Why is "Carry" a role at all?

The first time I ever heard a hero being called a "carry", I was immediately perplexed. What the hell does that mean?

Oh, so carries are the best heroes? Well, basically yes. In THEORY, they are supposed to be WEAK early game characters, REQUIRE tons of gold, and be the best late game ( carrying the team). This IN THEORY balances them, but apply that to the reality of DOTA2 metagame...does it work?

WEAK EARLY GAME

- How do you define weak? Can't kill anyone? Harassed in-lane by a ranged enemy? Doesn't have any useful abilities? Of course none of this makes sense when thinking of a carry, Drow( for a carry example, you could fit ANY of them here) is STILL ranged, STILL does good damage, and is FULLY capable of fighting/surviving in early game. What makes her weak?

I serious feel that the DOTA community is considering them "weak" compared to how stupid-silly OP Carries generally get late game, so sure, but that comparison, then yes they are weak. But are they WEAK compared to other heroes at similar level, early-mid game? Absolutely not, so start comparing Carries not to themselves later, but to everyone else. I can just as easily get killed by a Lvl5 Drow than a Lvl10 Drow, but once Drow is Lvl 20, the odds are in her favor FAR more than mine ( even considering we have the same amount of gold and level). It's purely a myth that all carries are "bad" early game, it may have been true in Dota1, or other MOBAs, but not in Dota2 whatsoever.


REQUIRE TONS OF GOLD AND FARM

-- Alright, so Carries require tons of farm and kills in order to be viable, right? If they don't get one of these things, they are NOT viable, correct? Is that what I'm hearing? So we are saying that a Lvl10 Sniper vs a Lvl10 Crystal Maiden leaves the Sniper as NOT viable, and weak? The reality of it, is that Sniper will likely win, and that's balance, giving two heroes of similar gold/XP a chance at killing each other or avoiding death. Carries "requiring" gold and farm is a complete fallacy, anyone playing DOTA2 knows this in the back of their head.
In the end, what are you expecting them to be doing once they have this farm/gold? Be viable, or be absolutely ridiculous ( soloing multiple heroes, which is the reality)? The reality is that they become absolutely ridiculous.


Lastly,

I want to hit the most obvious idea about carries. Carries are the only heroes allowed to be absolutely ridiculous late-game, to carry the team to victory. Why in the hell is this not something that every hero has a chance at doing? All of this screams balance, if you had at least somewhat more balanced heroes, these issues wouldn't be so bad. Why rely on a handful of heroes to carry the game? If I play well, shouldn't me character get better, or at least on even terms with another who did the same?

And for your enjoyment...this Dota wiki explanation of a Carry... does this really describe Dota2 carries?

"Carries are the heroes that can obtain the greatest power and utility. (It is so derived from the act of "carrying" a team; that is, to bear the responsibility for ultimate victory.) They tend to be those who become extremely powerful later in the game as compared to other heroes once they amass enough levels and items. They are the ones expected to have the highest number of kills at the conclusion of the game and tend to be those that directly tackle the structures and the Ancient upon the team becoming powerful enough. Carries typically lack early game power, but they scale well by late game; thus, the items they carry are an essential part of their build.

Although they are the major nexuses of power late game, their weakness in the early game must be made up for by other, more early-blooming heroes to ensure that they are not killed, and even survive, to gain enough gold and experience to become effective, in direct confrontation with enemy carries.

I'm kind of a noob, so take this opinion as whatever, but I think a lot of carries tend to be powerful right clickers in the end game, where as supports tend to have more powerful spells, especially ultimates. I know this is not exactly true for all heroes, but it seems to apply to a lot.

Look at the example you gave, Drow. She literally can't cast an ultimate. It is just more bonus damage to her ranged attack. Compare that to a support like Lich. He is pretty much a walking ultimate. He doesn't have a strong regular attack, but his ultimate is a force to be reckoned with in team fights.

Your post kind of raises the question, if carries are ok in the early game and really good in the late game, why not just have a team of 5 carries? I think part of the answer is because you need those disables and powerful ultimates on the supports to win.

And even though carries like Drow and Sniper can be effective in the early game, they are squishy. I don't have enough experience to say they are more vulnerable than most supports to gankers like Pudge, but they are definitely vulnerable.

And I guess it is worth mentioning that carries aren't always the ones who carry the team. In the noob brackets that I play in, it's not uncommon to see somebody rampage with a support class like Lina. If it were a more serious, competitive game, it probably wouldn't be a good strategy to give the killing shots to a Lina or Lich if you could give it to someone like Drow instead. Because Lich doesn't really need a Daedalus or a Desolator, he just drops his ultimate, and it is still going to mess up the other team even if he is a little under their level.

I feel like reading about League of Lesbians (every hero carry thing).

