This is an updated version of a previous post comparing League of Legends (LoL), Heroes of Newerth (HoN), and Defense of the Ancients (aka DotA) (or DotA vs LoL, or LoL vs DotA, or... you get the idea). A few new things have come around over the past months, and I wanted to make the guide easier for new players who have no idea what DotA is. So, if you are deciding which to play as a DotA vet or have just heard about these guys, read on. Brief description of the DotA genre in a bit.
Heroes of Newerth
League of Legends
Oh yeah, they're badass.
td;dr recommendation: LoL is probably better for the new player. HoN is excellent for pro gamers looking for an almost perfect clone of DotA, but on a better engine and lots of shiny features. DotA is for those who love the HUGE number of heroes its amassed, enjoy the comforts of knowing every detail, or just don't want to shell out money for something they already have (and love). That being said, I think putting money into either HoN or LoL is definitely worth the investment. Also, Icefrog apparently is heading up a team at Valve to make a new version of DotA so perhaps you could just wait a bit...
If you care about which is more popular, as it stands, LoL is currently edging out HoN as the DotA successor, at least according to the press released data of how many active players there are. Most attribute this to easier access to new players and that they recently have been doing a superb publicity drive showing up at several game expos including PAX and being one of the games at WCG, being the best DotA-esque game from PC Gamer, oh and 5 awards from the Game Developer's Conference including the Online Popularity one. Granted, some also argue that the Wii is popular as heck but that doesn't make it good.
Brief Description of the Game
The best way to describe DotA (and thus HoN and LoL) is a RPG condensed into about 40 minutes. You start at Lv1 and grow in power, get gold, buy items, and vanquish enemies until you eventually storm the enemy fortress and blow up their headquarters. While this is going on, you have lanes where helpers called creep charge out of your base and try to get to the enemy base. However, since the opposing team is doing the same thing, they clash in the lanes alongside heroes like yourself. Of course, these broad paths are only part of the map, the rest hidden in fog where monsters (and maybe enemy heroes) lurk that you can kill for more gold and experience. Kill enemies to gain gold, experience, and make them wait to respawn at their base, missing out on stopping your glorious rampage.
Pick from a variety of heroes. Are you an assassin from afar? A beefy tank who can soak up damage? Maybe someone who spew fireballs and lighting, or throws hexes than stun enemies and buffs your teammates. Perhaps you can burrow through the ground, or can strike any point on the map with ease. Are you powered by the Gods? Or something more... sinister?
Work as a team to kill, level, gather gold and items and buffs, and crush your way to victory.
Feature-by-Feature Analysis
Developers
DotA- A long history of developers starting with Guinsoo and leading up to Icefrog as the current leader. Always been a one-man job, but what wonders they have done with the WC3 engine.
HoN-S2 Games. Same group that made Savage and Savage 2, a multiplayer RPG/RTS game. Overall a solid bunch with successful (albeit perhaps not AAA) games under their belts.
LoL-Riot Games. Includes Steve “Guinsoo” Feak, original DotA All-Stars pusher, as well as other huge competitive gaming balancers, gamers, coders, and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon who started DotA-Allstars.com. Plus a guy I used to game with. He kicked my butt. And now another classmate of mine.
Cost to Play/Purchase
DotA-Whatever you paid for WC3. So, effectively free.
HoN-Single $30 USD payment up front, unlimited access.
LoL-Free to play (with possible microtransistions). There are two meta-game currencies. Influence Points (IP) are gained via playing the game. Riot Points (RP) are bought using real money. Heroes are unlockable via either, and there are always 10 free heroes available. The 10 free ones rotate periodically. Summoner Runes, minor meta boosts, are only purchased via IP. Cosmetic skins and temporary boosters that boost IP or XP gain are bought via RP. There is also a summoner level determined by XP, and XP is only gained by playing. Higher level means you can use more runes and unlocks different summoner spells. You need to be lv12 to unlock all the summoner spells.
Popularity
DotA-While the big king back in the day, the playerbase is shrinking as people move to HoN or LoL.
HoN-Gets steady growth, especially from Europe. Midday peaks around 40,000 online players, at night around 20,000. Up from a peak of only 20,000 when it left the free Beta.
