra regeneration, extra spell damage, longer cast ranges, and spell resistance, all at a very affordable cost, especially since you could get the Energy Booster for it simply by disassembling Arcane Boots. Simply put, if your hero relies on spells, there's literally no reason not to buy an Aether Lens as soon as you can afford it. Aether Lens was quickly nerfed into the ground, bringing it into line: the magic resistance was removed, its health regeneration was changed to mana regeneration, and the magic damage was instead given to the new item Kaya, so that it only provides increased cast range and some extra mana.
  • Ever since her release, Dark Willow has established herself as the support hero, standing head and shoulders above all competition due to her incredibly overloaded kit. She possesses disables for days, a good gold-gain talent so she doesn't lag behind, and most importantly Shadow Realm, an absurdly powerful defensive skill that also happens to double as a long-range nuke. All of this makes Dark Willow an absolute menace in ganks and teamfights that's also incredibly hard to put down when the shoe is on the other foot, in contrast to other supports who tend to melt if the enemy so much as looks at them funny. Things got really absurd when she was given an Aghanim's Scepter upgrade that causes Shadow Realm to no longer end when she attacks and apply its damage on every attack while it's active. If Willow gets to level 25 (much easier than for other supports due to her kit making her relatively hard to kill) and picks up the +200 Attack Speed talent and a Scepter, she suddenly becomes a murder machine that absolutely devastates anything without a Black King Bar, as she can easily deal over 15000 damage with a single Shadow Realm cast - enough to kill even the tankiest heroes three times over. The Aghanim's build was swiftly nerfed to bring it back into line, but the rest of Dark Willow's kit is enough to make her a relatively common sight.
  • Magnus's 7.23 Aghanim's Scepter upgrade quickly established itself as one of the most absurd things ever: reducing the cooldown of Skewer to 4 seconds and removing its mana cost. It wasn't long before Aghanim's became the item to get on Magnus, sometimes before even Blink Dagger, because of how good it was. It gave Magnus ridiculous amounts of mobility and was amazing for lockdown, since the drag combined with the slow afterward allowed him to pin enemies down almost indefinitely. With an Octarine Core and the range-boosting talent (which also increased the drag duration), Magnus could lock enemies down for 2 seconds at a time on a 3-second cooldown, making it entirely possible for him to Skewer an enemy into the fountain from the middle of the map if they didn't have spell immunity, and let's not even get started on things like Abyssal Blade. This lasted about two weeks before 7.23c nerfed the upgrade.
  • One of Io's level 15 Talent grants the Tethered Hero an Aghanim's Scepter effect as if they hold one without owning it. Under the right circumstances, this meant that the linked hero gains a free 4200 Gold item, allowing them to free up their gold and item slot for other more useful items. Among their most common partners, Gyrocopter gets Side Gunner that allows him to get a free attack even when disabled, Ursa's Enrage allows the hero to cast even when disabled to dispel stuns and reduce the damage received, and Weaver can use Time Lapse on other heroes to save an ally from being ganked. This combination proved to be so devastating that it can usually end the match within 5 minutes after both heroes were properly farmed. As a result, 7.21b moved the talent to level 20 to slow down the time Io can snowball before it was eventually removed altogether starting from 7.22d.
  • Marci debuted in an absurdly dominant state, by virtue of being a virtual Master of All. She had powerful damage, was a considerable threat at all stages of the game, mobility on par with Anti-Mage and Puck, and a powerful disable as well. She could leap into the enemy's back line with ease, toss the carry into her team for an easy pick, and use her remaining abilities to output ridiculous damage of her own in the meantime. She proved to be such an extreme Lightning Bruiser that she was hotfix nerfed twice within a few days of release, and still remained powerful.
  • A rework to Medusa in 7.33 was initially released to raised eyebrows by the community as she became the first hero to have a starting Strength total of 0 with 0 growth, meaning at levels 1 she had a paltry 120 hit points without additional stat items. Mana Shield was also reworked, innately scaled at level 1 and now grating a 98% damage reduction in exchange for a higher damage-to-mana loss conversion. While it actually cratered her viability initiaitlly, buffs in 7.33b (including making Mana Shield usable by illusions, making Manta Style especially dangerous on her) made her a nigh-unkillable raid boss that even her natural counters such as Anti-Mage or Phantom Lancer struggled to take down. As a result she became the biggest winner of the 7.33 changes, almost achieving an average 60% win rate across all brackets until 7.33c and 7.33d stepped in to tune her down.
  • Ember Spirit is often considered one of the best carries in the game due to his ludicrously stacked kit. He has some of the best mobility in the game, has good magical damage output in the early-game, scales well with physical attack damage and attack modifiers thanks to Sleight of Fist, has a long-range disable, and is great at flash-farming, making him one of the most versatile damage-dealers in the game that can be built as either a magical nuker or a physical attacker. While his skill floor is high, a well-played Ember Spirit is strong at ganking, split-pushing, teamfighting, and escaping, often all at once. While he's not always a meta-dominating force, it's worth noting that he's been at least viable in nearly every version after his release despite getting far more nerfs than buffs.
