Help me pick a MOBA

Long story short I've decided to return to MOBAs after quitting years ago. I can't decide which one I should invest my time into, though.

I'm considering LoL, HotS, and DotA 2.

I've played LoL at a high-level but, got turned off by the meta being centred around new, attractive characters, rather than characters with higher skill-caps or, ones that promote rogue picks. Is it more of the same these days? Stale metas, low damage, boring jungle, etc.? Really only asking re: high-level play. I don't want to play if I'm waiting on flash CDs every fight.

DotA 2 looks fun and I've never really invested much time into it but, does anybody actually play this? All the twitch streams (which I visited to research) are weird russian people and tournament re-runs. Some burnout in a toque. What's up with that? I don't want to love a dead game.
Also, is it still impossible to learn how to play DotA 2? Know any good resources?

And, uh, HotS. What's up with that? I played it during the beta and it sucked ass. It seemed better than some games now, though I'm not sure how much I can expect out of it. The objective-focused nature seems vanilla. Should I just skip over it?

Thanks for the input.

Considering they are all free why don't you play them and find out what you want to play? Also, what do your friends play that is the only thing that matters with Mobas. Even if you solo queue you need friends to for chill matches every now and then.

You should invest your time into something more productive than MOBAs, such as hitting your head against a wall or playing any other video game.

t. you

I don't want to invest a lot of time into a game and then find out the matches in high rank games are really boring. I can't really figure that out by playing each of them for a short period of time. I have tried HotS and Dota 2 recently to see the changes to game mechanics.

re: my pals, I do think this is generally good advice but, I get annoyed with my buddies when we play team competitive games because they're hard to carry and I have to make smurf accounts because they'll beg to do ranked.

smite is the only good answer

Dota2 and LoL are esport shitfests for autists with no lives. You will enjoy hosing the blood and semen out of your shattered boipucci after your first hour long match that you lost in the first two minutes, as your teammates scream on mic about how much of a loser faggot you are. Avoid both of these shitfests.

Smite is HiRez. Enough said.

HotS is the best of the bunch, despite the ActiBlizz presence. It's not as popular as the big two, but it's still massively successful, and is the only MOBA where actually having fun is in any way relevant. HotS is the one you should play.

>Smite is HiRez. Enough said.

>HotS is the best of the bunch.

you're retarded

>got turned off by the meta being centred around new, attractive characters
Zoe is the only character guilty of this, Ornns strength was only a product of Top being a fucking mess.

They're playing with a bunch of characters and not just in "rework them see what happens" Swain ways. Tryndamere and Yi just got buffs, Hecarim is fucking insanity due to the Predator rune. Its pretty fun

Dota is the correct answer. Less so if you're already sunk a lot of time into LoL due to having champs unlocked, but if you'd be starting relatively fresh then Dota giving you all the heroes for free makes it miles better.

>does anybody actually play this?
No, and with good reason.
For every fun character and legitimately good mechanic its got a shit one that just shits on your experience. Denying is fine, Turn Rates are not.

The game is visually retarded. Valvecucks give Overwatch a hard time for "visual clutter" but will always disregard the fact that DotA2 had for the longest time a UI which took up 40% of the screen for absolutely no reason, which is now cut down to about 10% which is reasonable.

Abilities exist to trick you. The rocks thrown by Sand Kings Ultimate are the same rocks thrown by Earth Spirits abilities, the game re-uses so many assets and effects that its just a mess to realise thats going on in a tightly packed and effect heavy teamfight. Its less about skill and more about making the correct guess if a team somehow has a Lina and an Invoker.

Its not just abilities either, its characters and the map. Shadow Demon, Shadow Fiend and Doom all have strikingly similar silhouettes and all three blend into the Dire side of the map. They actually have a version of the map that reduces visual clutter and actually gives you an objective advantage in the jungle and on the sides of the map which tree pathing, its called Immortal Gardens and you had to not only buy the TI Battle Pass, you also had to grind or pay to level it up to get he map. That is objectively P2W.

Theres so much they took from Warcraft 3 without actually thinking about what it means for DotA and in turn it became just a mess of systems that existed for no real reason.

Moba is dead but if you had to pick one it'll be HotS.
As someone who has wasted over 10 years playing DotA1, i suggest you don't even bother with this genre.

I'm Gold V~ in League and find the macro boring but laning interesting as a Top laner. Mid-game is usually just a matter of who has better vision and obtains picks, and late-game is usually an ARAM because pressuring sidelanes is too much for the average players macro competency.

I wouldn't suggest Dota2 anymore. Maybe I'm just too old for these games. I vented earlier about how Dota2 has changed too much and I'm tired of having to learn new shit every time I load it up. I've been playing dota since 2007 or 8 in warcraft 3. I felt like I was pretty good and after years I learned how to deal with just about every hero. But Valve continues to fuck with Dota2 and I've had enough. Constant map changes. Secret shop item changes. Now I have to learn the skill paths of every fucking hero. It's exhausting. I'll never play another ranked match again because of how mad these autists get at you for not knowing some obscure shit about a hero that you've killed hundreds of times before but now has some crazy final tier ability that changes how they play.

