Yes, but it does teach the very important stuff that is almost never learned when playing against people. Because players vary in styles, reaction, lag etc... someone is gonna punish you while others will let you slip. VS an AI, they will almost never leave you unpunished when you make a mistake. And that consistency will build your dota skills immensely.
You have to rely both on the fact that people can do something smart, and something stupid, and that there's a thing called reaction time and ping, which bots hardly have (seriously, if you blink into bots you're often insta-stunned, which very often does not happen even in pro play). Playing against a robot when you know what they're going to do is actually you having an advantage, not the robot, they cannot anticipate your moves, but you can obviously anticipate theirs, and even if their time response is better, you already know how to dodge all of it if you play against bots a lot. This simply does not happen neither in pubs nor in competitive play, you can know how certain players play and what they usually do, but it's not that they're programmed. The robot can be programmed to perform various tasks very well, but you (should) now exactly what it's gonna do.
I am not a good team player, which sucks for me when going with people. But alone in a lane, I don't do stupid shit and I always farm well and deny their farm to the best of my ability. Item wise I am also smart.
So while AI isn't gonna teach me to play versus people's tactics, it will and has taught me how to play and how dota works.
If you're not a good team player, your farming skills will go to waste, and if you deny and take last hits against bots you'll obviously be up for a surprise against real players, who can be reckless and try to tower dive you when you least expect it, or not attack you at all when you do expect it. Some players will risk their life trying to take yours (which bot supports hardly do, even if you are carry), some players won't have map awareness even if their hero completely depends on it (pub spirit breakers), some players will actually blindly go into your jungle without any indication you might be there, and catch you completely unprepared because your support didn't put wards where he should've, and he had no reason whatsoever to roam your jungle. Bots are too calculated and programmed to perform certain tasks, that they won't do things typical players do.
Huskar players will often get killed while also killing you, which does not happen with bots - they have more rational calculations. Bots are only good to practice certain mechanics against them, but you're really not practicing the GAME against them, if you understand what I am saying. Faceless Void players in pubs will use Chronosphere to do a variety on things, like running away with other hurt carries, while pub Voids will only use it to attack, etc. An underfarmed Void that's aware he cannot kill anybody won't even use chronosphere if he's a bot. He had already calculated that he cannot dish enough damage for it. Bot Windrangers will never play the carry build for her, even given proper farm, though they can still be deadly, because +int items hurt a lot if built on her anyway.
And those who risk it reap the rewards, most of the time. Those that play out of fear of losing money or losing the rewards almost 100% of the time lose, in any game. Fear is an important motivator, but if you let it dictate your play style, you're dead weight.
Not really, the reason why the pro scene does not improvise much is because they practice certain lineups and simply do not want to risk getting owned playing heroes they barely play. Risking a bit can pay off, risking too much often does not. Playing heroes in the most efficient way to play them is still the best way to do it. Building BKB and heart on Naix might even be a good idea against certain lineups, but is absolutely atrocious in majority of cases, and they know it. So if somebody picks Naix, chances of them getting Heart AND BKB on him are very, very, low, but WILL happen if the opposing team has a ton of magic nukers (BKB blocks magic damage, Heart helps with what does get through, and Naix effectively already has a BKB built in). Another reason is that certain lineups just work much better than something random mashed together, and even better than something that seems like a good idea on paper, but does not work at all. Pro players use statistics to their aid too, they know what heroes are countered by what heroes, and WHY, etc. There's no place for too much experimentation if you have a GOOD correct answer. Where things are more vague, you can, and will experiment. So basically, pro teams actually think their lineups and builds through, and don't experiment to try if something will work simply because they know it simply wont - they have thousands upon thousands of hours playing dota and have seen all kinds of stuff, and often remember well enough when somethings works vs when it does not.
Your logic stands. Maybe that item isn't that good on Lina. But some damage item to utilize that passive most efficiently is good. I don't think pure INT items are best, since she has spells to deal damage with - her attack barely hitting though. Desolator maybe? Armor reduction is always welcomed.
You got it at "she has spells to deal damage with". Well, Lina has high damage spells, good int gain, and good right click after spells are spammed a bit. Getting +int items on her is ULTRA EFFICIENT when it comes to both right click and spells. She might be the hero with the highest benefit from +int items, due to this, when it comes to actually dealing damage. And on top of that, most +int items you are gonna get are also gonna help your team because they have utilities, so your killing and supporting potentials skyrocket. You're squishy, but you can also kill VERY fast, so there's that. Reaction time and proper chain stunning and teamplay are keys to playing Lina well, as well as knowing when to start spamming right click on somebody, and when to back out (realizing you might get killed and not get a kill in return).
I did say IF you have core items and IF you have lots of gold. Then investing into something unorthodox will catch them by surprise too. Nobody expects Lina to deal lots of damage with auto-attacks.