  • 7.35 gave Bloodstone an experimental buff as the first item to boost the AoE of spells. Enter Leshrac, who's all about massive area-of-effect spell damage and already got along with Bloodstone like a house on fire due to Bloodstone patching up his survivability with spell lifesteal and stat bonuses and the Bloodpact ability, which gives even more spell lifesteal and lets him regenerate mana by dealing spell damage. The AoE bonus made it even more desirable for Leshrac since all of his spells benefit from it, even Lightning Storm, which players normally wouldn't count as an AoE spell, since Bloodstone increases the jump distance for the lightning bolts; in particular, Split Earth's area of effect became so huge that you'd have to be blind (or fighting someone with an innate blink) to miss with it. Leshrac became an auto-pick for about a week before patch 7.35b came along and removed the mana return from Bloodpact, forcing Leshrac players to actually build mana regen again rather than rushing Bloodstone every game to solve all their problems.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Briefly during 6.81 when Vengeful Spirit has her Vengeful Aura reworked so that she reduces damage upon her death, there is a critical bug where if she gets killed by a non-hero unit, the game would crash immediately. This bug caused many players to exploit this bug whether it be for trolling by quickly ending the game before it began, or just to deny the opposing player their guaranteed victory by purposely suiciding themselves to either a fountain or a tower where the game will end without any victor. This bug actually caused her to be banned from several tournament matches before it's quickly hotfixed so that she will no longer crash after dying.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Mud Golems. In older patches, they were completely immune to magic, meaning that they disrupt many junglers' farm just by showing up, and their relatively high HP pools don't help in this regard. Patch 6.84 removed the magic immunity and replaced it with a large amount of magic resistance and the ability to split upon death, meaning that they can now be farmed using spells but still take a long time to kill.
  • Early in the game, lane creeps can be this, especially for gankers. They're numerous, don't die quickly, run faster than most heroes without boots, and chip away small but still numerous amounts of your health at a time. The kicker is that, if you try to attack an enemy hero, they will drop what they're doing to chase and attack you. And they don't give up easily, either.
  • Hill Troll Berserkers have a passive ability that causes their attacks to Break the target, making them a real headache to farm for heroes that rely on passives to quickly clear camps such as Sven and Axe. Not to mention, they can prove to be a huge Spanner in the Works for passive-reliant heroes if a fight breaks out in the jungle and the camp gets aggroed.
  • Ogre Bruisers have an ability called Ogre Smash! which slams an area for heavy damage after a long cast time. The wind-up makes it easily dodgeable (and thus makes the ogre worthless to control using abilities), so it pretty much only exists to annoy junglers and make them pay more attention to creep camps than they have to.
  • The catapults, despite not being strong, are usually annoying if they manage to reach a tower, in fact if you abandon a line when a catapult comes, your tower can end up suffering a lot of damage, or even destroyed.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • While the gameplay is largely free of bugs (aside from Ascended Glitches), a few amusing visual bugs pop up on occasion, such as Crystal Maiden losing all her hair during her death animation (leading to the Fan Nickname "Cancer Maiden"), Tiny becoming a demented cousin of Jack Skellington, Lycan losing his head, or lane creeps Dressing as the Enemy.
  • Briefly in 6.75, Chen is able to use Holy Persuasion on Roshan and since the latter could not be attacked outside of his pit, Roshan ended up being an invincible game-breaking force. Unsurprisingly, this is quickly hotfixed after this bug is known.^note Interestingly, the original Dota mod actually had a failsafe against this scenario by teleporting Roshan back to his pit if he tries to attack a building.
  • For a short time after Techies was ported, Tusk could pack Land Mines into his Snowball with hilarious results. Understandably, this was quickly patched out.
  • In 7.33, if Muerta used Parting Shot on Tiny while he has a tree from Tree Grab, Tiny's ghost could throw infinite trees until it went back to his body; this also worked with Alchemist's Unstable Concoction. This was fixed in 7.33d.
• Harsher in Hindsight: This video detailing the story and bond of Dota 2 pro duo Fly and N0tail, was released on April 21, 2018. Fast forward just over one month later...
  • One common joke within the Dota 2 community is how Dota often ruins friendships due to disagreements in-game. Not so funny anymore when it actually happened between pro players N0tail and Fly who used to be best friends until the latter left the former behind for a better performing team on really bad terms with each other.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2016, Dota 2 personality SirActionSlacks jokingly made a suggestion for Lycan's Aghanim's Scepter upgrade where he can bite his allies to turn them into werewolves, similar to how lycanthropy is commonly portrayed in fiction. Come patch 7.23, and Lycan actually got a similar ability called Wolf Bite.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: This is the most common criticism players of most other MOBAs, particularly main rival League of Legends, have about Dota 2- the game absolutely demands a positively encyclopedic level of required knowledge to play, with countless little tricks (usually that started out as Ascended Glitches, such as denial or creep camp stacking) that you simply have to master if you want to get anywhere at the game. With the possible exception of Heroes of Newerth (which was meant to be the "real" successor to the original Dota before Dota 2 came along) Dota 2 is unquestionably the most difficult to play MOBA on the market. Fans of the game, however, don't consider this a drawback at all, generally considering all the other games (except HoN) to be cases of It's Easy, So It Sucks! instead.
• Memetic Loser:
  • If there's one hero that gets the Butt-Monkey treatment from the fanbase, it's Crystal Maiden, due to being the archetypal "hard support" - easy to kill, has to babysit the team's carry while surrendering farm to them, and has to spend most of what little gold she earns on wards rather than nice things for herself. Currently she only has 17 strength, and relatively low intelligence for an INT hero, making her about as physically dangerous and/or resilient as a creep early on, which gets her a lot of flack. Others take it to the (good-naturedly) opposite extreme, calling for more nerfs, saying facetiously that if she gets any kills, it's a sign that she's overpowered.
