Been playing the game for a bit. Some random thoughts:
>the skill ceiling is through the fucking roof, into the stratosphere, and out into fucking space
>being great at Deadlock will be THE gamer badge of skill
>it includes the entire skill set of ASSFAGGOTS (communication, presence of mind, reaction time, situational awareness, timing, anticipation, etc, etc) except now you have to shoot precisely to last hit/deny, you can no longer auto attack while looking at the map, no more wards to keep you safe, far easier to focus fire heroes so positioning matters a lot more, 3d space, far more complex movement, ammo conservation, melee/parry system, hard angles for cover
>they fixed most of the design issues in dota/HoN
>picking phase has been replaced by a roster system where you pick 3 heroes before you queue, and you can assign three levels of priority to your picks
>deny/gold/exp system was overhauled, gold and exp have been merged into one currency called souls
>you only get souls on creep kills if you or an ally get the last hit on the creeps
>about a second after getting a last hit, a floating orb will spawn at a random location near the creep that died
>the orb despawns after about 3 seconds
>you can shoot your orbs to confirm the kill, you can shoot the other team's orbs to deny their kill
>gun kills and skill kills give half the souls, the orb gives the other half
>melee kills immediately give the full soul value and don't spawn the orb
>this creates a laning phase where players are constantly playing against each other through harassment, harassment when poking out to melee, fighting for confirms/denies, managing ammunition and health
>unlike other ASSFAGGOTS, it means that things get crazy and intense
>no wards mean supports no longer have to spend all their time and gold warding and counter warding
>new item system feels way better, you now have 3 item categories for weapons, vitality, and spirit
>each category has 4 slots, items are split into 4 tiers which give an increase amount of free baseline stats based on tier
>get 4 extra flex slots after destroying certain enemy towers
>this opens up genuinely different builds, with some items being soft/hard counters to heroes
This is going to overthrow DotA and LoL, and it won't even be a competition.