My synopsis: LoL is for the "casual" gamers. There is no competitive scene.
Ranked games have already been implemented and tournaments are being launched regularely.
They recently have even expanded into Asia, which should provide a significant boost to competitive gaming (just think of Japan or Korea).
The game is balanced in that any hero can become a "carry;" there are no differing roles for each hero to play and play well when all of them are homogenized trash. There's no need for a "balanced" team when anyone can do any role, more or less.
I wouldn't say that.
It true that most heroes can become good at killing other heroes, but the are also a lot of supporters out there.
Still the best team consits of a tank, a physical carry, a magic nuker, a supporter and one other random heroe.
You should never forget to bring some stuns, slows, heals and such.
Every hero is unique in his own way.
Being built around a cash shop means that people can pay for what you can do for free in HoN (See: Skins, mods, etc). Having to pay to access all the heroes (or play a game like that on a regular basis for over a month) was very offputting (yes, I know they switch out heroes every week).
You forget that you will have to pay for HON once it is out (if it isn't out yet) while LOL is completely free.
If you know what you are looking for in champions, you won't have any trouble in sustaining a bunch with the points you earn.
Also runes from the shop add additional customizability to your champion as well as do masteries and summoner spells.
The interface and graphics look horribad and cartoonish. Lack of essential mechanics (like denying creeps for lane control) and a real metagame (where, like I said, if any hero can carry then there's no point in early push strategies; these are invalidated with how hard the towers hit anyway) really killed the game for me.
I happen to like the cell shading look of the game.
Its simply a matter of taste.
And there is a lot of metagame.
Pushing early allows you to deny the enemy xp and gold, as well as making some of the squishier characters or the ones without an escape skill an easy target.
Also denying makes no sense (Killing you own guys? Seriously?) and didn't add anything to the gameplay value.
It annoyed me in Dota and I was glad that it wasn't in LOL.
I do like some of the things in it, though.+Power to spells would be nice to have in either DotA (where it would be unwieldy to implement, due to engine limitations) or HoN (where it would be unbalancing to implement directly, due to certain heroes having spammable nukes). The variety of items is nice, too. Neutral creeps being the equivalent of runes in HoN or DotA was an... interesting change, at least.
My favorite part of the game.
Finally every chapions stays useful, once he has passed his strong phase.
I really didn't like how your caster characters became more and more useless as the game proceeded, as you weren't able to increase your spelldamage.
I played two games, both of which I dominated in (16-2, 21-1) without knowing what I was doing. Have uninstalled since; it's not worth the space on my hard drive.
That's ELO for you.
If you continued playing you would have gotten tougher and tougher opponents.
The ones you get in the beginning are pathetic.
Even my brother (a 11year old) was able to beat them, without knowing what he was doing (he doesn't understand much of english, just bought the recommended items and applied random skills).
Summary: If you want a low skill-cap game that is "fun" to play, and you haven't played DotA or HoN before, then LoL may be a good introduction to the genre. If you want a game with a competitive scene or advanced mechanics, then Warcraft 3's DotA or S2Games HoN would be a better choice.
The games are equally competitive.
Well HON probably has more "professional gamers" right now and more events, but LOL is catching up quickly.
And LOL has expanded upon DOTA and HON (which is basically a reskin of DOTA) in terms of gameplay mechanics, introducing new item stats, interesting new heroes, with elaborate new abilities.