  • Sniper as well, as the most common pub stomper hero, which means that he's a good hero if the enemy doesn't know what they're doing and his glaring weakness that he absolutely has no mobility. He's usually the go-to hero to portray 'The typical deadweight player that's more of a burden than a contribution to the team'. While there are many obnoxious, annoying pub stompers like Riki, Sniper simply is ahead of this curve because even Riki finds use in some unorthodox support role, and Sniper has several Memetic Troll qualities (especially his annoying laugh) in addition of being responsible of one of the Audience-Alienating Era (the 6.83 patch/'HO HO! HA HA!' era), so some people still use that to justify making him the punching bag as revenge.
• Memetic Mutation: Memes are common within the Dota 2 community, which can be seen here
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Enchantress is occasionally portrayed by the fanbase as an Ax-Crazy Yandere with a mile-long sadistic streak hiding under an innocent facade. The fact that Enchanted creeps are on a limited timer really doesn't help her case, nor does her ability to kill people without any real shift in demeanor. Further not helping the case is how Terrorblade, well known as a very evil Card-Carrying Villain, somehow claiming himself as 'her best friend' meaning that he, in all his evilness, approves a lot of her 'acts'.
  • By piecing together parts of the lore, some fans came to the conclusion that Keeper of the Light is a genocidal madman at best and one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse at worst, due to him wiping out the night creatures save for Night Stalker and leaving a trail of destroyed worlds in his wake due to Chaos Knight's pursuit. And perving on anything female (except Dawnbreaker, but that can be credited with un-updated voice banks).
• Moe:
  • Enchantress. She has a very adorable voice and bubbly sweet personality (which of course, occasionally undermined with some slight obliviously sadistic streak).
  • For much the same reasons as above, Crystal Maiden. It's helped by her being very delicate, can die with even the slightest touch from heroes. She, like Enchantress, also voiced by the same person: Gin Hammond (though she also does other heroes with different non-delicate personalities)
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • When Doom kills Storm Spirit, you might get this gem.
  • Whenever the announcer states that you deny your own tower, you know you deny the enemy most of the potential gold they would have gotten.
  • "RAMPAGE." ^note Assuming it's for you or your teammate, of course.
  • Chen's ultimate, Hand of God, plays one note for each ally it heals. Played together, this results in an angelic F#/Gb major chord in-game.
    • In fact, most AoE heals in the game produce major chords if they affect several targets: Omniknight's Guardian Angel makes a C major chord; the Mekansm item, B major and the Guardian Greaves, A major.
  • If the hero in question is on your team, the hum of Enigma's Black Hole, the boom of Magnus's Reverse Polarity, the rumble of Sand King's Epicenter, the crack of Tidehunter's Ravage or the crash of Earthshaker's Echo Slam are probably the most encouraging sounds one could hear in the middle of a teamfight.
  • Hearing the slot machine make jackpot sounds when you manage the amazing skillshot of a 4X Multicast on your Fireblast or Ignite as Ogre Magi.
  • Phoenix doing a triumphant screech once the battle begins and again, when/if his team is victorious.
  • "Bullseye!" when playing as Mirana and actually landing a blind or maximum-damage+stun arrow.
  • *ka-THUNK* "I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR!"
  • "Radiant Victory! / Dire Victory!" Followed by the triumphant music, signalling your team's win.
  • The distinctive "fwoosh" layered over the normal level-up sound effect which means you get a new talent to play with.
  • The sound of a Black King Bar activating, if it's coming from you or an allied carry. Up to ten seconds of unimpeded asskicking ensues.
• Narm: Some of the heroes have really bad voice work. Luna in particular has become memetic for this gem. However, the tone of the game means it doesn't actually detract from the experience.
• Nausea Fuel: Pudge is an extremely disgusting character to both look at and listen to. Lifestealer isn't much better.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In the supplemental comic The Summoning, we get to see Enigma's Demonic Conversion up close and personal. It isn't pretty.
  • Ursa. Few things in the game are as scary as a roaring bear tearing out from the jungle and ripping you to shreds in a second. It gets worse when he uses his ultimate, which surrounds him in a fiery red Battle Aura and allows him to kill you faster while becoming Nigh-Invulnerable in the process. And he'll often be carrying a Blink Dagger, so you never know when he might strike next. It's somewhat alleviated by the fact that he's not overtly malevolent, just very violently protective, but you wouldn't know that from fighting him.
  • Lifestealer's lore contains not one but two examples of And I Must Scream, first from N'aix himself who has been cursed with immortality and chained in a dungeon for eternity until his mind broke, and then from the wizard who tries to mind-control him only to have his consciousness trapped by his overwhelming insanity. His gameplay adds a third in the form of his ability to Infest a non-hero unit and then take control of it, only releasing it when he decides to burst out in a shower of gore akin to the Chestbursters.
  • Occasionally, while trying to quit the game using the Narrator as the announcer, the female Narrator from the Museum Ending of his game will repeat her line to quit the game. While the context is different here (in The Stanley Parable, she’s trying to get the player to stop playing by telling them that there is no truly good ending other than to quit), it’s still very sudden and jarring.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The 2015 Shanghai Major. Let's just say that fans remember the tournament better for the many, many issues that arose than the actual competition and leave it at that.
