DotaPlus from Overwolf – The subscription service you didn’t know you need

Dota Plus, you most certainly would know what it is if you ever played Dota 2. It’s the paid subscription that Valve promotes, that offers perks, such as voice lines, Dotaplus hero level progression, and an intelligent in-game assistant.

Well, there’s a different DotaPlus from Overwolf, the company that specializes in developing third-party plugins for various Esports genres. As quoted from a Dota 2 fan,

“Any player with an ounce of intelligence would consider installing the free plugin because if you don’t have DotaPlus Overwolf, you are at a disadvantage by default.”

Dota Plus Overwolf Dota 2

© Overwolf

 

What is DotaPlus by Overwolf?

The namesake, DotaPlus, is intended to rival Valve’s in-game assistant that players need to pay monthly subscription fees for its service. Frankly, Overwolf is killing its competition because of how much further DotaPlus offers in terms of assisting its users. Key statistics that distinguish DotaPlus Overwolf over its counterpart are players’ historical data, such as match-making rank (MMR), their most played role, and even party members in the game.

Among these useful features, perhaps the most beneficial perk is opponent stats during the picking phase. Knowing what heroes your opponents have been spamming and winning frequently is bound to be great insight.

In fact, DotaPlus Overwolf even suggests the most effective hero bans for you to decide on, saving you the trouble of thinking about counters. Hence, it’s also the most controversial feature that DotaPlus Overwolf has to offer, here’s why.

Debate on Player Stats Privacy

For one, the ability to drill down on your opponents in mere seconds during the game is a massive advantage. Of course, DotaPlus Overwolf wouldn’t be able to pull match history if the opponents disabled the public match history option. However, at the cost of not being able to use Dotabuff, a leading statistic for Dota 2 players.

After all, it’s for the sake of hiding yourself from DotaPlus Overwolf that would instantly identify your signature hero is Chen. Well, that very niche bunch of players, who aren’t relying on DotaPlus Overwolf while not wanting to share their stats publicly, is in between a rock and a hard place.

Neutral statistic apps, such as Dotabuff and OpenDota provided the Dota community with insights to study their personal Dota 2 stats. Being able to study your match’s timeline and understand what went wrong, will help in improving your skills. Hence, disabling public match history from your Dota 2 client is certainly not a viable solution.

F.A.Q about Overwolf DotaPlus

Is Overwolf Legal?

DotaPlus Overwolf, being a third-party integration to the Dota 2 client can often be indistinguishable from the average maphacks or cheats applications. However, the DotaPlus Overwolf does not manipulate the Dota 2 client in ways that hacks do.

According to Reddit user, Tsury, who claims to be a DotaPlus developer:

“All it (DotaPlus) does is detect when a new match is created, get the players information, cross it with info from Dotabuff and detect image picks without accessing the game memory.”

While it’s no official sign-off by Valve, we can at least rest assured that the folks at Overwolf ensure that they won’t get their users in trouble.

This however, does not apply to addons that Overwolf has for other esports titles. For instance, the Call of Duty ban issue occurred, but Overwolf is in the midst of fixing that.

Does Overwolf Skin Changer cause VAC ban?

Recently, a Dota 2 Reddit post accused the cause of his account VAC ban on the Overwolf Skin Changer, a plugin from the Dota 2 Overwolf app series. The original poster shared that VAC banned multiple of his accounts, even after he uninstall the app.

However, other users debunked the rumor that the VAC ban is caused by the use of multiple accounts, plausibly for smurfing. In such case, it’s most likely an IP address wave ban as the VAC system managed to identify multiple accounts owned by the same user.

Does Overwolf reduce FPS?

DotaPlus Overwolf is not a miracle app, and there are scenarios where DotaPlus Overwolf not working well. A caveat of Overwolf is potential performance issues, leading to FPS drops, and hoarding too much memory and CPU usage.

This may be due to Overwolf’s video capturing function that the app uses to identify necessary data. Long story short, make sure that your gaming setup meets the minimum requirements for it to run properly.

Minimal Requirments & Operating System:

  • Minimum: Windows 7 (64-bit, 32-bit is not supported / Windows 8 is not supported) > Recommend:  Windows 10 (64-bit) / Windows 11 (64-bit)
  • 350MB on your hard drive
  • In-game support: DirectX 8, DirectX 9, DirectX 11, DirectX12 and OpenGL, Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8

CPU & RAM:

  • Minimum: Intel or AMD quad-core CPU > Recommended: Intel i3/i5/i7 Gen7 CPU or AMD Ryzen 1Gen with 3 GHz or higher frequency
  • Minimum: 8GB > Recommended: 16GB

Verdict on Overwolf DotaPlus

Amidst the controversy, there isn’t a viable solution to the use of DotaPlus Overwolf in our average pub matches. DotaPlus has become a gaming phenomenon since DotaPlus downloads surpassed approximately 680,000 times to-date. And, players at higher ranks of Divine and Immortal are likely to have DotaPlus installed to leverage their matchmaking advantage.

Alternatively, you could just get good at the game by not being a one-trick pony, who spams Juggernaut. Play an inconsistent variety of heroes, and chances are DotaPlus Overwolf wouldn’t have any leverage against you. However, the rest of your team would still face the same frustration of not having their best heroes to play.

If you are reaching a plateau in your Dota 2 Ranks, you may consider using this service to give you a boost over the competition and you can ban out their picks. But in the meantime, you should focus on your own expertise in order to claim victory, without the assistance of third party apps.