When comparing League of Legends vs Dota 2, the Slant community recommends Dota 2 for most people. In the question“What are the best LAN party PC games?” Dota 2 is ranked 71st while League of Legends is ranked 99th. The most important reason people chose Dota 2 is:
Microtransactions involve only cosmetic items such as custom weapon designs or clothing colors and tickets to view live events.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free to play
It's free to play without being pay to win.
Pro Frequently updated
LoL has frequent patches pushed to the game client. However, with every patch new bugs appear.
Pro The world's biggest e-sports title
League of Legends is the worlds top e-sport title. It raises e-sports to a completely new level, making it real sport, no compromise.
It's funny that people still think of "biggest e-sports" as of "highest prize pool", playing other games, they are accustomed that there is nothing except Worlds championship and another couple of big events. On the contrary. League of Legends is a constant big event. Although it's not the first in highest prize pool on Worlds, its e-sports competition is not limited by rare championships here and there. That's why it is the biggest.
Since 2010, there have been several professional leagues, with four major: LEC (Europe), LCS (N. America), LCK (S. Korea), LPL (China) and more than 10 "not major" in Russia, Turkey, Latin America North, Latin America South, Brazil, Vietnam, South-East Asia, Australia and Oceania, Japan, Taiwan and more.
It has big "physical" infrastructure, studios and "stadiums" (usually one per region, but they have more than one in S. Korea and China) are built to take regular championship events. Each region has large "TV"-teams, a large number of analysts and casters. Major regions have more than one caster teams, one of which is English-speaking. Overall, several days a week they produce about 6 hours of an expensive TV show.
They have two seasons a year (splits). In each, 10 teams are competing. Each team plays 2-3 games each week, so the total number of games is around 10-15 a week.
Teams have large infrastructure. Each has several coaches (strategic, analyst, etc.), sports psychologists, cooks, etc.
In major and some other regions, each organization has 10 or more players, who also play in challenger league (as the second team) and/or are raised to play in the main team somewhen and/or for substitutions in the main team.
So, LoL is a real sport and the biggest of e-sports ever.
Pro The most popular MOBA by a huge margin
More than 27 million players log in each day to play the game and more than 67 million players log in to play each month. It has peaked at 7.5 million concurrent players.
Pro Largest diversity of champions with unique play styles
Having 144 champions League of Legends ought to offer the greatest diversity, and it delivers.
Many champions have long combos that need precision in positioning and timings on par with fighting games, while others can be effective without combos at all.
Also, many champions feel really unique (not necessarily complicated) in play style, unseen in other MOBAs.
Pro New Champion every 3 - 4 months
It may sound not much (and it was much more frequent), if you don't realize there are ~150 champions already.
Pro Constant champion reworks and visual updates
They are updating champions that have "outdated" gameplay/visuals on a regular basis. And usually, they hit bull's eye, giving those champions new life and making them feel "right" to the player (there are much more praises than complaints from the community).
Pro League of Legends Championship Series
League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) is a weekly 10-team league.
Pro 14 free champions in weekly rotations
Pro Offers free skins
Pro 3 different maps
There are three different maps that users can play on, which offers a bit of a change up of play and familiarity as well as allows for the player to not get burnt out on a singular stage played over and over again.
Also, there are game modes with new experimental maps.
Pro Balanced game - requires skills
The game is quite balanced and second its skill(requires) dependent.
Pro Fun mode every weekend! New fun mode every second weekend
There are a number of fun modes that are switched on Friday evening and switched off Monday evening, rotating every two weeks.
This include always highly awaited URF (Ultra Rapid Fire), AR URF (all-random URF), Nexus Siege, Hunt of the Blood Moon, Legend of the Poro King, Doom Bots of Doom, Hexakill, Ascension etc.
Pro Fair free-to-play business model
Microtransactions involve only cosmetic items such as custom weapon designs or clothing colors and tickets to view live events.
Pro Start with all heroes
You don't need to unlock or purchase characters.