• Paranoia Fuel: Surprisingly, Dota 2 can be a very nervewracking experience. Due to the Fog of War covering most of the map unless you have wards and any number of enemy heroes being able to destroy you in seconds, don't be surprised if you find yourself treading very gingerly outside your base. There's a reason why warding is important: nothing is more terrifying than not knowing where the enemy is.
  • You never know where the Techies might have planted their mines. And if they purchase an Aghanim's Scepter, any mines under their Minefield Sign become immune to any kind of detection. So you see his sign on a chokepoint and wonder agonizingly, "is it really mined?" If it is, I should find a detour. But could that be the sign's true objective?
  • Lifestealer. There's no way to tell whether that jungle creep you're farming has a Lifestealer in it or not. Or that support you think is all alone, or that lane creep you're last hitting. Or the one that's supposed to be on your side. No longer the case as of 7.23, where a rework to Infest made whatever unit Lifestealer was infesting always appear as an enemy unit to the other team.
  • Spirit Breaker's Charge of Darkness has global range. He could be charging towards you right now and, unless you have lots of wards, you might not know it until he's bashing you in the face with his flail.
  • Pretty much any hero with an invisibility skill, as they can come out of nowhere, kill you in seconds, and then disappear without a trace. They can be dealt with using any form of True Sight, but if you don't have any and are farming the jungle...
    • The last thing any support hero wants to see after placing a sentry ward is a Riki or Nyx Assassin rapidly approaching them.
  • Anyone with a Blink Dagger (mostly Ursa). You may be just farming away and minding your own business, then suddenly POOF, that hero appears right in front of you after hiding through the fog of war and lays smackdown on you until you die.
  • You're in red health and are about to teleport away, hoping for the safe haven of your fountain in the next 3 seconds. Then some hero with a Basher (or Spirit Breaker, or Slardar, or Faceless Void) pounces on you...^note As of 7.20, though, you no longer need to worry about Slardar randomly bashing you... because his bash is guaranteed to proc on every fourth attack, and he's probably primed it by hitting creeps three times.
  • Seeing "Pudge is Missing" in your chat. You'll be expecting a hook to shoot out of every tree.
  • Dropping to low health while playing against Bloodseeker, with Bloodseeker himself nowhere in sight, and seeing that little debuff icon above your health bar indicating that he can see you now... and, for all you know, could be charging towards you at that very moment to rip you apart. Hope you remembered your TP Scroll.
  • When playing against Zeus or Invoker. You'll never feel safe with less than 20% of your health, since you just know they're waiting to spontaneously kill you from across the map. Even worse if they're on the same team as Bloodseeker, since they can see when you're weak enough to finish off.
• Play-Along Meme: The Flavor Text for Ogre Magi's Multicast (a purely luck-based ability that causes his abilities and items to randomly cast multiple times per use) insists that "Despite being largely incapacitated by his IQ, the Ogre Magi's success in battle is attributed to pure skill." Fans have gone along with it, with streaks of good Multicast RNG being played up as a display of skill and conversely a streak of bad luck being classified as a "skill issue."
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Alchemist was rarely seen in matches prior to 6.75 due to a crippling reliance on farm, a skill that does nothing but give him extra gold, and a flashy indicator that lets enemies see how charged his stun is. However, thanks to 6.75's immense buffs, he became a much better hero all around. Considering that he was a Joke Character before said patch, that's saying something. After helped OG win two Majors back-to-back, he was nerfed again, though.
  • Spirit Breaker received a massive buff in 6.75, causing him to go from barely seen in pubs to the local Game-Breaker for how amazing he was at ganking. Nerfed in 6.79 so that his ult could be stopped while casting and he was put somewhere between back in the scrappy heap and balanced.
  • Naga Siren and Morphling, after being widely detested for being ubiquitous at The International 2012, suffered heavy nerfs in 6.75. However, they slowly worked their way back into the meta by The International 2013, where they became crowd pleasers. Morphling in particular, enjoys new playstyle as a support, using his obscenely long stun duration on Strength-attribute Adaptive Strike.
  • Lycan was equally detested during The International 2012 yet was almost never in play, sporting an almost 100% ban rate throughout the event. With his ability to jungle nerfed thereafter, his reign of terror over the game has since ended. Although he retains his powerful objective-killing abilities, he's no longer considered a priority pick/ban nor does he see much pub play. TI 7 sees him on the rise, mainly because his powerful Howl buffs.
  • Heaven's Halberd, a decent mid-game item with evasion and the ability to disable an enemy unit's auto-attacks found a niche as a siutational support item for its utility in teamfights after Manta Style was changed to no longer dispel its Disarm. However, because BKB still removes Disarm, it's lumped with Rod of Atos as "support Items that sound amazing in theory but tend not to come up to snuff in practice." Then again, Rod of Atos was buffed, seen below.
  • The Rod of Atos was once an item whose active ability inflicted a decent slow on a target from a long distance. Unfortunately, slows are the least powerful form of crowd-control, so the item was mostly forgotten despite offering pretty good stats (Skywrath Mage was pretty much the only hero to buy the thing, and only because it was the only reasonably-priced item that could pin enemies inside Mystic Flare). 7.00 reworked this ability, turning it into a long-ranged root which completely prevents movement. The item became much more commonly purchased after this change. 7.28 would then introduce an upgrade called Glepnir, which made its root active an area-of-effect and combines it with Maelstrom, making it an even more popular item.