EVERYBODY expects lina to deal lots of damage with auto attacks, if she's farmed at all, this is due to crazy attack speed. That's why you focus and shut down her like you'd do with a carry - she can get kills too easily if you do not do that (and have no map awareness, so she walks in and ultis you while you're at low health), and that can make her snowball. Since you're playing against bots, they are hardly going to get Lina this farmed, but in pubs, and even in the pro scene, a farmed lina is a menace - speaking of unorthodox builds - if the other team deals a lot of magic damage, and your lina is farmed, it's perfectly ok for her to buy items like BKB - because if she survives their nukers and stuns, while also getting to cast her devastating spells, she then has right click damage to finish them off, and you're hardly going to walk up to lina with 10% health and attack her. And even if you do, she should have items like vyse and shiva, and you're toasted because her attack speed isn't getting worse, but your HP is. Don't forget she also has huge attack and spell cast range, and movement speed, so she can simply run away if she needs to, and can also come close enough to you to cast everything she has. And as I said, if she's farmed well, you do not even want to get close to her, as she'll probably still kill you. Lina definitelly has a semi-carry potential, but she's also an INT hero who can use high mana cost and +int items very efficiently, so getting 60% more right click damage is wasted if you could get a lot of damage + mana pool + utility from another item. It just doesn't add up with Daedalus. If you're a hero likе Sven, however, who does have mana problems, and does not get damage from +int items, building high tier support items on him is also inefficient, getting items like mjollnir and daedalus is obviously better in majority of cases.
But its 3850 gold, unlike Abyssal which is 6750 gold.
You build it mid game and it lasts all game. That BKB won't do the carry anything good because he/she will try to counter your halberd and won't build other items until they get BKB, only to escape you. You basically won the game because of this.
And it has a 30 seconds cooldown, while Abyssal has 60.
It's situational. If you have really high attack speed and you're melee, going basher + attack speed gives you something rather consistent that neither costs you mana nor has a long cooldown. It really depends on how long you're going to trade hits. If you can kill a hero in a few seconds if they cannot fight back, disarming and attacking them might be an option. Lifestealer is a perfect choice of target here - if he cannot attack, he's just dead - he has low base armor, and depends on chewing people to survive, if she can't attack for 3 seconds and he's in a middle of the fight, or tries to chew on Halberd carrier (evasion, ha ha), he might be toasted, so there's that. BUT, if you need to outcarry your enemy 1vs1 or in the middle of a teamfight, attack speed + basher are going to help a lot more in most cases, and going abbyssal after many successful kills is going to help a lot too. You have to remember that lategame Abbyssal will have 60sec cooldown, but heroes will be dead for double that time. Lategame, getting that ONE kill might solve a lot, and lategame, if you have halberd, they might also have MKB, in which case your 3850 item is worth way less. And if you picked Halberd INSTEAD of bash, they can walk away, then go back and kill you, and bash you to death, since they have a better idea of what to do. Instead of getting abbyssal, sometimes having fast attack speed is just good enough to lock down enemies long enough to kill them, but it depends on so many variables that this discussion might make absolutely no sense.
Also, you do not buy a BKB to counter Halberd. Halberd might not even be much of a deal in some scenarios - you buy BKB to protect you from anything the enemy can throw at you - most high tier support items just don't go through bkb, most spells don't, etc. That's why you buy BKB as carry, halberd is really likely to be the least of your worries if they have heavy magic nukers or heroes like earthshaker who can stun you to death. So you're getting BKB anyway as a carry. To counter a halberd - you instead bait it out and let them waste it (since you're not really disabled in terms of movement, you can often just kinda ignore it in most case), buy a MKB, which is a great item on all accounts and you won't regret buying it anyway. If you farm up a BKB and MKB, and hard counter enemy carries who should also be getting their halberds/butterflies/evasion going, as well as high magic damage supports, you're still likely going to win, those two items have a hefty win rate, where halberd is more of an utility item than you're really going to benefit from evasion - there are almost always better items to buy for your hero, because if you're an agility carry, you're saving up for a butterfly, if you're an int carry/support, you're getting a good utility item with a lot of +int, if you're a strength support/carry, you're still going to get something better in most cases, as you really don't need evasion in most cases, and it's easily countered by the very players you're using it against (you want halberd against hard right-click agi carries, the type of a hero most likely to buy a MKB anyway), so halberd is ultra situational, but in some cases might even be the best item to buy ultra lategame (when both yours and enemy's farm is already maxed out), when you're already six-slotted, but still deal high enough damage to kill a target if they don't retaliate. I had a fed ursa one on one as sven, if I had not bought halberd, he would've killed me - he did not even understand what was happening, he was just standing there unable to attack, previosuly he was abbyssal'd for 2 secs, but then he bashed me a few times before I used halberd on him, because he simply had better attack speed. Does not happen against good players who first check your inventory, they run away if you're melee and they're faster. I actually killed ursa, despite us both being lvl 25 and 6-slotted and str carries kinda sucking really late game. They still won, but ursa could not kill me with his setup. In most other cases, though? Halberd would probably be a bad idea, it's an ultra-situational item, and in almost all cases, getting some other utility, or damage/bash/disable/anything really is often a better idea. So it's not that it's bad, it's just that there are better things for equal or a bit more money (with high attack speed, basher's gonna help you way more than a halberd, if you're not a good right clicker or have bad attack speed, halberd is an obvious choice if you're a str hero, otherwise just get something else).
