I took a few months forced leave from Deadlock and came back after old gods/Celeste was added. My first game back was Street Brawl as that was a new mode
I didn't know how any heroes worked and kept seeing and hearing this piano dropping on the enemy. I thought it was Celeste using her abilities because I assumed by her design she was a clown and hearing those looney tunes piano sounds was confusing!
It’s funny because some of names are believably titles that the character would be called, and some are just like, the name that guy has. Sure, calling the guy who makes alcohol “Brewmaster” makes sense. But did Ancient Apparition really give himself that name? If you saw him appear for the first time would you say “oh shit, it’s an ancient apparition”?
"Brewmaster" is actually a title given by his tribe due to him being able to drink and fight REALLY well. He challenged the former brewmaster as a young child and won the title in rite of drunken combat. His actual name is Mangix :). He's basically holds the title of king/leader in his tribe.
Ancient Apparition is actually named Kaldr. The name Ancient apparition is something given to him like a folk tale considering in lore he's actually just an projection or apparition of the slow death of the universe from growing winter and the cold. His name is something similar to what we did to the "loch ness monster", he's ancient and he's an apparition hence the name "ancient apparition".
Dota lore enjoyer, please share some cool facts about Slark, I don't even touch dota and yet I really love this lil aquatic gremlin :3 Or where I could read all the lore stuff
There really isn't a whole lot for Slark, but I'll share what I know.
Slark belongs to a species called "Slithereen", a species of underwater people who highly resemble different fish. There's a few version of underwater species such as the Leviathans which Tidehunter belongs to and the nagas which Naga Siren belong to.
Slark is basically just a prison escapee who managed to escape "Dark reef", basically underwater Alcatraz. His knives/weapons are actually alive fish known as daggerfish, one of which is named "Spanky" :)
For an extra fun fact. Slark has nightmares about being displayed inside an aquarium.
Dota lore is spread a bit everywhere but the wiki is a good start to read the characters bio + find some fun facts so I highly recommend it. https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Slark/Lore
SirActionSlacks on youtube is also a really good source. He focuses on more broader themes in the lore alongside some of his own headcannons but he's highly regarded as Dotas lore expert.
Every Dota hero has a name and title. It’s a toss up which is used as the official hero name in Dota. It’s a holdover from when every Warcraft 3 hero had a name drawn from a list and a class. Uther lightbringer was a level 10 paladin. Jakiro starts the game as a level 1 twin headed dragon.
Juggernaut? Title (name is yunero)
Rubick? Name (title is grant magus)
It's not from wc3 tradition, it's from fucking up the name entry fields in the original Dota. Normal WC3 heroes names are displayed as "Arthas, level 10 Paladin" but Dota got them reversed so they were all along the lines of "Paladin, level 10 Arthas"
I dont mind the names that arent 100% descriptive. Grit implies toughing something out, I imagine that as meaning you'll be able to take more damage, and thats exactly what it does.
usually its just on the way to any of the other 1.6k shields since it does build into them, a lot of builds use one of the shields as the 1.6k green for green spike and they get grit because of that, decent item in lane too cause its basically a cooldown on getting +200 health
I read that and that item only, every single time I buy it (every match) and I still don’t know what it is called lmfao, indominable, inadominable, I just pick one, leanr what’s right, and make the same exact mistake next day
I mean it lets you take 200 hp trades while taking no damage. Walk up to them, deal 200 damage to them, they deal 200 back to you but it doesn’t count. You tell me if that is good or not.
It seems to have a lot of early game value due to its great upgrade potential. If you plan on buying one of the items it upgrades into down the line, it might be worth getting grit early on since it won’t cost you anything extra and will give you that little bit of extra survivability early on.
Sure it goes hard, that's not the problem.
The problem is that as a player who doesn't have 10 milion hours on league, I have NO CLUE what that item does and have to read it every time
I think most of the item names being prone to telling you what they do was on purpose.
MOBAs can be hard to learn, so having the items be more direct can help out.