  • Following a change to Silver Edge's recipe in 7.28, which replaced Echo Sabre with an Oblivion Staff and a more expensive recipe, the item saw a sharp decrease in popularity as it was still an expensive item with fairly mediocre base components. The item was changed in 7.30 so that you combined Crystalys with the Shadow Blade instead, adding damage and crit to the Silver Edge while causing the Back Stab from invisibility to deal a guaranteed critical hit, making it a lot more attractive as an item.
  • Vanguard as an item was generally viewed as inferior to a Mekansm. Vanguard is more effective for damage reduction, but quickly falls off in effectiveness, is half as effective in reducing damage on ranged heroes, doesn't offer anything to teammates, and generally isn't worth the investment. These days, it's seen as a situational item at best for heroes with damage return passives, like Axe and Spectre, squishy agility carries in need of some quick health, such as Phantom Lancer and Riki, as a component of the much better Crimson Guard or Abyssal Blade, or for heroes that cannot afford the steep mana cost of a Mek (especially after Mekansm's mana cost was nerfed). However, later patches (particularly 7.33) were very kind to it by greatly reducing the cost of its components, making it much cheaper and faster to build for heroes that want to shrug off damage in the lane and jungle early on, and it was allowed to be disassembled so you can build better items with its components after Vanguard has fallen off. It also helps that it got a useful upgrade in the form of Crimson Guard, making it a good starting point for heroes that want to build one.
• Sacred Cow: Comparing this game to another MOBA will get you obliterated on certain forums and imageboards. As can referring to it as a "MOBA" at all, as most fan prefer to just call it Dota. Also, you don't diss Dota's granddaddy IceFrog when compared to other MOBA developer names. EVER. Only this kind of dissing is acceptable.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • For new players, creep pulling and stacking can be a large hurdle to overcome when learning to play support heroes. Modeled after fairly unintuitive mechanics of the WC3 Dota engine, neutral creep camps are stacked by displacing them from their spawn locations a few seconds before the minute mark, at which time more creeps will spawn should these locations be free of existing units. Done improperly, time and map presence can be wasted or the position of the creeps in the adjacent lane can be moved to an unfavorable position, hampering the ability to farm from it.
  • Evasion can make a fairly straightforward encounter equal parts confusing and frustrating. Because one of Brewmaster's passive skills gives him a chance to evade incoming auto-attacks and one of his active skills adds another layer of miss chance, the Phantom Assassin whiffed the majority of her attacks, dropping an otherwise elementary kill. Faceless Void's Backtrack ability deserves a special mention: not only can it ignore all spell damage, physical, magical or pure (but not secondary effects) as well as auto-attack damage, it is disabled only by the rare Break effect. This might be why it was reworked in patch 6.86.
  • Linken's Sphere's Spellblock ability can be one sometimes, blocking some spells and activated items on cast, some on projectile impact, only certain aspects of other spells^note e.g. the first slash of Omnislash or first bounce of Chain Frost, with yet other targeted spells or items not blocked at all. Further inconsistencies arise in considering whether the protected unit is the primary or a secondary target and whether the cast was ground- or direct-targeted.
  • Status resistance has proven itself to be quite unpopular. Changing the duration of disables can mess up one's timing for combos, and how the stat interacts with certain spells can be inconsistent: some slows have their slow value lowered, while others have their duration shortened, and the interaction between status resistance and an Aghanim's-upgraded Doom is so complex it takes several sentences to explain. It doesn't help that what was once a niche mechanic on only a select few heroes and items was made more widespread starting in 7.20, where status resistance was added to common items like Sange and Satanic and the skill sets of several heroes, like Bane, Omniknight, and Spirit Breaker.
  • The 7.20 patch gave Brewmaster a new ability, Cinder Brew, whose duration gets refreshed when the target takes fire-based damage. This proved very controversial, as prior to this, an ability's element only affected its appearance, and this led to forced synergies between fire-themed heroes and Brewmaster. The list of abilities that were considered fire-based was also confusing (most notoriously, Axe's Battle Hunger was on the list, while Oracle's Purifying Flames was not, and the item Radiance's Immolation effect did not proc it while Brewmaster's Fire Spirit's did). Thankfully, Valve got the message and shortly afterwards, the ability was changed to cause the target to ignite upon taking a certain amount of spell damage from any source, not just fire-elemental ones.
  • In Custom Games, if you fail to accept the "Ready" button, you won't be able play Custom Games for 1 hour. While ostensibly done to prevent bots and griefers from ruining games, it also applies to 1-player lobbies as well as private lobbies with a full-man party. This means that if you either change your mind, you go out for a while and go back only to fin that the lobby has already started or if a player didn't update the game to the latest version, you'll be kicked from the game and get locked out for 1 hour for no reason.
  • Whenever you mute a player in-game, you also report said player supposedly for comms abuse. While intended to be a way to deal with toxic players, some players muted them because they either speak in a foreign language, they have an open mic that is way too loud for them, or they just want to focus on the game and said players inavertedly get reported even though they didn't do anything toxic which led to them getting sent to Low Priority for no reason if said players ended up getting muted too much. To make things worse, said mute also uses up your daily reports so in the event that you encounter a genuinely toxic people or a Griefer, you won't be able to report them due to overusing the mute function. While there's a way to mute players without reporting them, doing so requires more mouse inputs (right-clicking their profile and mute without reporting) which in a tense game, wastes a lot of time to the point that it could mean the difference between victory and defeat. The only other way to mute without reporting is by clicking the mute all function in the team tab but this usually only happens for players who specifically wanted to mute everyone, not as a way to deal with specific players that most players intended.
