Hello, my name is Andrew “Riser” Bronze, former Heroes of Newerth competitive player who has recently transitioned into the world of DotA 2. Our squad was fortunate enough to be picked up by compLexity Gaming very early on in our foray, thanks to great successes in the HoN scene (mostly my teammates, I continue to be fairly mediocre and have no idea why I’m here) and bit of risk taking from the coL management. Big shoutout to Kyle “swindlemelonzz” Freedman, our captain, as he was able to successfully convince compLexity of our potential to be a top contender in DotA 2. He even had me convinced, and I’m the guy that thinks we’re always losing, or we’re going to get crushed.

I just wanted to write a few words today about the transition from HoN to DotA 2 and point out some interesting differences between the two games. One thing that surprised me greatly is how everyone says DotA 2 is so “slow”. I think this is mostly attributed to turn rate speed, as in HoN it is instant on every hero, and in DotA 2 it varies greatly (Batrider as an example). Burst damage, on the other hand, is still extremely prevalent. In competitive HoN, magic resist was much cheaper and a staple on almost EVERY hero. If you didn’t buy treads/cloak, you were doing it wrong. Perhaps this was because all of the heroes were broken S2 heroes and you had to? Who knows, but in DotA 2, almost no one buys cloak and it leaves them super vulnerable to crazy damage.

So here I come into TMM expecting every hero to hit me for 2 damage every minute and 40 minutes in there’s this dumb dude with a pipe (the smoking one, not the item) that one shots me instantly with a Dagon. To anyone who played HoN, Tinker is literally global Parasite and his ultimate instantly refreshes all of his abilities. COOL!!

In all seriousness, transitioning was tough. I just did not enjoy my initial games of DotA 2 because I was so enamored with HoN. Of course HoN was a very similar game, but I just loved the graphics and the gameplay so much. I would play one or two games of DotA 2 and then just have no more desire, figuring I’d just rather play HoN.

Looking back, I wish I had jumped ship much earlier as the HoN scene was crumbling and everyone knew it was going to die miserably soon. Zai and ppd, two former teammates and friends of mine, knew what was up. If I had switched with them maybe I’d already be traveling the world and owning. I hope we enjoy similar success as fnatic and EG, our hontrash brethren, but it’s going to take some hard work.

Follow Andrew on twitter @coL_Riser

Complexity Returns to DOTA