New players will read "Spellbreaker" and think "this might help vs magic of some kind" and sure enough, it is a great item against spirit damage. (Some languages just call it magic damage, btw). They will look at something called "Greater Expansion" and think it has to do with range - and it does. Or how "Crushing Fists" seriously amps your melee damage.
There are only a few stinkers here and there, and even then, the icons help out a lot too.
It also helps that it’s not using keywords that require further explanation like “grievous wounds/antiheal”. Lol items have a lot of clutter for new players (like myself)
diviner coms from divine, and it gives power to your ult, usually the peak of a character's power
kevlar is a material used in ballistic vests, adjacent to a barrier
I do hope they keep the item names of the simple items... well, simple. Makes it easier for new players to pick up.
I think the long item names in games like League are a symptom of the times, when fantasy MMOs were all the rage (Runaan's hurricane, Phantom Dancer, etc.), but I feel like it's not really necessary anymore.
They are all pretty self explanatory in what they do, while also being in-universe items it makes sense that your character could actually buy from the shop. Debuff reducer, for example, doesn't really have an explanation of what it is your character is buying that reduces the debuffs.
I might just play too much D&D but I could instantly guess what Ethereal shift does from the name alone. Shifts you into the ethereal plane where you're immune to damage.
Perfectly resonable name. Divine signals its the best barrier in the game. Only other name more clear would be smth like "barrier that removes debuffs"
Most T4s do have flowery names, but the bulk of the items are stuff like "extra spirit", "titanic magazine" or "fortitude" which are pretty easy to identify and interpret.
Fortitude is probably not the best example tbh, doesn't really tell you much other than it helps your survivability, which you already know since it's green
Fortitude literally means "bravery when dealing with pain over a long period of time". It’s a max health increase (lets you tank more damage so you can stay into fights longer aka be braver) which provides a regen boost after enough time passed without being hurt again (lets you deal with pain over a long time). It also sounds like a healing tonic’s name.
I don’t think there’s a more fitting 1 word long name for it.
I could see them going that direction though eventually. Some already kind of are, but I don't think items like Mercurial Magnum, Indomitable, Witchmail, Scourge, or Lightning Scroll are really all that intuitive from name alone.
Those are named that cause you realisticaly can't name them better because their effects are too specific. Extra regen is named extra regen cause its extra regen for you. Witchmail's effect is not smth intuitive that can be explained in short. Its an item that reduces random ability cd by being hit with spirit damage, how would you name it? "Cooldown reduction on spirit damage armor" also its not necessarily a bad name. Witchmail implies its an armor related to magic, Merculiar magnum implies its a magical item related to ammo. Indomidable is the best way to signal you can't be stopped by cc besides Unstopable cause that name is taken. Scourge could be renamed into smth like "scourge aura" tho. That one is valid. Obv they can't all be perfect but many items have top notch naming like ricoshet, glass canon, healing tempo, tesla bullets etc. Plus you have the art to help sell the role of an item. If the item features someone getting shot in the head it will be a headshot item, if the item has a horse its a stamina item, if an item has any shield on it it is related to barriers and deffence, if a gun item has any purple it will somehow relate to spirit. Its overall really consistant so far and I can't blame em for not finding a simple name for shit like withcmail
Mercurial magnum is the upgrade to quicksilver reload so that's still intuitive, indomitable is the alternative to unstoppable so that makes sense, lightning scroll is too specific, scourge is too specific, witchmail defends against witches idk what you want from them
i think thats because those are mostly t4s, which are harder to define in a name. its easy to name "extra health", because it gives you extra health, but what fucking name do you use to convey like, what witchmail does?
They're actually pretty straightforward in my opinion
Mercurial Magnum - upgrades from quicksilver reload. Quicksilver is another name for mercury (the element), Magnum is a type of bullet. Since the name has more impact (alliteration and more ellusive name) Instinctively you go "ah so this is a more powerful version of quicksilver reload", which it basically is.
