The MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre has exploded over the past few years on the eSports scene, commanding monstrous prize pools, consistent and incredible Twitch/streaming viewer numbers, time on ESPN2, and a ridiculous amount of concurrent players at all hours of the day across the world.
Learning how to wade into the MOBA/ARTS genre pool can be intimidating, and one of the best ways to get your feet wet is by checking out Dota 2 during the upcoming International tournament. This annual Valve spectacle features the best of the best teams from all over the world, with last year’s tournament boasting a prize pool of 10.9 million dollars. This community-funded prize pool has the potential to enter even more dizzying heights this year, as it is already sitting at 7.5 million with plenty of time to go.
The main event will be held this year on August 3-8 at the KeyArena in Seattle, but you’ll be able to watch the game on various streaming platforms or even within the game client itself (the best option), if you want to have precision control over viewing all the action. You can swap commentary within the games themselves to have no caster at all, find a caster in your preferred language, or even (highly recommended for new viewers) tune into the “beginner” stream, where the casters will often focus on aspects of the game that will be left out of other streams that assume the viewer knows many of the characters, items, and situations that could be happening in any given game.
Before we get started as to HOW you should be watching, let’s tackle WHY real fast. The potential for “big plays” and exciting game-defining team fights is huge within the genre itself, and watching a beautifully executed 5v5 play is an awesome experience. This video from The International 2012 is an amazing illustration of two great teams facing off in an incredibly important team play (Think 4th and goal with the clock running out) and what can happen when both individual player skill and team coordination come together to create impressive spectacles.
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What happened there may not make a whole lot of sense now, as it requires some knowledge of gameplay interactions and characters, but you get the point – it’s big plays like that which make the game a blast to watch. Now, there are of course exceptions to this rule, especially when a ton of money is on the line and both teams are trying to play from a point of maximum control with little risk or when things are one-sided, but overall you’re going to get a great show from start to finish as players bring out sleeper picks or secret weapons. That’s when you’ll probably get your first taste of watching competitive Dota 2, during what’s known as the draft phase – a game before the game.
What you’ll be seeing during this phase is teams taking turns both selecting characters for their player roster for the game and banning characters that no one will be allowed to use during that game. The metagame is always shifting, so when certain characters become deemed too powerful in competitive environments, the ban phase will often see some of the same faces during big tournaments like The International. There are also bans that come into play for individual teams and players – if you know an opposing team gravitates toward a certain composition, you may opt to ban those specific characters.