Pro Incredibly deep gameplay
For players who put the time into Dota 2 to get past the early beginner phase, Dota 2 can become an extremely satisfying game. There's a reason it's one of the most popular eSports titles in the world. The amount of strategy, skill, and variables involved make it a very deep game where anything could happen.
Pro A very diverse MOBA
This game has a steep learning curve, but it's well worth it. The games that came after Dota like League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Smite, and other lookalikes don't even compare to the complexity of Dota 2.
Every hero is unique and valuable in one team composition or another. The amount of versatility of each hero is amazing as well. The mechanics by far destroy any other Dota style game (MOBA) and that's what makes this game top tier in its genre. This game is the highest grossing eSport game in the world and will probably continue to be for a long time.
Pro It's very well-balanced
Gameplay is balanced in the sense that while other MOBAs would have only around 30-60 viable picks for the competitive scene, Dota 2 has heroes and strategies in the game that are more varied, which enables more heroes to be picked in the competitive scene.
Number of Heroes Picked in Dota 2's Recent Major Tournament in the past 4 months (as of July 2016) is 86/111 heroes picked and 100 out of 111 heroes picked.
To compare between Dota 2 and LoL pick diversity, LoL has 64 out of 131 champions picked for LCS.
There are also factors such as the ban/pick phase difference and the more rigid positions in LoL that may limit the viability for different playstyles and hero picks (typically it is 2 (AD, Support Bot) -1 (AP mid) -1 (Tank Off) - 1 (Jungler), with a possibility of double junglers in LoL).
On the other hand in Dota 2, there are a lot more different positions compared to Lol/Smite such as Duo Mid (1-2-2), Traditional (2-1-2), One Jungler (1-2-1-1, most similar to league), One Roamer (1-2-1-1 as well with the difference being the hero roams the map for kills to create space for the mid and safelane rather than farm the jungle which can weaken a lane), Duo Roamer (1-1-1-2, all lanes are weaker in lane presence with the tradeoff being they get solo experience with two aggressive supports roaming), Trilane (1-1-3, Aggressive or Passive Trilane) and Abandoned Offlane (0-1-3-1 where the offlane is completely left empty due to a strong duo or trilane on the opposing team).
More heroes are viable and balanced in Dota 2 partly due to the greater flexibility in laning. This can be attributed the mechanics such as creep pulling and creep stacking which allows the team doing trilane to make up for the shared experience between three heroes. Besides that, the existence of teleport scrolls that allow you to defend your towers or punish a tower dive also allows you to react and assist other lanes.
In pub games, any hero/lane/lineup can work, and it is more about your individual mechanical skills (understanding of hero, combo execution, map awareness, last hitting, timings, item builds, flow) over the lack of coordination and teamwork (on both teams).
Pro Has user-created custom games
Dota 2 includes Workshop Tools that allow users to create custom games as well as other play them.
Pro Moba-leading graphics
When compared to other leading MOBAs, Dota2 has some of the best graphics to be found.
Pro In-game mic
Has in-game mic so you can get toxic with voice chat.
Pro Cross-platform
Available on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Pro Very active professional scene
Dota 2 has one of the most active professional scenes in eSports today. If it's not the most active, it's certainly got the largest prize pools, coming in at over $20 million in 2016.
Pro Players can trade self-made cosmetic items
The game includes a system for players to create, buy, and sell cosmetic items.
Pro Dota 2 has the world's biggest e-sports tournament
At The International 7 in summer 2017, players raised the prize pool to more than $23 million, one of the largest prize pools in sSports history.
Pro Can be played online and offline
However, you will need to be logged in to Steam either way.
Pro Good for brain
Trains brain hard.
Pro Regularly updated
Dota 2 is regularly patched and changed with new characters being introduced and balance changes made. This can prevent the game from becoming too stale as the tactics utilized by players changes often.
Cons
Con The community is very toxic
Your teammates will most likely be hostile towards you for every mistake.