LoL-No released number of player stats, but a press release recently mentioned for about a year the online active players was doubling about every 3 months. That's some serious growth. It seems like LoL is winning the popularity war. Oh, and it won 5 Game Developers Conference awards in 2010 including the Online Audience award (i.e. the popularity contest).
Ratings and Matchmaking
DotA-None inherent, but I applaud the efforts of groups like Throneit who try to add it in.
HoN-Each account has persistent global stats tracking kills, deaths, assists, gold/min, xp/min, and many other factors. Each player has a Pub Skill Rating (PSR) and a Single Matchmaking Rating (SMR) which are used to balance games. Only single player matchmaking available at this time. Does not account for sets of players having better teamwork when playing together. IN fact, it's a common joke that all we want for Christmas is Team Matchmaking.
LoL-There are persistent summoner stats like summoner level and total games won that are visible to everyone. As a player you can see more detailed information about yourself. Your actual ELO rating, used to do matchmaking, is hidden from the player. Ladder ELOs are visible. Team and solo matchmaking available, and algorithms are employed to compensate for a team of players having inherently better teamwork are used to keeps things fair.
Game Types
DotA-All Pick, Single Draft, Banning Pick, WTF Mode....
HoN-Supports all the game types of DotA. All Pick, Single Draft, Banning Draft, etc. Plus some of the wackier ones, like allowing Repeat heroes.
LoL-Currently only supports Blind Picking in generic games. Within a team, no repeats and you can't see what the other team is picking. Within a game, you could have same hero on both sides. This is because not all players have the same pool of heroes to pick from, unlike HoN. For Ladders, they have a clever way to allow picking strategies and counter pick enemy team lineups via a method similar to Banning Pick. They assume since you have to be Lv30 to do this you should have a decent pool of heroes to use.
Creep Denies
DotA-By attacking your own "creeps" or minions when they are low on health, it can "deny" the enemy experience and the chance to kill it themselves. Killing enemy creeps with your attack gains extra gold.
HoN-Same as in DotA.
LoL-Removed to put greater emphasis on pushing forward with creeps and not tower hugging, i.e. keep denying your own creeps to cause the creeps to fight close to your tower, and let the tower protect you from early attacks.
Hero Stats and Item Boosts
DotA-Primary stats: Strength, Agility, Intelligence. These influence secondary stats like attack damage, health, attack speed, mana pool, mana regeneration, etc. You can also buy items to directly influence secondary stats and give new abilities (such as lifesteal). Abilities don't scale with stats, except one item can boost some heroes' spells, so typically late game heroes are more stat reliant, especially on agility heroes since Agility gives them attack speed, damage, and armor bonuses making them damage machines and still able to take a bit of a beating. Since stats influence multiple secondary attributes, including damage dealt and hit points, and primary stats are gained by leveling up, there is a natural progression of the hero. Conversely, high damage spell heroes are more powerful early and mid game since they can put out high amounts of damage quickly without purchasing items, but since they output fixed amounts of damage and everyone's health pools go up, they lose effectiveness.
HoN-Same as DotA.
LoL-No underlying stats. Purchase items to directly increase damage, health, attack speed, etc. You can buy items to give new abilities (such as lifesteal). You can also purchase items for Ability Points (AP) which can scale up the effectiveness of your abilities. Thus, ability dependent heroes can scale up to remain powerful in the late game. Several items can be purchased to reduce ability cooldowns, which is unique from DotA and HoN. This means hard carries have a harder time wiping the entire enemy team by themselves because everyone can get items to scale up every aspect of their character, be it HP, Armor, Damage, etc. It is still possible to take a team one-on-five, but they really have to run away with the game and they tend to work alongside support, ability carries, and tanks. On level up individual stats are boosted to create a natural progression.
Death Recap
DotA-You'rd dead. Wait for respawn or buy back from the fountain.
HoN-You're dead. How nice.
LoL-On death, provides a Death recap where you can see what/who dealt the damage, what items they had, what abilities did what damage. Nice way to understand how you just died, and something to look at while dead. There is no buy back system to spend money and instantly revive.
Item Purchases
DotA-While outside of base, you can purchase items and they instantly go to your Stash. Your Stash acts as a kind of locker where you can store extra items to pick up later or because you're out of room and might want it at a later time. Local shops in the map such as the Secret Shot and the Outpost have special more advanced items or provide a quick place to grab assorted items respectively. You can buy items while dead, but cannot sell. Can drop and share items with your team. Can purchase recipes as individual items. Larger number of recommended items to fit the variety of builds. Some hotkeys that help make item purchases quick.
