You know what I wish LoL had that was in DotA? Random picks with extra gold. It would make non-ranked games a lot more entertaining in my opinion.

It could work like this: You choose "Random", and the game locks in a random champion for you. Then you can choose runes, masteries and summoners for that champion. And when the game starts, you get something like 200 extra gold to buy starting items with; this would allow you to buy some extra potions or wards for easier laning.

If a full random would be too random, maybe there could be buttons for "random tank", "random caster", "random physical" and "random support"; pressing one of them would give you a champ that roughly fills that role in the team, and you get maybe 150 extra gold instead. I really love to pick random in DotA, so it'd be fun to be able to do it in normal LoL games as well.

Man, who cares about Talon? AP Carry Solo Mid Soraka is the new flavor of the month.

There's a big difference between summoner spells and juking. One is "press this button to save yourself" and the other one involves manipulating your opponents with an unexpected maneuver, which requires skill.

Juking is good, Flash/Ghost is bad. Juking in trees is a lot more interesting and rewarding than juking in the brush, and I believe that kind of juking would be really fun to watch for those who are interested in competitive games.

Re: denying, I think people make too big a deal about it. If you watched the tournament, you'd see that most players had an average of about 150 last hits and 15 denies per game. It doesn't completely break the game, but it does shift the balance of it in favor of the one who's more skilled at denying/last-hitting.

I must admit I don't watch competitive games much, but I still watched the tournament last week since I wanted to see DotA 2 in action. When the game is truly released, I'm going to play it myself instead of watching other people play it. 

And I can't speak much about how good/bad competitive League of Legends is since I don't watch it either. But I think that Flash really kills most of the early-game excitement in this game. It's too easy to escape from ganks with Flash and it encourages solo farming. If I die early, it's usually because I made a newbie mistake (like facechecking the brush) and not because the enemies did something truly skilled.

Well it's certainly amusing, even if it may be fake.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see what Riot are going to do to keep people from jumping ship when DotA 2 comes.

I feel your pain. 40+ minutes into the game, you don't want to be the Nunu on the team. But still, it looks like you won after all!

I mean that all the heroes who are currently implemented were picked (except for Axe).

Now that it's over, I have to say that the diversity of the picks in the tournament was incredible. The only hero who never got picked is Axe. It shows that there's actually a very good balance within the pool and most of them can fit into some kind of strategy or composition (except for Axe ).

I don't like Vayne much, because she doesn't really have any spells at all - the only thing she can do is shoot people. On the other hand, Cait brings a lot of things to the team and doesn't have to walk up to someone and shoot them in order to be useful.

Well played, Na'Vi.

I thought it was a little odd how EHOME let them have Chen in all of the three games, even though they knew Puppeh was going to take him and support his team like a boss. I guess other things were more important to ban, or something. Anyway, both of these teams were highly skilled, and they definitely deserved to be in the final.

Also: I'm really itching for a game of DotA right now

Man, I really want Na'Vi to win this. They have the most awesome Chen I've ever seen, and picking Pudge is such a ballsy move you just have to love them for it.

Holy shit. Na'Vi have Pudge.

So far I believe the only heroes in the pool who have never been picked are Axe and Pudge. It's very unlikely that we're going to see them in the last few matches, but I kind of wish I could at least see what they look like. Maybe they can play a few joke games if they have time over after the tournament?

Also, I found out only a few minutes ago that the one who's been doing all the camerawork during the tournament is a bot. I was astounded. It always seems to know where the good stuff is happening.

No, he has a purpose in the team: ranged DPS. It's just that he's really not good at it anymore.

I have vivid memories of the days when Twitch was OP. I don't know if you were there at the time, but his ultimate had unlimited hits and would absolutely wreck his enemies in a big fight. Earlygame, he was either roaming or laning with Kayle for heal support. Later on, Kayle would put the shield on Twitch and it was nearly impossible to stop them.

But that's all in the past. Like I said, it doesn't work very well anymore because Spray and Pray is about 10% as effective as it was back then.

Yeah... Twitch is pretty bad. Riot knows about it, and they're not buffing him, because they don't want him to be good until they rework stealth so it's less binary and frustrating to play with and against.

That is true. Gangplank is definitely an unusual melee character. He's getting kind of old though, and most of the newly released melee champs seem to roughly follow the same formula.

I normally don't use guides, but some games are just impossible to me without them. I'd never have completed La-Mulana without a guide, and I can't find all the characters in Suikoden games if I don't look at recruitment guides (some of them are missable, so you have to be aware of them while you're going through the game).

He's good for his hooks and not much else. Dies easily. Still one of the most fun heroes to play, but the pro teams don't play for fun.

Well, would you look at that. EHOME just lost their first game in the tourney, and it wasn't even close.

Gotta say I always love seeing Lina and Sven picked on the same team. That's like the oldest strategy in DotA. Major nostalgia.