General Discussiongood entry-level informational content?

ZQuixotix puts out support-oriented tier lists and tries to highlight top tier supports.
BSJ puts out general meta content and the occasional hero guide.
GameLeap tier lists also give a brief overview of why a hero is good, but you have to skip an ad for the website every video.

There are also different channels that just do pub match replays from the PoV of different pro players. Those will kind of show you what is generally being built on a hero. Just search "Dota 2 [role] pro game replays" or similar. They don't have commentary, though.

Hope that helps.

Didn't even know gameleap still lived, to be honest! I checked out a hero crash course video for Hoodwink from them, and also checked out a BSJ video, particularly the only about the newest patch.

The gameleap vid was... okay. It definitely had useful info in it, like how she HP/MP hungry from all the skirmishing she wants to be doing, that gleip-rushing isn't necessarily the optimal way to itemize, I should be getting shard more, and that I should be buying early regen a LOT more than I have been, as well as getting raindrops. But it failed at lot in explaining *why* something was a certain case or why the things they say are good are good, to the point where I had an extremely hard time figuring out what was inherent to dota, what was inherent to hoodwink, and what was attached to the meta and patch the video was made in. The skill build in particular stood out - they recommended [(1/2)/(1/2)/2/3/2/4/2/1...] and mentioned how "there should be no good reason to go for any other build, ever." Fast forward to today and 4/4/0/1 is the meta build. What happened? Why is it that way now? The video doesn't give enough material for me to do my own critical thinking about it, there was no explanation for *why* you shouldnt build anything else. It also didn't really provide a good summary of the hero - it didn't describe the hero's gameplay identity.

The BSJ video was a lot, LOT better, but still ultimately had a similar issue - an incomplete origin for why things were the way they were. The save-support popularity made sense, the blade mail rushing offlaners made sense, the gapclosing midlaners made sense, the NP flex made sense, and his patchnote analysis also made sense (glad I was correct in instantly noticing the bloodseeker buff was really big), but the strength of gleipnir-building ranged carries and aura stacking was just kinda... stated, and left at that.

The impacts of the Strong Thing are all explained well, but *why is the Strong Thing strong???* In both videos, it seemed to almost get blown aside, just boiled down to "it got buffed since last patch / been smallbuffed for a lot of recent patches" and leave it at that.

Definitely subbed to BSJ :3

It sounds like you are at a point where you decently understand the game.

When reading patch notes, do you have more questions about the game or more answers?

Did the Gleipnir change trigger a reaction where you said: "Damn, I won't be able to play..... anymore."

Furthermore, I can recommend watching all TI games with commentary and pre-draft (so the whole thing, not just the games). They really go into detail why certain heroes are good and getting picked. Same with ingame commentary.

The problem is: You will find people that master a hero like sniper as support and people try to imitate what they saw at the International. In the end it's a mediocre support and needs perfect timing and really good communication with a team mate. People pick sniper Pos 4 anyways. He has no reliable lockdown, no way to escape and no way to save allies.

He can be countered easily when he is Pos 4 but people saw (sneaking or whitemon???) play sniper Pos 4 and that's the sole reason.

Many hero shifted into the meta not because they are good but because they are on par with existing heroes that got nerfed. And laning against an unknown hero is often harder since you don't have the automatic reaction to buy and skill like you always do.

Many heroes are really balanced this patch and not a lot of items stand out. Gleipnir was OP. Bristleback was OP a year ago. Same for Nature's prophet. All these extremes seem to have settled a bit. You find some strong heroes but not absolute lane crushers.

Definitely more questions. Numbers have always been my weak spot in terms of understanding - concepts and design intentions, calls and responses, and percentages and other relative comparisons I can all understand just fine, but as soon as its "the numbers attached to this/these stats on this/these things are Really Good to the point where it's worth forcing and enabling and strategizing around", I'm fucken lost lol. Must be the support brain...

I never really feel like patches kill characters to me? The only time I've ever really felt that was Spirit Breaker's recent change to his instant charge speed - while not necessarily making him *bad*, he just wasn't nearly as fun to play anymore, to the point where I found myself preferring to play other heroes over him even in cases where he'd theoretically be good. The way I view things, I'm not at a level where patch stuff matters, unless it's really big - mistakes in execution, itemization, positioning, strategizing, coordination, risk analysis and risk/reward balancing, and information parsing are all gonna make significantly bigger waves in any given game I'm in than whatever the current Flavor Of The Patch is. That being said, metas give grounding from contextualization, it gives me something to bite into and work with and start from, even if it's ultimately not actually worth anything.