  • Once players have reached Immortal Ranking, teams are no longer fully randomized but are instead determined by a pre-selected leader before drafting the heroes for them. While seemingly a way to encourage teamwork, the problem with this is the fact that the game ignores party queues for the team so in a 2-3 party matchmaking, it's possible for the team to be on opposing side which often creates disputes due to the stakes involved in Ranked matchmaking. Additionally since the player pool is determined based on the Captain, a player that isn't chosen as one will encounter the same player again even after they specifically blacklist them in their avoid pool, rendering their Dotabuff Plus subscription pointless. But the worst part about this is that the game does not take the player's role into account so it's possible for a player to lie about their role in the drafting stage and have a team full of carries wherein previously, your team would already know the role you play from the start before the the draft has begun.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • On paper, Octarine Core is a perfectly acceptable item; giving your spells lifesteal along with a 25% cooldown reduction should be a nuker's dream come true. In practice, you'll rarely ever see the item being prioritized by most heroes not named Death Prophet, simply because of its prohibitively high cost which consigns it to the late game, at a point where most spellcasters' nuke damage has fallen off already. The few casters that benefit from the spell lifesteal tend to be too squishy to really get much mileage out of it, the cooldown reduction is generally less impactful in teamfights than the full refresh given by Refresher Orb, and the item's stats are overshadowed by Scythe of Vyse, which has the added utility of serving as a "screw this enemy in particular" button. While Octarine Core eventually lost its Spell Lifesteal, it was also made cheaper and easier to build, making it a more common pickup.
  • Given the huge Random Number God aspect of Neutral items along with the limited supply and only being able to use one at a time, it's inevitable that some of the drops can be rather disappointing (though 7.33 at least introduced the Neutral Token system to give you a choice between five items, letting you more easily avoid the stinkers):
    • Repair Kit allows the player to both heal and buff their own towers to great amounts, potentially enough to repel a big push from the enemies. However the problem is, if at any point you're using this ability, then the enemies would have already became strong enough to easily destroy your towers regardless of how much the towers are buffed. Not to mention that being a Tier 3 neutral item means that it's probably way too late to benefit from it and the item itself only provides marginal boost (nothing but health regeneration) to yourself meaning that it's not even worth keeping it in your inventory. As such, it was eventually removed from the neutral item pool entirely.
    • Iron Talon and Poor Man's Shield were two overpowered items back when they could be bought, due to the major bonuses they granted to junglers and in the initial laning phase respectively right from the get-go. However, upon being reworked into neutral items, they quickly fell out of favor because 7 minutes into the game is way too late for them to really be useful in their respective niches before being replaced by something better. Both of these items were thus removed from the neutral item pool in patch 7.28.
    • Trident is essentially Sange, Yasha, and Kaya combined. It gives 30 on all three attributes, 30% amplification on lifesteal, health regen, and spell damage, 30% status resistance, 30% manacost reduction, and 30 movement and attack speed. Overall, good stats on any hero for late game. The problem? The neutral drop is a recipe, meaning that you need to craft Trident using Sange, Yasha, and Kaya (a 6000+ gold investment). Even worse is that it's a Tier 5 item, meaning it drops 60 minutes into the game, at which point gold is much better off being hoarded for buybacks. It only becomes effective if there's a hero who has two of the three items (or has a ridiculous amount of gold that they can buy all three components and still have enough for buyback), otherwise the recipe will be left gathering dust in the stash. Not to mention, even if a hero does have two of the three components, the benefits they get from completing the trifecta often don't justify the cost of building it as opposed to just using their two existing components by themselves and/or crafting them into other items like Manta Style, as very few heroes can make full use of Trident's stats and even the ones that do have better options in the shop since Trident is just a Stat Stick with no real abilities. And even as a Stat Stick, Trident compares poorly to Apex, which has the much more Boring, but Practical effect of massively boosting the holder's primary attribute and doesn't require assembly. Trident subsequently got the axe in patch 7.28. Fallen Sky (essentially a Blink Dagger + Meteor Hammer item) used to be in this category (if marginally better since Blink Dagger is a good enough item that you can consistently expect somebody on your team to have one), but a later patch made the item itself drop instead of the recipe, salvaging it.
    • Phoenix Ash is a watered down version of Roshan's Aegis in that it heals the hero when they're about to suffer a lethal blow, even against KO spells like Culling Blade or Reaper's Scythe. While it seemed useful in teamfights to equip to a position 1 carry for an extra life, the problem is that it only trigger once and afterwards the item disappears completely which wouldn't have been bad if it weren't for the fact that it's a Tier 5 item where they're supposed to be one of the strongest items in the game as a way to break stalemates, and if you need an extra life at 60+ minutes into the game and have enough map control to farm neutrals, you're better off just beating up Roshan instead. Needless to say the item didn't last long before it was removed in 7.24, just one patch after Neutral Items were added.
    • The Fusion Rune is another tier 5 item that grants a targeted ally the effects of every power-up rune at once for 50 seconds - which means invisibility, regen over time, illusions, double damage, max movement speed, and reduced cooldowns and mana costs. The problem is, the wide array of power rune effects mean that the whole isn't much greater than the sum of its parts, and especially not at that point in the game (Invisibility and Regeneration are only useful outside of combat rather than as part of an Hour of Power and Arcane is only useful on heroes with spammable spells, so the only beneficial effects on late-game carries in a fight are Haste, Illusion, and Double Damage, and even then they probably have most of those effects covered with items). It's also only good for 3 uses before disappearing, and most damningly, it uses the same modifiers as the regular runes so it's dispellable. Fusion Rune ended up being one of the first Neutral Items removed in 7.24.