By weak early game I would mean that carries compared to other heroes have less nukes and skills that deal much dmg early game (compare 3 dmg skill Lina to 0 dmg skill Faceless Void).
Some carries also have nukes, but skill type determine how "hard" carry is. Again, lets compare 2 carries - Luna and Faceless Void. Luna have nuke, passive AoE, passive small dmg addiction and strong nuking ulti. Faceless Void have escape mechanism (very important for every carry), passive dodge, passive stun and strong team fight disable.
They both are described as carries, but (for me) Faceless Void is much "harder" carry than Luna, cause her nukes got the weaker the longer the game last, where Faceless Void passives and ultimate scale into late game perfectly, allowing him to clear whole enemy team with help of heroes like Magnus.
Comparing these 2 heroes in early game, places Luna in much better position than Faceless Void, cause she can take 1/3 of his hp with one ******ed nuke, but later he can take whole team in his ulti.

Next thing is gold and exp requirement. Gold and exp is needed for every carry to make him able to survive strong int heroes nukes and team fight ultimates ( Magnus, Enigma). Ofc Sniper is stronger than Crystal Maiden in 1v1 fight, but dota is not about 1v1, and when team fight occurs, itemless Sniper will die as first in his team.

Now about giving a chance to carry for every hero. I will say only 1 thing - if you want to carry with every1, go play League of Lesbians and instead of leveling abilities to do more dmg, farm for gay AP/AD items to improve them. Dota is about strong early game nukers and mid-late game team fights and carries. Thats what makes it different than every other RTS (LoL, Smite), there isn't any other skill upgrade than lvl's and maybe Aghanim's Scepter.

I hope you can understand me, peace.

Carries are not the best heroes, at one point Batrider was considered the best and he's not a carry by your definition. You cannot call heroes who fit into a category and say they're the best since you have to look at the individual hero and assess their strength and weaknesses. It can and cannot work, all that depends on the skill of the players themselves and how strong the whole team is.



How weak a hero is a defined by their individual hero assets (abilities, stat growth, farm, etc), skill of the player and the strength of both team compositions. Although Drow is ranged, she doesn't do good damage and has terrible attack animations in the early game before level 6 and is quickly dealt with by initiators/nukers. Drow has low HP and requires decent farm to dish out good damage but has to maintain distance from other heroes. If heroes focus her and get close to her, she won't deal damage and is quickly dealt with by both nukes and auto-attacks.

As you can see I delve a bit into hero strength and weakness with ways to deal with her assets. You simply cannot look at a category of heroes and judge them based on that, you have to look at the individual heroes.



This doesn't make sense, how is it "been true in Dota1" and not in DOTA 2 when they're identical? Sure some heroes work differently simply because the Wc3 engine doesn't allow it but they're practically the same. Some carries are better in the early game than some other carries for example: Phantom Assassin has a much better early game than Drow and farms easier/safer with dagger. PA can also help get kills slightly easier with dagger and if committed to a kill, PA can blink strike in and help get the kill faster than Drow in a similar situation.



That comparison is actually pretty bad, CM is squishier than Sniper, her abilities are to control teamfights. If I had a Lion lvl 10 vs Sniper lvl 10, the Lion would win but then again you have to see how they've itemized, if the Sniper stacked health then maybe he'll survive a bit longer after the chain attacks. These 1v1 comparisons in general are bad and any situation can be made up, it really depends on how the teams are playing.

Some carries require a lot more farm than others but to completely say they don't need is completely false.



Well they hurt and survive attacks much better late game if they're farmed but if you're able to slow or completely shut down the farm then any carry is useless until maybe super late game. However if you get to super late game then it's not that carries fault but you and your team, why haven't you pushed? Why haven't you went in for a teamfight if the carry is incredibly weak late game, is it become your whole team is weak?



Yeah that's a very general point of some carries, mostly hard-carries. For example Shadow Fiend can be played in the hard-carry role if the team needs it or played as a semi-carry if the team needs it.

That last paragraph pretty much summarizes the whole point of carries, some carry better than others with equal farm but again that's generalization. You have to look at the individual heroes strength and weakness, how well they're being played and how well your team does.

The difference between carries and non-carries is that carries require items to reach their true potential, while supports can be a major asset to the team not only with very little gold but they also benefit less from items than carries. Consider Crystal Maiden versus Drow Ranger. CM can be a major asset to her team no matter how much gold she has, and no matter how much she has she can't really purchase any items that will make her as powerful as they would be on Drow. Drow, however, cannot be nearly as useful if she doesn't gain gold, but the gold she gets can be spent much more beneficially than if CM had that gold. There's only a limited amount of gold that can come from each lane + the jungle, so prioritizing someone who benefits the most from it is necessary, and that's what makes them carries. They're not weak early game, per say, but they need more gold to be useful proportionally. They almost always have some on-attack effect, which is where the items come in to help them more than other heroes. Also, Agility heroes are just better for carrying because it increases your DPS in both speed and damage, and the extra armor helps you absorb damage late game.