HoN-Exactly like DotA. Better hotkeys.
LoL-Only able to purchase and sell while in the fountain or dead. Cannot drop items. No stash. If you are out of inventory room, you must either sell another item or purchase an advanced item made up of several pieces. Buying an item also buys all components if you can afford it, including the recipe. You cannot buy a recipe without the needed components. Easier to navigate item purchase UI to find an item with certain attributes. Only 6 recommended items making the build simpler, but not as flexible. No hotkeys, at least easily visible.
Gold and Kills/Deaths
DotA-Bonus gold for stopping an enemy hero's killing streak. You lose gold on death if you have gold to lose. Bonus gold for getting killing blow on creeps. Team gets gold for tower kills.
HoN-Same as DotA.
LoL-Even more bonus gold to stopping a killing streak than HoN (up to 1000). Do not lose gold on death. Bonus gold for getting killing blow on creeps. More creeps per wave than HoN. Team gold for tower kills. Team gold for killing the Dragon.
Hero Spells
DotA-A mix of hard hitting, high cost, debilitating spells, AoE, single target, spammable, buff, etc. spells just like DotA. Basically, if you think of a spell, DotA probably has it. Including one where you drag your opponent behind you. You get 4 spells to level up to lv3 each, and 10 levels of taking a bonus of +2 to each base stat (STR/INT/AGI).
HoN-Pretty much what DotA does.
LoL-Similar mix, but there is tends to be less stun durations, more slows, lower mana costs, lower cooldowns, and higher mana pools. This means for any character you don't have to have a full mana pool to do you spell combination. That being said, a full spell combo doesn't guarantee insta kills as easily (*cough* Deadwood *cough*), but there are still some powerful spike damage assassin characters. Plus, stacking huge amounts of AP can still give some heroes an insta kill combo. Oddly, some heroes don't have a mana pool. Some either spend health, spend from a smaller (but faster regenerating) pool called Stamina, and some merely have cooldowns. You get 3 normal spells that you can level up to lv5 and your ultimate that you can level up to lv3. There is no option to buy stats on leveling.
Fog of War
DotA-Cannot see higher ground. Juke through narrow gaps in forest trees. Need to learn where all the juke points are on the map. Miss chance attacking unit on higher ground. Cutting down trees potentially strategic to open new paths or remove abilities cast on trees.
HoN-5v5 Maps is almost perfect close of DotA's except for a few juke points. However, they've been able to manipulate a few things to prevent weird behavior and to make life easier for some things like neutral creeps being stackable and the like.
LoL-Uses tall grass, aka Brush to break line of sight instead. While inside the brush, players outside the brush cannot see you. Once inside the brush, you can see other units in the brush. This provides juke points that are clearly shown on the map. No miss chance for attacking units on higher ground. Cannot see up to higher ground, and higher vs. lower ground regions reduced. Cannot modify map, unfortunately.
Runes vs. Glyphs
DotA-Copies HoN. No, wait...
HoN-Uses DotA runes in the river that spawn and can be picked up. Several types: Invisibility, Double Damage, Illusions, Regeneration, Haste. Can bottle runes to save for later and refill the Bottle.
LoL-Certain creep camps have special glyphs. These creeps spawn at the same spots and there is one set (2 creep camps) per forest. On killing that creep, you gain that glyph. If an enemy hero kills you while you have that buff, they steal the buff instead. Three types: Attack and HP regen bonus, Mana Regen and Ability Cooldown bonus, uber bonus from killing the Uber Creep (only 1 Uber creep on the map).
Minimap/Map Features
DotA-Uses the WC3 engine's pings. You can tell your friends stuff, and maybe even make them pretty colors.
HoN-Supports pings. Shows where players are teleporting to via Homecoming Stones (TP scrolls).
LoL-Supports Pings. Draws your intended path via pathfinding on the minimap over long distances. Can target and mark enemy heroes and enemy towers to have team focus them down, and highlight friendly towers to defend. Marking also shows up as a ping on minimap and in team chat. Definitely helpful to compensate for lack of voice chat.