Con Characters are unbalanced
There are heroes that are OP, and others that are completely unplayable.
Con Unbalanced
They release a new champion every 3 months which requires a series of patches every week for a year to balance properly. Too frequently changed.
Con Balanced around pros and not the average player
Riot keeps balancing the game around the professional players, disregarding the majority of the players, making the game unbalanced until you reach top 0,1%
Con Bad matchmaking
Con They want you to spend money
You will just buy RP and your accounts gonna be banned for calling someone a degenerate. Hard-worked money is gone. No refunds, exchanges, or skin transfers.
Con Support never cares about players
You can get banned just by spamming chat.
Con Takes a long time just to learn the game
If you want to get in the game as a new player, you'll have to play for at least a year, or put in hours and hours of studying just to be able to keep up with what characters do what, and what items to get for which character in any given situation. If you take a few months off from the game and return, you will probably have to relearn the whole game again. Almost every Champion is different, not just in stats, but in mechanics and gameplay altogether, from their original launch. The item shop is changing quite frequently, making you have to relearn it every so many months.
Con Player Support is useless
They can't speak English and they can never help you out. No exceptions, and no exaggerations here.
Con Not fair
Every match you will find someone who will give kills to enemy and you will loose almost every match because of that person, and then you will unninstall the game.
Con Can't get blue essence easy enough
Not even if you play the game 20 hours a day.
Con Only 14 heroes are free each week
There is a rotation of 14 heroes that are available each week for free. To unlock the rest they can be purchased for ingame currenency.
Con It's boring
It's repetitive, always the same, not challenging, gets boring very fast. You can feel that the game is made to get money in for Riot and not to make you happy or excited. Its not like that
Con Too many champions
141 champions are too much and too expensive, when you want to buy a better champ you need to play constantly for 1 or even 3 weeks to get that big amount of gold that is required.
Con Buggy engine
With every new patch, a wave of game breaking bugs are created yet the developers still refuse to update the game engine. Some bugs result in characters being removed from the game for up to a week.
Con Items are broken
Con Terrible graphics
Models of champions looks flat.
Con Long games (average 25-30 min) and leaver penalties
Long games aren't bad per se but when paired with leaver penalties (not just for ranked games but also normal games) it means once you start a game you are practically locked to your computer for a good amount of time.
Con Champions cost money
While in Dota 2 every hero is for free and you can catch up which characters you like, you have to buy them in LoL and spend a lot of time and hopefully (what they want you to do) spend real money.
Con Not complex enough
Very static game. You get pushed into a pattern you have to play, can't make your own decisions.
Con It's got a huge learning curve
Dota 2 has 111 heroes, all of which are unique from each other. It will take time and effort to learn which heroes you like to play, and become skilled with them.
Con Rude, toxic community
Many players feel free to flame and insult, especially in the lower ranks and from non-English speaking countries.
Con You can be put into a low priority mode for being bad at the game
Con Matches are too long
The game is great but even just a single match can take a lot of time. And when you get to mid game and realize you already lost, you have no option but to keep dying and literally wait for the game to end.
Con Zero merit goes to good players
If you score, say, a 20 kills 0 deaths but your team loses because 4 people are noobs, you lose -26 personal rank.
Con Miserable community
Takes 100s of hours not to suck, and even then, you're still not going to be good.
Con No SURRENDER option
As ridiculous as it may sound, you are a slave, once you start a game.
You may suffer, you may cry, but you can't concede.
Very much influences an overall toxic atmosphere of game.
Con It's a slow and repetitive game
This might be the most repetitive MOBA game.
Con The controls are terrible
It feels more like SC as a MOBA than an actual MOBA.
Con Waste of time
Con It has voice chat
It boosts rage and toxicity so much it has to be removed.
Con Valve doesn't care about their players
No surrender option and bad teamate can influence your personal mmr even if you perform good. Plus the company seems way too big and the services start to lack and suffer.
Con You love and hate the game
While infuriating at times the addictiveness of the game keeps the players coming back.