It's a lot different from dota, no gold, no last hitting, no items, team levels. All the maps look like they are 2 lanes with objectives, although they can just make the OG map.
Dark Pact max is good if you go bottle, or have a Crystal Maiden on your team, otherwise you only cast it when you need to purge a debuff and you would rather have essence shift. Dark Pact is very good at clearing waves and for jungling so if you are playing a more passive game you could max it at 7(leap is usually maxxed first because of CD reduction), but all in all, every one of slarks skills is useful and scales well, so it depends on what you're playing against and playing with.
It looks stupid but from the hands-on videos in youtube the form factor looks comfortable for adult hands. Lots of people have DS for pokemon, and releasing a cheaper next gen DS on the same day as the next gen pokemon is a great idea. Not to mention the new Zelda and Smash Bros. titles releasing next year.
Supporting is as fun as you make it, I would recommend Lion or Shadow Demon because you can actually kill people with your spells and they aren't item dependent. I actually prefer to play support because a lot of people are not good at it, wards win games when you a.)actually buy them and b.)use the information they give you effectively, ie. ganking and avoiding being ganked.
Another fun support hero is Rubick, his attack animation is pretty good, and his 2 first spells have instant cast animations, and his ultimate lets you learn what other heroes can do while not actually playing them. Rubick has a high skillcap but his first 3 spells are very straightforward.
The best thing to do is to play with any number of friends, if they are new then you should all be in the same matchmaking, and having voice communication is a huge advantage, and it's easier to synergize. It's also easier to rage when playing by yourself.
It's also important to know which spells to level when, and which items to buy.
What about the Gifts Ungiven deck? It is green but doesn't play Goyf and black but doesn't play Bob, it's still fairly expensive but not playing Bob and Goyf saves a lot of money
Look at Modern Zoo and Jund, they only play 1 of each shockland anyway. These lands would be too good for some decks and only a replacement of 1x shockland in others
I'm not a professional, but every problem has happened before and has been fixed, you just have to google and look at various tech forums. Find out what he did before the problem happened, like installing or updating anything. Quick search yielded
People see Standard and say "rotation sucks", even though yugioh basically rotates by banning and hindering archetypes. It can be cheaper, usually through buying 3x Structure decks plus staples, or buying the reprinted versions of once expensive cards, but you can also make cheap mono-colored decks in magic. I guess people just don't know and take word of mouth as Magic being more expensive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhf-OVtvML0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqov5xpEZY4
Another fun support hero is Rubick, his attack animation is pretty good, and his 2 first spells have instant cast animations, and his ultimate lets you learn what other heroes can do while not actually playing them. Rubick has a high skillcap but his first 3 spells are very straightforward.
The best thing to do is to play with any number of friends, if they are new then you should all be in the same matchmaking, and having voice communication is a huge advantage, and it's easier to synergize. It's also easier to rage when playing by yourself.
It's also important to know which spells to level when, and which items to buy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k6XM4MlYts
Almost forgot about Bane, his ultimate is crazy powerful and Brain Sap is probably the best non-ultimate skill in the game, check it out
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=472528
griselbrand combo
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=418264
amulet of vigor deck
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=495829