Map Teleportation
DotA-Use Teleport Scrolls to warp to any friendly building. Also a specific version of Boots allows teleportation to any non-hero friendly unit.
HoN-Use Homecoming Stones to warp to any friendly building. Also a specific version of Boots allows teleportation to any non-hero friendly unit. (sound familiar?)
LoL-All summoners have the innate Recall spell. After the cast time, immediately return to the fountain. During cast time, any damage taken stops the spell. You can also take a summoner spell Teleport to teleport to any friendly non-hero unit/building. No consumable warp item.
Unit Control
DotA-Select as many units as you can and control them as a giant blob of death. Or tab through them to fire individual spells. Mmmm minions. Mmmm heroes who's whole job is get and then run around with 5+ minions...
HoN-Like Dota, can select and control as many units as you can.
LoL-Can only directly select own hero. Other minions can be directed to attack something or move, but cannot not directly controlled via selecting them. However, if you start to run away or move somewhere or attack something, they typically will follow your lead. Granted, this makes running away and letting your minion do all the attacking for you a tad hard.
Jungling
Definition: When a hero doesn't stay in the lane and instead goes around killing neutral creeps. Potentially lower XP gain, but overall team XP and gold gain goes up provided the extra solo lane doesn't die horribly against the two enemy heroes.
DotA-Potentially amazing. Heck, some heroes seem designed with this job in mind. With careful timing you can pull these monsters into your lane to slow down your creeps, helping keep the action near your tower where it's safer. Plus, if you time it right, you can pull the creeps out far enough so that the game thinks it's OK to spawn more creeps there, thus doubling (or more depending on how many times you do it) your XP and gold gain. Sometimes done by another player or by a minion to get it ready for your team's carry to clear out in one shot and reap the benefits.
HoN-Like in DotA, a powerful strategy for certain heroes. Can use Creep Pulling to slow down team's creep waves and to help tank neutral creep damage.
LoL-Jungling has much lower gold payout than laning and will leave you a level or two behind the rest of the team. Requires specific summoner spells to perform properly on most heroes. Low GP payout. Still, in theory allows two solo lanes to gain levels and gold more efficiently as a whole team. No creep pulling into team's creeps, but can pull into brush to hide that you're killing the creep.
Uber Creeps
DotA-Roshan. Kill him to drop the Aegis, which will revive the hero when they die. Also, bonus gold for your entire team. Kinda awesome. Maxed out teams kill it with ease. However, you are in a vulnerable spot on the map making ambushes oh so tasty.
HoN-Kongor. Once killed, drops Token of Life. The hero that has this, when killed, instantly respawns. Huge gold bonus for entire team. Melee only neutral creep. Again, maxed out teams kill it with ease, and again you're right in the middle of the map.
LoL-Baron. Once killed, all heroes on the team get uber buff. Not transferable to enemy team on death. Hefty damage, movespeed, and regeneration boost. Some gold bonus to entire team. Mostly melee but also creates spouts of acid and has ranged rain that fall on heroes. Spouts are dodgeable, making it a bit like a MMO boss fight. Even at max level Baron can sometimes take a team down to half health, making them perfect targets for an ambush by the enemy team. Not quite the middle of the map, but pretty ambush-able.
Consumables
DotA-Eat a tree for HP. Drink a potion for mana. Vision wards and ward that reveal invisible units but have a small vision range on their own. Teleporting Scrolls.
HoN-All the usuals from DotA. Healing items, mana restoration, map teleportation, and vision wards.
LoL-Healing and mana regen items are still in the game, and the mana one doesn't dispell upon taking damage. Vision and anti-invis wards available. Also introduces several buff potions that last for a set period of time, including one that gives True Sight revealing invisible heroes until you die. Takes the place of the Gem of True Sight/Bound Eye used in DotA/HoN.
Replays and Spectators
DotA-Available. You just have to use WC3's horrible interface.
HoN-Available, and there's even a mod that makes the UI extra awesome for spectators and video commentators.
LoL-Not available (yet). There is a weird hack that lets in a single spectator, but the UI is kinda meh and no replays makes this an annoying endeavor.
Competitive Scene
DotA-Giant tournaments and cash prizes, including being one almost every major gaming circuit. However, it feels like this has been drying up recently.