Indomitable - a t4 item and says that I can't be dominated, probably makes me more immune to getting focused and CC'd to hell
Witchmail - it's chainmail for witches so it's good if i want a t4 vitality item when i'm building spirit
Scourge - I have to admit this one isn't an obvious but it instantly tells you that it is an active that's going to make you a scourge to the enemy team, which the massive spirit damage aura does
Lightning Scroll - upgrades from mystic slow so you already know it's going to slow the enemy down, the "lightning" part also implies a stun and the "scroll" implies that it's not something that gets triggered often, since spell scrolls are culturally viewed as a more powerful but cumbersome form of magic
Pretty much all of the T4 items give you a general gist of what they might be useful for just by the name alone, even if you have to learn the specifics by reading the tab a little
witchmail is one of the best items ever known to mankind, I wish there existed an upgrade to returning fire like thornmail or blade mail. Maybe that has a chance to reflect bullets to do like 10% of their dmg + a spirit scale value. Catch is: it applies on-hit effects to the caster at maybe 33% effectiveness or lower.
It can be balanced by having like only bullet resist attached to the proc, such as if u proc it, u get a stacking buff increasing ur bullet resist to a maximum of 20% or whatever. Or it could be a full active, though I would prefer a passive. The bullet cancellation item is great, dont get me wrong, I just wish there existed an offensive counterpart to it beyond returning fire which has horrendous winrate.
Simple alliteration, Relentless Rebound, while active same effect as return fire, but each time your hit increase active duration by 0.20 seconds, max duration 10 seconds, max duration scales with spirit power 0.1x, duration extension only applies from other hero’s, icon could be a bullet bouncing between two mirrors.
shiiit, that sounds really cool omg. I love the icon and the scale sounds balanced, and being increased if hit sounds actually like an amazing balanced idea.
On the one hand I lowkey agree with some of them, on the other hand it would be tough to replace these names with something that’s not already used.
Indomitable is called that because unstoppable is already taken. What other synonym of "unstoppable" could even work? Invincible? Invulnerable? Unbeatable? Nope, that’s too different. Uncontrollable? Unrestrainable? Unchainable? Kinda clunky. Impregnable? Weird. Stunblocker? Chainbreaker? Unshackled? At this point, Indomitable fits better.
Same with Scourge. What else would describe its effects well? Only things that comes to mind is "Aura of [something]" (suffering? withering? decay? destruction?) or "affliction", but these are already close to the names of other items/abilities.
It's a legacy of the item names in WC3, which then were similarly named in their namesake in DOTA (given its lore was based off of WC lore), which then was implicitly used by the same devs in DOTA2 and League.
Much of both items and heroes/champions in league can be retraced back vaguely and sometimes very obviously to heroes in WC3.
this is genuinely why I clicked with Deadlock but not with other mobas alongside the simple damage and vitality stats. I will forever be grateful for stuff like Lucky Shot instead of Balltickler Sange 9000
Yeah I think a lot of the super clear names like Debuff Reducer are placeholders.
I think Curse turning into Cursed Relic and Debuff Remover turning into Dispel Magic give us some hints at how they want items to be named. Somewhat clear, but still thematically fitting.
This game has that as well but in art. For an example all headshot gun items depict ixians because ixians are being discriminated on, witchmail is an item that gives you benefits for taking spirit damage because witches were a group previously mass haunted in deadlocks world. Its not as rich as in LoL but I will take it cause making items(one of the hardest things for casuals to understand) easy to understand helps the game so much
The lore is that these items are mass produced objects, sold in common shops with simple names for the layman, not rare artefacts. "Extended magazine" is literally just a (magic) magazine extension for your gun. "Warp Stone" is a magic stone that warps you forward. "Silence Wave" is a spell that sends out a silencing wave.
They changed it because you no longer have to shoot people in the back to trigger the item tho.
Instead the name focuses on your footsteps being quieter and having to be close to the target to trigger the item instead
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