  • Patch 6.87 added Bloodthorn, an Orchid Malevolence upgrade that granted guaranteed critical hits on top of the damage amplification and silence on any unit that was affected by its active ability. While good on paper, it was a very expensive item at 7,205 gold and the stat bonuses it provided were subpar for a majority of heroes. 7.25 would make the item almost 1,000 gold cheaper but at the cost of replacing Crystalys with Hyperstone for its recipe, removing its innate critical chance and the slot-efficient upside it had in favor of even worse stats. 7.31 reworked the recipe again, replacing Hyperstone with Mage Slayer. Bloodthorn would enjoy more popularity with the change as the Oblivion Staff for Mage Slayer can be acquired from disassembling Echo Sabre, making its build path faster and easier despite a 500 gold increase.
  • Before 7.25, Nullifier was an item whose purpose was to prevent a hero from using their items. It was the only item, and one of only three active abilities in the entire game that could do so (the other two being Disruptor's Aghanim's-upgraded Static Storm and Doom's Doom). While not a bad item per se, it only becomes very effective in the late game where most heroes have items like BKB, Manta Style, Silver Edge, etc. and as such is an effective counter to it. The aforementioned patch reworked Nullifier so that it instead applies a continuous dispel on a target. Worse, the dispel debuff itself is dispellable, and as such items like Manta Style and BKB can counter this. Already a very situational item, the patch now made it one of the worst items in the game. The 7.26a update buffed the item so that the dispel debuff cannot be dispellable, making it marginally more reliable to use.
  • Bloodstone has had a long stint of being Awesome, but Impractical. On the one hand, its Mana Battery ability means it gives a hero potentially more mana than even mana-guzzlers like Storm Spirit can reasonably use. On the other hand, building up that much mana regen requires charges, which are obtained by getting kills without dying in the process because dying makes you lose charges, making Bloodstone a win-more item in the majority of situations (though it used to make the holder respawn faster based on the number of charges, giving some compensation for the item being crippled) - if you're snowballing out of control with Bloodstone, you were probably already kicking ass without it. As such, even mana-starved heroes that could benefit from one tend to prioritize Eul's Scepter and Scythe of Vyse instead, which give less raw mana but have useful abilities. Bloodstone would later be reworked to focus around Spell Lifesteal and health regen, making it a magical counterpart to Satanic, to give it a better niche.
  • Arcane Blink was introduced as part of a trifecta of late-game upgrades to Blink Dagger, one for each Attribute alongside Overwhelming Blink and Swift Blink, whose Blink abilities would grant a bonus related to heroes preferring that Attribute after Blinking. Then came 7.33, where Arcane Blink's on-blink bonuses were removed in favor of simply making it have half the cooldown of the other Blink Dagger-based items. Because Blink Dagger and its upgrades become unusable for a few seconds upon taking player-based damage, the lowered cooldown was largely pointless when it mattered most, and Arcane Blink was instantly thrown onto the trash heap for not having any selling points compared to the other two Blink upgrades. 7.34 redeemed it by making the blink now restore health and mana to the user.
  • Revenant's Brooch's claim to fame is that the wielder's physical attacks will be treated as Magical damage and since magic resistance won't be as high as the armor value by the late game, theoretically it would allow the hero to attack the enemies' weaker defensive aspect as well as allow them to attack through Ethereal targets which is the bane of physical carries especially during the later stages of the game. However the item itself gives relatively poor stats for the cost required and it being magical meant that the commonly purchased BKB hard walls it, to say nothing of the fact that in order to utilize the item to its fullest potential, you would need to center your build around magical damage which in the early stages is entirely reliant on your abilities that itself fall off by the late game. Even the ability to attack Ethereal units is rendered redundant when all of them besides Muerta's Ultimate are dispellable meaning that one can easily purchase Nullifier which does the same and more or even just wait it out until the buff expires as they don't really last long enough to make a difference anyway. In fact the item was so bad that even back then when it builds up from the much more commonly used Witchblade, Intelligent cores almost always prefer to sell the latter and use the gold available to purchase a Scythe of Vyse over upgrading it and once Witchblade was changed so that it builds into the more useful Parasma, Revenant's Brooch usage dropped to almost non-existent levels.
• Shocking Moments: Icefrog is known for his bold approach to game balance: not afraid to make players cry They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, patches often massively shake up the foundation of the game, often leaving the player base in shock (whether it be positive or negative) as they read through the patch notes. But some patches have a bigger effect than others, leaving players feeling like they're looking at a whole new game:
  • Patch 7.00 blew away the playerbase with its massive changes. The UI was completely revamped, and the Talent system had huge repercussions on every single hero in the game. That's on top of many alterations to the map and the addition of the Monkey King as a new hero (the first to not be a port of a Defense of the Ancients hero).
  • Patch 7.23 elicited a similar reaction. The two new heroes, Void Spirit and Snapfire, weren't too shocking since they'd been announced months ago, but no one was prepared for the addition of 62 new and extremely powerful items which are dropped by neutral creeps. On top of that, the courier system also got completely changed, with each player having their own courier who levels up with them, gaining new abilities (such as being able to use items), the Level Cap got increased to 30 (granting heroes all of their talents at the same time at max level), new map objectives were added in the form of Outposts, and many heroes got their skills reworked or completely changed.