HoN-Almost weekly HONCAST.com tournaments, and several huge prize tourneys have already been played. With the spectator and replay features, shoutcasting is easy and fun to watch. Plus, they are the game of choice at Dreamhack, one of the Largest Euro LAN events, and have a league going on in the newly rebooted Cyberathele Amateur League.
LoL-Several tournaments occurring, but less notoriety of individual games due to the lack of integrated spectator modes and replays. Thus, no live streams nor game commentary outside of fraps captured gameplay videos. There is currently a special hack that allows a "spectator" to watch the game, providing a few casts and replays to be found in the web now. Recently Season One, based on their Laddering system, finished up at the WCG for massive prizes. Also, several other groups have had LoL tournaments, including PAX.
In-game Voice Chat
DotA-Ahahahahahahaha. No. Use Ventrilo/Teamspeak/Mumble/Skype/etc.
HoN-Supports both whole team and local voice chat (i.e. only to nearby friendly heroes). Still waiting for global so you yell at the enemy team.
LoL-Not available (yet). Use Ventrilo/Teamspeak/Mumble/Skype/etc.
Leavers, Surrender, Kick, etc.
DotA-Bnet is stupid. However, using a cool tool called Banlist lets you monitor if that guy that just joined is a jerk who is a known leaver and ruiner of games. Drop out of a game, you can't come back.
HoN-No longer supports kicking except for idlers, but still supports Remaking a game, Surrendering, Pausing the Game, and maintaining a personal Banlist. You can rejoin games you left, as long as you rejoin within 5 minutes of game time. Also, heroes left by a leaving player can be controlled by a teammate, but rarely are.
LoL-Supports Surrendering. If a player leaves a bot takes control of the hero and tries to teleport them back to the fountain. You can rejoin games within a reasonable time.
Modability
DotA-Lots of WC3 engine hacks like Banlist and Voice Overlay, but not really that moddable.
HoN-Very open API, and some stellar mods. I personally have 5 different mods for my HoN client, so you can change the UI to your whims making it simpler or more complex.
LoL-None, except perhaps the hack to allow an observer.
Spell Range UI
DotA-Sorta not really. Mostly only AoE shown.
HoN-AoE area shown, but no range markers. Can mod in ability range displays.
LoL-Range, cones, AoE Area, all shown.
Team info. at a Glance
DotA-None.
HoN-Hotbar shows team heroes' HP, Mana, all abilities whether ready, on cooldown or not enough mana. Can also see how many points are spent in which abilities on teammates.
LoL-Hotbar shows team heroes' HP, Mana, and if their ultimate is ready.
Final Recommendations:
If you are a DotA veteran and only want to play more DotA, Heroes of Newerth is solid. It's basically DotA, but with better UI and way better engine. Plus, no BattleNet. It also tends to feel more frantic and visceral due to the extremely influential spells and grittier graphics. The purchase unlocks everything all at once, no grinding to unlock heroes and plenty of game modes to play them in. If you do some advanced forum hunting you can also modify your UI in wonderful ways to give you every bit of information you wanted, on the screen where you want it. Some may balk at the $30 price tag, but I think it's worth it. It appears the community is growing slowly and in the evening on the West Coast there's usually around 20,000 players online.
If you thought DotA was awesome but the core mechanics could use a bit of tweaking or are a new player to the scene, League of Legends is the way to go. Much better UI to find items, great overlays, and the Death Recaps ease newbies in. Plus, the limited number of available heroes at the start lets you become familiar with them instead of trying to learn 80+ all at once. The persistent summoner with levels and runes also adds a bit of progression keeping you looking to grow as a player even more. Don't worry, summoner stuff only accounts for about 10% of the battle. Hero choices are another 20-30%. The rest is skill. It also currently has superior (i.e. team) matchmaking capabilities. Plus, you can't argue with free. It's also winning the popularity war, so if you want to join the teeming masses LoL is the way to go.
Granted, if you're a DotA vet, that means you already have DotA. So, why spend money on a new game? You already know everything about DotA, and DotA currently offers way more heroes than either HoN or LoL (but they're catching up soon). So, while I have kissed DotA goodbye and never looked back, maybe that's your fit. Or you're just waiting for Icefrog's Valve version.
I will continue to play HoN and LoL for now mostly playing with friends from each side.
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