Master of the UI – Part 3 – DOTABUFF

It’s been over a decade since the last post in the “series”. Dota is a very different game and we are very different players as well. One thing remains, though — the insatiable drive to be better at Dota and squeeze out as much efficiency as possible.

Today we are going to quickly go over the recent update and how it can simplify your shopping list and courier management, allowing you to concentrate on the game. These small things might not feel like much, but when combined they can have a palpable effect on freeing up some mental processing power on things that actually matter.

In the week since the patch release, we didn’t really see an ubiquitous adoption of the new UI functionality, which is a shame, but understandable. Some players still don’t use quickcast after all, stubbornly nerfing themselves for no reason whatsoever. For players who want to improve in any way possible, the new UI options provide quite a bit of small advantages, so, please, tap into them.

How many times have you gone on a risky run into an enemy creep wave, because you are 150 gold away from Blink Dagger? Most of us did that at some point, sometimes getting caught off and killed by the enemy team, losing the earned gold in the process and not getting the key item in time, despite having the money.

Previously it could be semi-solved by having a dedicated Quick Buy button, but even then, depending on how quickly you get ganked, it could be insufficient. With the Auto-Purchase button, the moment you have enough gold for an item, as long as it is a general shop item, you will have it.

But that’s not all and is probably not even the best part of the new Auto-Purchase functionality. The Secret Shop trips with it enabled become a one-button endeavour, and it is making a huge difference both in terms of delivery speed and user experience.

If you queue a Secret Shop item for Auto-Purchase and then, with sufficient gold, issue a Delivery command, the Courier will fly to the Secret Shop, purchase the item and deliver it to you in the fastest way possible.

Compared to the previous route, where you had to use multiple buttons to get the courier into position, press a button to purchase the item once the courier is in range of the Secret Shop and then issue a Delivery command, the new way is much easier. It is also making sure that you get to stay focused on what’s happening on your screen, as opposed to getting distracted multiple times, potentially during a teamfight.

Take a conscious effort to develop it into a habit and we assure you, over the next couple of games it will become second nature and you won’t want to go back.

This one we found to be slightly less useful during the game, but incredibly useful during the laning stage. Personally, I usually keep it on for the laning stage. As a support, I need a constant stream of small trinkets, wards and consumable items delivered to me. This option simplifies the whole process and I just buy whatever I might need and can keep on concentrating on harassing the enemy or saving my core.

Later on I typically turn it off, since as good as this system is, it can’t really read your mind. Most of the time, with bigger purchases, you need to think of what to prioritise. Partial item deliveries also don’t really impact the game too much, so once the laning stage is over turning it off isn’t a bad idea. For the laning stage, though, we fully recommend using it to out-regen your opponent.

Even five seconds of improved delivery time can make a huge difference, if it is a Healing Salve or a couple of Mangoes, for example.

The moment you lost a couple of your Tier 2 towers, this should be turned on. Well, not really, but having and not having a buyback can be the difference between staging a comeback and just losing.

This one is probably the easiest to understand and the hardest to use properly. I did a post roughly five years ago, during Team Spirit’s TI run, about how the team had the lowest total time when they had buybacks. Their playstyle revolved around spending gold to maximise their chances of winning a teamfight, as opposed to having a second chance. This is a viable approach.

Understanding which items and by how much can change the outcome of an upcoming teamfight is very hard, though. I don’t think even most pro players can reliably predict the impact of an item on their potential DPS and how it changes the underlying math of an engagement.

So for us, mere mortals, the simple mantra of “always hold buyback gold past minute 30” is probably the way to go. Unless, of course, there is a BKB you desperately need. Or a Hex that can solve your Puck problem or open a way to initiate. Or maybe a Crimson Guard against a heavy zoo lineup. Or… you see what I am talking about, right? The functionality is great, but use it wisely.

Making Dota less complex in terms of UI interaction, while preserving the depth of the gameplay, is undeniably good for the game. A lot of things we now have are things we didn’t even realise we wanted or needed, but they can make your life much easier, so there is no reason not to spend a couple of games to learn them, for a lifetime of advantages.

That said, Dota players, for some reason, tend to be somewhat conservative when it comes to new functionality. As in, they are afraid to learn new things, because it will impact their performance for a couple of games and might cost them their rating.

I believe it is one of the reasons some players insist on not using quick cast, despite it being strictly superior in every single way: you can even keep the double-tap self cast functionality by altering a specific hotkey for specific heroes, while keeping the AoE aiming with Quick Cast on release. There are so many ways to be faster and more efficient, without losing precision and it saddens me to see people not use it. This is what’s costing them MMR in the long run, not the couple of games they will need to retrain their muscle memory.

And even then, you can always train in a regular All Pick match to get used to some interaction changes. Which is a good practice in general, as it will force you to think more about spell usage, instead of playing on auto-pilot, and as humans we learn better when we are presented with some obstacles.

So, tell me in the comment section below whether I’ve managed to convince you to try the new UI functionality, or were you already using it? And do tell me if you’ve decided to make a switch to Quick Cast after reading this, as it will absolutely make my day.