  • Patch 7.28 added the Aghanim's Shard, which upgrades one of your abilities. It's (usually) less impressive than the full Sceptre, but it caused a large-scale realignment in how players handled some heroes, especially since it was a lot cheaper than the sceptre (though there's a timer preventing early buying).
  • Patch 7.33 became perhaps the single biggest update since 7.00 as it saw the map size increase by 40%, the addition of Universal-type heroes that resulted in many heroes being reclassified, introduction of a Miniboss neutral called the Tormentor, Gates to teleport between Radiant and Dire safelanes, two Roshan pits at each corner of the map where he changes when its day or night, and the removal of Spell Immunity in favor of Debuff immunity.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: This can be one of the worst games for this, practically being a Wretched Hive at times. Alleviated somewhat by the report system, which puts the worst offenders in a "Low Priority Punishment Queue" pool during the matchmaking search for a game or gives them communication bans. Low Prio matches them solely with other members of the pool - ideally rude/unpleasant players, but also some players who may have been reported multiple times unfairly, or innocent victims of unstable internet connections - forcing them to play through six or so matches of the unpopular Single Draft game mode before they're allowed back into regular MM. Communication bans disable the use of text or voice chat for a day or two.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • One of Main Menu themes sounds quite a lot like the opening segments of "Liberi Fatali" from Final Fantasy VIII.
  • The theme of The International 2014 sounds like it's been taken straight out of Mortal Kombat, be it either the movie or the game.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Fans of the original game often react poorly to changes that deviate "too far" from how the original game was. Even something as simple as names and appearances, which often are changed for copyright reasons, cause backlash among veterans and newer fans alike. Examples that come to mind are Brewmaster (originally known as Pandaren Brewmaster) being turned from a giant panda to a red panda, Doombringer having his name changed to Doom, and Bristleback having his name be Bristlebog during development but ultimately reverted, Windrunner becoming Windranger, and Necrolyte becoming Necrophos. Skeleton King got an entire event and game mode based around his remake into Wraith King (though that change seems to be received more positively due to Wraith King's copious amounts of ego and swagger). It seems that Blizzard has their finger on the lawsuit trigger the moment Valve slips up.
  • Patch 6.79. The changes to buybacks, the day and night cycle, courier, and certain changes to heroes did not rub well with more than a few fans. That mostly went away when the patch actually dropped, but more than a few people still wonder why Night Vision has to be near universally crap.
  • Averted with Storm Spirit's remodel. When it was initially discovered that he would receive a new model, the playerbase assumed the worst because they had grown fond of the originally derided design. When it was finally revealed though, the playerbase immediately changed its tone.
  • The Reborn update. Good Lord, the Reborn update.
  • The rework of spell immunity in 7.33 into debuff immunity proved to be a very divisive move, with some saying Black King Bar is now a dead item as the 50% magic resistance it now grants isn't enough to prevent getting killed by magic during its active duration. Not to mention bizarre interactions where you can still get briefly stunned by spells which can cancel channeled abilities and debuffs longer than BKB's active can result in the hero getting affected by debuffs after it wears off.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Storm Spirit's original model was changed from the Pandaren for DotA into a rather weird looking human. His teeth looked like they weren't connected to his chest. His new model from the Three Spirits Update averts this.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Nobody seems to be able to agree on whether Visage's name is pronounced VIS-ige (the English way) or vis-AHJ (as in French). Visage himself stresses the first syllable in the English audio, but casters and players will use both in the same breath. Lampshaded by the Bastion announcer pack where Rucks dubs him "vis-AHHHHJ".
• The Woobie:
  • Say what you will about how you think he's really annoying, but there's no denying that Dragonus/Skywrath Mage's life sucks. He's once a proud Skywrath, loving the future queen, Shendelzare. A small overlook, and everything changed: Shendelzare was deposed by her ruthless sister, having her wings clipped away and then because of the law, Dragonus is not allowed to strike against this new Empress and is forced to serve her, hating her ruthless methods all the way but unable to protest. So he thought of a new plan: Restore Shendelzare to throne in secret! ... Too bad Shendelzare at that point became Vengeful Spirit, and now Dragonus is forced to juggle between restoring the throne AND restoring Shendelzare's status, ALL while she, as Vengeful Spirit, hates him and all Skywrath. How does this suck even more? The lore straight out spelled that Dragonus is honestly good-hearted and noble, and this situation is nothing but the worst torture he's ever had...
  • Heck, just look through the backstories of every hero in the game. Chances are, you'll find at least one or two that qualify for Woobie status.
  • Not backstory, but usually if you lose, your hero will curse on their defeat or make some angry or humorous lamentations. Drow Ranger, on the other hand, has a very heart-wrenching lamentation, like she's borderline sobbing while cursing how fate could be so cruel after her ordeals of losing her family and feeling estranged within her own race... then it's topped with a defeat. This is a strong contender of a Tear Jerker, and just makes you want to give her a hug and say "We'll get'em next time, Drow. Next time..."
  • Everytime your favorite hero is either: dies or lose the game, and then sound so defeated is just... heartbreaking to watch and hear. Especially for the girls or more friendlier heroes. Do they really deserve that cruel death/loss?