Sacrificing team mates to win a fight? How cruel of you.
It's all in calculations - if you realize that support will die anyway and can't do much lategame, baiting just one thing from the enemies is gonna help you in a teamfight is really good, especially if it's something with a short cooldown and they don't expect you to counter-initiate after your support gets killed (even a blink dagger with a 12sec cooldown can be wrecked this way, and expecting people to be greedy often pays off).
Its 300% now? Damn. No seriously. Damn.
+200% bonus, 300% total. But still, really crazy. The counter (running away from him) is often way too easy to pull off, though, especially now they've nerfed MoM.
While Warcry is insane, nothing beats a consistent armor buff. And devotion aura back in the days was a +3/4/5/6 armor boost (if I remember correctly) to everyone in a large area around Sven. Desolator was a must for all carries that went against Sven back then, unless you are Slardar and sometimes even him went Desolator.
Warcry is up 50% of the time, it's cooldown is 200% of its duration. It's not really a problem, you're not going to be able to sustain hits more than 6 seconds anyway, against really good players. It's a teamfight tool, and now takes some actual skill to execute, aside from just staying around with an aura. With good timing, warcry is amazing, with bad timing, it does nothing. With devotion aura, people are going to attack you anyway, with warcry they might wait till its off, or just waste their right clicks on your team, which now has 120% more health against that kind of attacks. Realizing when to turn it on is now a crucial thing.
Combined with the new Crimson Guard, that Warcry is even more insane. Though I have to wonder if Dota is gonna become the new LoL.
Well, you can also have an omni on your team, who can cast Guardian Angel. The point is, nothing lasts forever, and there's nothing you can't counter somehow. Warcry is really good, but works 50% of the time, and that's IF sven has enough mana, which he mostly won't unless supports are good with arcanes. Crimson guard has a pretty hefty cooldown. Guardian Angel as well, and you just wait till its over, and attack then. There's no spell or strategy you can't counter with wise choice of when to attack and jump into the fight, what build to use, etc, so you can't really depend on those things to be so OP they lead to victory easily. Look at winrates, OMNI has the highest one in pubs - because people can't coordinate against such heroes in pubs. Items with high winrates are ones that provide damage, not protection. No matter how much protection you have, damage is still going to fry you at some point.
I hate League of Legends since way back, but now to me its garbage. They buffed champions magic resist and armor, and their items are kind of shit as well.
Either your champion deals TONS of damage or it deals none. That's how LoL feels to me right now and I always want to go back to Dota where consistency is king.
In DotA, timing is the king. Most ways to buff armor are temporary (unless you have pure armor items or a lot of agi, I am talking about crazy armor buffs and reductions), and most ways to boost damage are permanent, keep that in mind. Attack is the best defense still works very well in DotA, even Assault Cuirass, one of the better defensive items - is also an offensive item.
I don't want Dota to become like League. League has an almost balance between armor and damage items. Dota always had more damage items than armors.
And this adds to the pressure of using builds rather than spam buy all armor items and just charge into fights.
As I said, armor is time-based mostly. If you cannot kill them while your armor buffs are up, you might be dead. You need damage+armor to dominate those who only build damage, in most cases, speaking against heavy-right clickers. You will also need good ccs, so it is not at all a simple equation.
Then again, I'm trying to compare completely different games. And I don't know if my explanation makes any sense, but to me it feels like this is the case.
The new DotA patch promotes killing and aggressive play in practically EVERY aspect. Afk farming now often does not pay off, killing towers is easier and gives more gold, killing heroes gives more gold to you and your teammates, etc. If new patch promotes more killing, you're hardly going to see more defensive play, but people are still going to buy items that protect them against physical and magical damage BECAUSE they know everybody should play more aggressive now.
Demand for damage means there's more demand for protection too, so I don't see protection and aggression as different things, rather negative and positive sides of the same scale - on some heroes building more protection means you get to do more damage. BKB and AC might be mostly defensive items, but they are the two items that sometimes let Sven run into enemies and destroy them without interruptions. Without a defensive BKB he's just gonna get stunned, take 30% more damage because of the Mask, get his warcry and ulti wasted to a point, and just simply - not gonna deal the damage he could had he not been stunned.
