Buyback, the unique mechanics of Dota 2

Ten simultaneous buybacks in the match between T1 and PSG.LGD is one of the highlights of The International this year. In the history of the biggest esports tournament, never before has so much gold been spent without either side gaining the advantage after the teamfight ended. That moment raised a lot of interesting questions around the buyback mechanism, and today, we’re going to take a closer look at buybacks.

BUYBACK HISTORY

Buybacks have existed in Dota 2 for a long time, probably based on the hero respawn mechanism in Warcraft 3. It didn’t take its current form until 6.70, when the Buyback timeout was added. In the past, in most professional Dota 1 matches, the carries would stock up on buybacks to get ready for the late game.

Buyback has changed many times since then. Buyback timeout increased from 4 to 8 minutes and an additional 25 seconds for next death.

During that time, many experimental mechanics were added to the buyback, like debuff gold earned or an additional respawn timeout, based on the respawn time remaining at the time of the buyback.

The buyback cost is also calculated based on the time in the game and the hero’s level, causing its cost to increase as the game gets longer.

All of the above points are meant to make buyback an option worth considering, but not to be overused. It can be said that the decision to Buyback or not is not easy.

Buyback is underrated?

A very interesting event happened in 2019, when Open AI Five was allowed to use pub training and a lot of show matches. First, the impact of Open AI Five made Active Buyback more popular and changed the mindset of “buyback is only used when cornered”.

Since then and now, Buyback is seen by professional players as a mechanism to gain an advantage, it doesn’t matter whether you use it offensively or defensively. There is no limit to the gold earned and the waiting time is acceptable to trade off, it helps teams make good use of the Buyback mechanism.

The current

Currently, with an initial cost of 200 gold plus value from Net Worth, Buybacks are expensive early game and getting more expensive for cores. Meanwhile, the buyback cost of supports is much lighter.

This is nothing new and it has been in the last three TIs. However, everyone, especially the supports, needs to know when to buyback and whether to use buyback in the early game or not is a must-have skill.

This is a skill that cannot be acquired without practice and Dota is a very diverse game that can give specific answers when a buyback is needed. So, in the next lane, when dying in the game, instead of focusing on why it happened and whose fault, think about whether the buyback now has a positive impact on the game.

Buyback is overrated?

Now, let’s take a look at the lower branch game clip between Team Spirit and Virtus.pro.

Notice, TORONTOTOKYO doesn’t have a buyback and jumps into position 1 even though he’s holding an Aegis (min 24:55 of the clip). If you’re a fan of Team Spirit or cheering for them, you’ll find that neither TORONTOTOKYO nor Yatoro have buybacks.

Although this can be seen as a very small factor demonstrating Team Spirit’s convincing journey, the article believes that it has contributed significantly to their success. Team Spirit cores are always marginally better or at least equal to the enemy hero.

The reason is very simple. If a team with a net worth deficit joins teamfight, while the enemy hero is still holding gold for the buyback, the theoretical power gap shouldn’t make much of a difference, maybe the team with less net worth is benefiting .

For example: Morphling has 20k Net Worth, including holding 2k gold for buyback, while your team’s Juggernaut only has 19k Net Worth, not having enough buyback money because of buying out of items. Although in Net Worth, Morphling is slightly better, but in fact, Morphling only has 18k Net Worth because he keeps 2k for buyback, 19k less than Juggernaut. It can make a difference in combat who is stronger based on the number of items they have in their inventory.

If the team with a Net Worth advantage used up the buyback while the opposing team kept it, that Net Worth advantage could theoretically be multiplied many times over. This is one of the reasons why Team Spirit has so many Rampages. Yatoro is not only marginally better than the opponent based on differences from Net Worth. He is even better plus the amount of gold the opponent keeps for the buyback.

So buyback is not good?

Not. As mentioned above, the article advises players, especially supports, to learn how to use buybacks to give the team an advantage in teamfight as well as the potential to win goals later.

But the author also encourages every core gamer to take a look at Team Spirit’s replays and notice when, why, and how to keep buybacks. In my opinion, keeping a buyback, while the team doesn’t have an important item to deal with an opposing hero (like Skadi/Shiva vs Morphling) is a pretty common mistake. Less than double strength is worse than risking and always having the best power at the right time.

According to dotabuff

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