It's the same garbage that happened to World of Warcraft. Think you were good at pvp back then? Think again. They keep changing everything every expansion. It's exhausting.

LoL: Try it, but honeslty me and most of my friends are done with it, and when we do get on we just wonder why we still play it.

Dota: Game is ok, the released three new characters in the space of 3 years but it seems to be losing players monthly.

Smite: Honeslty this game has kinda disappeared compeltly. My friend who used to play it a lot says that a lot of the new characters were blatan rip offs of their other characters, so not a lot of characterization throughout?

Hots: Blizzards version of the genre, its decs. You can have a lot of fun or try competitive. I got bored with it though...

you sir, are mentally ill.

Honestly

Why?
Why.

What?
Why?

League hasn't been good for several seasons, but the changes to support and wards were the last straw for most of my friends. I had already previously quit (played a lot in beta, s1, s2, and kept following it for a couple seasons without playing, general consensus is s3 was the last "good" season).
DotA2 got fucking HOTS'D by patch 7.00 (hint: it sucks now, was good for a couple years beforehand)
HOTS always sucked, and it's a total meme. The only good thing about it is the fact that games are over faster. But they emphasize teamwork by lowering outplay potential, removing snowballing (no items, shared team xp, gay objective forced fights, etc.) But it seriously feels like since no one can carry, it's like a game where they put weights on star players to make it fair for the other players who kinda suck.

Most of the innovative mobas are dead now (dawngate, strife, dare i say demigod)

if you like teamfights, just play battlerite wow arena (rip bloodline champions)

consider Smite if you've never played it
paragon dead or dying due to fortnite's success

the only other real popular one is Master x Master but all my moba friends went back to lol after a few months flirting with mxm

honestly i would not recommending playing mobas especially if you already quit, there's really nothing good about this false competitive genre.

unless you're competing in something that's making you money or friends or actually leaves you satisfied.

i'd make a joke about overwatch, but fuck it.

hots for casual baddie-ness, no point in competing, even top players like chu8 lose to me 1v1 in lol, no skll game

fuck off shill
hots is a moba for non-moba players
if you think moba players are trying to have """"""""""""""""""""""'''fun""""""""""""""""""""""""'' think again
no one gives a shit about diablo vs jim raynor
they want to stack bloodthirsters or atmogs
get fucked

The CORRECT answer is not to play mobas. This is coming from someone who has played several.

>LoL
Basically if you're not a meta slave and you don't abuse the fuck out of the current winningest tactic you're not going to have fun. Community ruins it more than anything (which could be said about the whole genre). If you do anything even SLIGHTLY off meta, or do not spoonfeed the gorillas on your team, you will get flamed and reported. It doesn't matter how shit they are, they always think they know better than you and even if their strategy doesn't work, they'll still fabricate some way to blame everyone else. As far as new characters, they're always shit, for better or worse. Camille was absolutely busted when she came out but now she's worthless. Ornn was awful and did 0 damage but now he's the best tank in the game (and by that I mean he has the most utility). Zoe is busted as fuck and they still haven't fixed her. Kai Sa doesn't look very promising. Riot doesn't care either. They care about money.

>Dota 2
Typical Valve Jewery is afoot here. Just like Riot, they don't care about you beyond your money. Most Dota players have been playing for a long time and as such they expect their team to know all the ins and outs of the game. It's very disconnected from the general public and not at all friendly to new players. You'll probably hate it if it's your first time playing. Where League is focused on big dick plays and doing fuck loads of damage, Dota is about microaggressing your enemy laner and hopefully catching them off guard. You have to be way more conservative.

>HotS
You're probably a casual anyway so you'll most likely have the most fun with this.

Honestly, I thought there would be something better by now.

I played LoL during the same periods, actually. And yeah, those were the best times. I miss that, I guess. I miss learning about drafting. I miss mastering characters. I miss seeing my counter-drafts appear in tournaments after I played against teams.

It was fun.

But, yeah. I know what you mean about the skill-cap. I know what it's like to reach it, and I know what it's like when Riot or whoever just makes stupid choices because they're pandering to low-tier queues.

But I miss shot-calling. I miss organizing teams. I miss showing off and making friends and watching tournaments with the guys and laughing together about the games are usually decided on the draft screen.

I just miss the genre and I'm too old for Quake, my hands just aren't fast enough anymore.

It feels like I'm the only one who has fun with DOTA these days.
Don't know why everyone hates it.

I like all random. Everyone's usually about as experienced as everyone else with the variety of characters they're given. All pick is annoying because all the tryhards play there.

Random is the comfy, fun dota2.

It's shit like every moba

Ok.

Objectively Dota 2 is the best choice.

>Every hero is free - unlike LoL and HotS
>cosmetics are cheap as fuck
>cosmetics have resale value for steambux
>custom games & Dota turbo override HotS

>better player resources, tutorial/guides/demo/bots than other games
>absolutely god-tier spectating client to learn from pros
>meta is incredibly flexible so you're not punished for not playing OP shit all the time

Dota 2 is patrician.
LoL is plebeian.
HotS is contrarian.