It is named "carry" because that's what we(as a community) have named it. Older players(or at least people i've played with) had a more vague use of the term "carry" we didn't classify it as initiater, ganker, semi-carry, hard carry, etc.(initiater/ganker NOT SUPPORTS) Carry simply meant the people you were giving farm because, they were what your team composition was based around. Thus you generally had 3 carries a game, one for each lane.(sometimes jungle aswell)

Basically - it's the difference between a fully fed, and heavily farmed Faceless Void anti mage Spectre and a fully farmed cystal maiden Treant Protector

Any hero is strong, fully farmed - carries are just the strongest.
your example of CM vs sniper is redundant, at level 10, with no items CM could actually win.. (max frostbite + ulti.. sniper will die..) though he can also lose..
early game weakness, stems from their use in fights, which is minimal.

Dota starts as a magical damage game, and transitions to a physical damage game by mid-late stages.
Don't forget, you can't push the throne with magical damage, you need to hit the f***er..

Just think of the term carry, they were named carries because they "carry" your team to a win.
As for the previous LoL rage, there's heroes of Newerth which is a closer version of dota that played much faster, No turning animation and some versions of dota heroes scaled way too hard late that weren't carries, and they steamrolled, and to point out a simple fact, if pubs actually were coordinated the. Your see non-carry heroes snowball and "carry" that early-mid game absolutely wrecking teams, An example would be pudge a non-carry hero that can "carry" because of his snowball potential and how easy it is to net kills if you can land hooks...basically there are non carry heroes that can carry in a way because of their potential to get so far ahead.

Yeah, depends on your definition of carry...

i) A hero who carries his team to victory
ii) A hero who needs to be carried by his team early game, before carrying them late
iii) A hero with strong right click damage scaling

Hence some semi-carries, gankers, etc will carry the game if it's short enough. As already pointed out, magic damage is the real killer early game, you're unlikely to be able to right click somebody down without a lot of slow/stun to back you up. Most carries don't have stuns, or have very limited ability to use them (e.g. lack of mana).

It's very difficult to get kills in DOTA without:

- A big farm and/or level advantage
- A great hero killing combo
OR team mates (!)

To use your example, a Drow/Sniper lane using standard builds would have a very hard time getting a kill early game - they have no nukes, no stuns and a few mild slows (if they level them). Maybe they could wear down your consumables eventually or kill someone who's massively out of position, but otherwise, nothing. Compare that to say a Tiny/ Crystal Maiden lane - even at level 2 they have strong stun and nuking potential that could net them a kill.

Very good way to put it, CM and Juggernaut is another good example, as jugg can easily net early kills with the right support, and heroes like Templar assassin who can burst most heroes earlier on without too much of an issue.
The biggest discrepancies are in the skill brackets..lower skill brackets, yes Drow, and Sniper blow peoples minds, but this has more to do with newer players lack of ability to deal with ice arrows being blasted in their face in lane, or snipers range..
Then there are heroes like Gyrocopter that are prevelant through the game because of his nukes early-mid, supported by his flash farming capabilities transition into a hard hitting right clicker late game.
Specifically though lets look at the various categories, and why these heroes are considered carries, and note some "carry" heroes can fill multiple categories based on abilities, itemization, and team need.

Semi-Carries/Mid Game Carries:
These are the heroes that are powerful through laning into the mid game, but get overwhelmed by harder carries the later it goes..
Storm Spirit, Queen of Pain, Templar Assassin, Juggernaut, Dragon Knight
Those are a few, but they can snowball and control the game, forcing it to end between the 25-40 min marks, Notably for their Burst damage, or in juggernauts case, his sustained damage, Crits, and raw damage from his ultimate.

Hard Carries/Late Game Machines:
Anti-Mage, Faceless Void, Medusa, Weaver
All of these heroes have abilities that synergize with their r-click, as well as supportive abilities helping them survive, but (with the exception being AM) dont nuke like most of the "softer" carries do, rather their atk dmg scales with items much harder than the mid game oriented carries. Essentially at the 40-60 min marks these heroes are capable of soloing multiple heroes, or in some cases, an entire team.

More versitile carries:
These ones are guys that can fulfill different roles, can perform at almost all stages effectively, and scale hard into late game.
Lifestealer, Shadow Fiend, Gyrocopter, Natures Prophet, Lone Druid, Doom, Naga Siren, Alchemist
These heroes generally dont need a babysitter, can lane a variety of ways, or fill supportive roles as well.