User blog comment:YurdleTheTurtle/LoL & DotA 2 - AMA and Information Blog/@comment-1330314-20121126191809

Funnily enough, Invoker was the first hero I played in Dota 2. I had looked at his abilities before and was really interested in his playstyle. Naturally, I sucked monumentally for the next ten matches or so. Dota 2 is certainly a lot harder than LoL (even when not playing the hardest champion), but at the same time, despite not having changed much since the original, it's more inventive in certain ways. For example, Dota 2 includes mana burn a lot more than LoL, since the latter's devs deemed it "anti-fun". There's also a lot more CC and the maps are much more gank-prone.

Personally, I think Dota 2 and LoL fit different niches, and thus don't necessarily fall as rivals. They certainly don't play the same, in my opinion, and that's a good thing. Also, there's this comic that came out recently that talks about two thieves on a quest to find Demon Edge, one of the legendary items in the secret shop in Dota 2. It exposes a little bit of lore, namely the origins of the Ancients (the equivalents of the Nexuses) and the reason why Roshan is cursed to drop the Aegis of Immortality upon every death. It's quite nice, a little bit more serious than LoL's lore but not too heavy either.