Action RTS. The problem with the genre spawned by DOTA is that it doesn't have a good name. Calling them DOTAlikes offends fans of various games that sport nearly identical maps, mechanics, and rosters of characters. Calling them ARTS games is silly because they're only RTSish in that they originated on Blizzard's games as map-mods. Riot invented the term MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) which could be applied to every online game ever. Sadly, the worst option (MOBA) seems to be the one that sticks.

If you want to go deeper, DOTA was actually originally modeled after a custom game in Starcraft (the first one) called "Aeon of Strife".

http://web.archive.org/web/20090624132302/http://www.gotfrag...

AOS was actually a term that was used before standalone clones of dota started to appear.

i would prefer to call the genre MOBA. There isn't any RTS elements in dota, and moba is a fresh new terms without any connotation on what it is supposed to be.

someone upthread defined it as "action real time strategy"