Actually no... it's a bit more confusing >.>

Before reading, most of what I'm saying about dota2 applies to dota1.

Firstly, there are some main differences, in lol you have runes for some extra earlygame stats, in dota2, you got nothing than the 603 or so gold in a 5 man team, and you've got to figure out how you use that for maximum effectiveness in the start of the laning phase. There are also NO skill trees or the such.

Secondly, if you want to get an item in lol you need to go back, and waaaalk all across the map back your lane(unless you've got the teleport ability, or how was it called). In dota2 you can have the courier get it for you, if it was bought and used by someone (click on donkey icon in inventory). But if you don't have a courier, you have to either get a teleport scroll (135 gold) from a sideshop and teleport back to base, and then run to tower after healing, or go back to base, buy scroll from there and return to lane using scroll.

I barely scratched the surface here... lets go on!

Now, lets dip in the lane, in lol you can either lasthit, or try to harass, or move out of lane at around lvl 6 or earlier, when the hero is most effective to gank, and that's about it, push towers.

In dota2 there are also some mechanics that newer players don't grasp from the first games. Firstly, you can DENY creeps. Denying means attacking your own creeps when they're under 50% health, and it's best to lasthit them. Successful denies yield less exp for the enemies and NO gold. I should try and explain some of the next stuff before I dip into pulling.

The jungle is similar for both sides of the map, but the spots are in different places if it were for a mirror image (lol is just a mirror image, excepting dragon/nashor). And the camps will spawn a random set of creeps at every :00 mark starting from minute 1, if there are no monsters in the camp. That means you can attack the camp (:52~) and run away from the camp, and at :00 new minute, you have 2 sets of creeps, that's called stacking. You can repeat that how many times you want. Also, do note that jungle is not as effective as in lol, it's an option, but not that awesome as the nice amount of gold that you get in lane. After stacking camps you can pull some of the camps to intercept YOUR creeps that come in the lane. Only the safe lanes can do this...goddamnit now I have to explain safe lanes too, fuck me. Keep safe lanes in mind; that will cause your creeps to be denied if the camp is stacked, thus enemies will get less exp, and the point of conflict of where the creeps duke it out will be nearer to your tower, which is a good thing; if it's not in its attack range.

Now, safe lanes. Each team has a mid lane, a suicide lane, and a safe lane, and the complementary jungle. Mid is where the character that gets the most advantage at lvl 6 or so sits, thus the ganker usually. The safe lane usually has the first point of conflict near YOUR tower, while the suicide lane has the first point of conflict near THEIR tower, thus safelane is usually the carry that needs the farm to, well, carry. Safelanes can also be helped via the pulling technique; note that it's the support's job. Suicide lanes is oftentimes a very potent combo that can survive any ganks or attempts from the enemy lane to kill them, or a solo laner with an escape mech, survivability or something that can give him farm at a distance.

To note; something I forgot, both sidelanes have a sideshop, which has a selection of items that can be useful, and it's nearer the tower of the enemy safelane tower than yours.

And another thing, in lol you only have one shop, in dota2 you have the main shop, the sideshops, and the secret shop(which is somewhere in between the suicide lane and the mid lane on both sides of the map). Sideshop has some items that appear in the main shop, while offering some other items that can be gotten from the secret shop. The secret shop has NO items from the main shop, but offers expensive items that can be made in very powerful gear...

The gear is the same as in lol, 6 item slots, use them how you like. Unless your name is Syllabear, then you have 12, your bear has 6 slots too.

And the main shop is the only place which sells recipes; recipes are items needed to make even more gear; each recipe is different for every item which requires a recipe.

I think I scratched enough off the surface here, time for the stats.

Lol has different stats for everything, one magic armor, one armor, one attack speed, one damage, one ability power, mana, health, etc. Dota2 is a bit more simpler, Strength, Intelligence, Agility, movement speed, armor, magic armor. These are the basic stats, if it were for me to dig into the damn lifesteal/crit things I'd be sitting here all freaking day. So, each hero has a main stat, if you get 1 point in your mainstat, you also get 1 damage; so if you're a Str hero and get 1 str, you get 1 dmg and the bonus from str, but if you get agility you only get the bonus from agility. Str gives you health and health regen, agility gives you attack speed and armor every so often, intelligence gives you mana and mana regen. That's for scratching the surface here.

Now, abilities, in lol, abilities scale off your ability power, while in dota2 they're fixed amounts, thus lol has better lategame scaling for mage type characters. There are a handful of abilities that can scale in dota2 based off some stats, but they're just a handful. Same goes to attack damage scaling on skills.

I only scratched the surface, but I suppose you get the point.

In conclusion; lol is a dumbed-down version of dota, it might have its differences, but it's still a bit too simple for some. And for incoming messages, yes, I didn't mention about there being no dragon in dota, that runes spawn in the space separating the two sides thus they don't have creeps with special auras that transfer to you after they die, that there are ancient camps that give a lot of gold and are harder to kill than normal camps, but spare me, this was already boring to write.

Lol might help ya learning curve, but it will teach you VERY bad habits for dota.