I had thousands of hours in DotA 2 before switching to LoL. Do you know how toxic some of the players here are? Well, it's not any better over there. Also, there's a significant Russian/Brazilian playerbase over there which flood the North American/EU servers. It's not a rare sight to be the only english-speaker in the team, which when you're losing a game and trying to coordinate can be extremely frustrating.

The game's far more punishing than League is. Turn frames, gold lost on death, denying creeps+XP, DotA is essentially the real 'hard mode' MOBA. It's as hardcore as hardcore gets (outside of Starcraft:BW) and it shows.

But that wasn't my main problem with the game. I got addicted, bad. I like buying skins and stuff in LoL, but in DotA tere's item sets and treasure boxes. Couriers, HUD updates, announcer-packs, and a metric fuck-ton of things to spend money on. That was my problem with the game.

LoL, I'll spend like $10 on a neat skin once a month or something of the like. DotA, I'd be spending $20 every single week 'cause there was just so much shit getting thrown into the game that I couldn't help it. It got to the point where at one point I realized how much money I'd spent on the game, and I decided to just sell everything I owned on the Steam market (Item-wise) and then uninstall the game. The game is more addicting than League, in my opinion, since the meta's a bit more open and the skill ceiling is deeper.

Honestly, I don't recommend it. DotA's so good it's captivating, and while this is a strange argument, League is 'difficult' enough to be entertaining without being as punishing, and it's not as much of a money sink. I can take a nice break from LoL, start up a game and still be good. If one takes a break from DotA, it's tough to get back in since there's just so much to it.

I'll put it this way. You need a few months to learn how to play League of Legends.

You need a few years to learn how to play DotA.