rootninja

What kind of player are you?

Which is better? It’s hard to find an unbiased opinion. Both games are full of noobs, bitter vets, trolls and everything in between so don’t expect a lot of friendly public chatter in either game’s chat channels. Some players like League of Legends (LoL), others are faithful to Heroes of Newerth (HON). Besides the basic dota mechanics, other similarities between the two are almost comical. For instance, both games introduced a Monkey King champ at the same time). But they’re completely different games, just of the same genre.

If you’re a casual gamer just lookng for some lightly competitive fun and/or you never played “Defense of the Ancients” mod for Warcraft 3, then go for LoL to learn the ropes of ‘dota’. You will pick up all the lingo and basic strategy faster by playing this game over HON.

League of Legends is a great entry point into the ‘dota’ genre. Both of these games are free to play, and honestly, they’re best played that way too. You could unlock all the champions at once, but then whats the fun in that?

New champions can be unlocked by spending the points you build up after many matches, but the progression is slow so don’t expect to open a new one all the time. Having all the champions available and all of your slots filled with paid-for runes doesn’t make you good at the game. You can only play one at a time anyway, and each one takes practice to master.

When compared to HON, the bare-bones feel of LoL really stands out. But unless you’ve tried HON, you won’t really understand this.

If you find that LoL holds you hand too much, then Heroes of Newerth is your game.

Right from the beginning you should feel overwhelmed by the interface. Just figuring out how to get your first match started might take a minute or two. Buttons leading to different pages, many with multiple tabs combined with decorative artwork first appeared to me as a gobbledygook of some type of fantasy camouflage.

The first time you start a match, a dialog will popup asking you if you want to do the tutorial first. If you’re new to ‘dota’, take the tutorial. However, if you understand last hitting, lanes, and all the other basic ‘dota’ mechanics, the tutorial is really a waste of time. It won’t show you much that you wouldn’t figure out in the same time spent playing a match. (but ONLY if you already understand dota!)

One of my biggest complaints about HON is clutter. There’s just so much stuff packed into the interface, it’s quite a climb to figure everything out. If you can stick around long enough to figure it all out and put the pieces together, this game is a beast. All the descriptions, filters, and verbose details are right there at your fingertips. The size of the map, multitude of options and build paths, graphics detail, and depth of strategy of this game completely dominates LoL.

The downside, no Artificial Intelligence matches. Thats right, no bot matches. But if you’re all about the pvp then who cares.

tl;dr If you’re a casual player or want an easier learning curve – League of Legends is for you.