DOTA 2 vs LOL: The Difference and The Similarities Between Dota2 and League of Legends

Invoker: A Dota2 Hero

7. Respawn – In both games after dying the players are given a timer after which the player will respawn. In Dota2 you have another strategic mechanic, called Buyback. By using some of your gold you can Buyback into the game, basically respawned instantly. Dying also costs a loss of gold from the unreliable gold you have gathered and for the buyback, you spend more. The late the game goes the higher the buyback cost it. It also has a 7-minute long cooldown so use it wisely.

8. Runes – Dota2 have runes. Runes are placed around the maps. There are 4 Bounty Rune spots, 2 each side of the river. Bounty Rune spawns every 5 minutes. The river has 2 rune place that spawns runes every 2 minutes and is called power up runes. Runes can be stored in a bottle and used later during a team fight or whenever you need. After the Rune is used the bottle has 3 charges with which you can heal your health and Mana both.

9. Teleportation – In League of Legends you have to choose summoner spell like flash which teleports you by few meters however Flash is similar to blink which is an item in Dota2 and costs you 2250 gold. Same with teleporting to your base or towers. In League of Legends certain heroes choose this summoner spell, however, in Dota it’s again an item that costs you just 50 gold and let you teleport in any of your tower or to the base. You can upgrade your boots to Travel Boots which will let you teleport anywhere on the map on your minions, and the upgrade the boot will teleport on your ally heroes.

10. Leveling Up – Leveling up in League is more of a gradual curve of the game, you level up and you get stronger. However in Dota2 leveling depends on the hero and on the line up you are using. Some heroes don’t need level up to be fierce or to be effective while they fall off in the late game even with higher level and some heroes desperately need leveling up to be effective in the game and the scale well in the late game. Their heroes that are weaker in the early game, very strong at the mid-game and slowly falls of in the late game and pretty much useless in the ultra late game. So levelling up in Dota depends more on the lineup or the draft and the strategy you are using. Not always you need level up to win the fight or the game.

11. Countering Heroes – In Dota drafting plays a huge role. Drafting is simply picking the heroes you want for your team and banning the heroes that can be a threat against your line-up. In all pick games each player bans one hero and in the end of the drafting phase some of those randomly gets banned. Then you pick your hero. In professional tournament mode or in Captains mode, both captains get to ban the heroes and pick the heroes. In League of Legends you have unlock your champs however, in Dota all heroes are open to use for you since the day one. Every hero counters some hero in some way and that makes the game balanced. You get all the heroes to choose from and if you enemy picks a hero that you don’t like and you know the counter hero of that hero, you can always pick it and ruin their game in pubs.

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Even though League of Legends and Dota2 has the same origin and a lot of similarities they both are different in ways. League was created with the target of making a game more appealing visually, easy to learn and hard to master. Dota was created with the idea of Dota1. More strategic gameplay, heavily based on strategy and mechanics, brain scratching difficulty, pretty difficult to even learn the basics and be an average player and extremely difficult to master. There are heroes that you can even touch or figure out how to play even after having 8000 hours of gameplay time. Unless you have someone to teach you the mechanics and you are immensely good at learning the mechanics and understand the game as well as good at developing the game-sense that runs really deep. Small observations can teach you a lot in Dota.

As I said earlier, LOL is more of a simplified version of Dota2. Let me put it this way, if Dota2 is the winter in the Switzerland then League of Legend is a month inside an Air-Conditioned room. I however, prefer Switzerland. But in the end both the games are undoubtedly the giants of E-sports scene with a huge player base. Which game do you love more? Have you tried both? Which one did you find difficult to learn? Let me know in the comments.