1: THE DOTA MAP
1.1: Lanes - Pros and Cons:
The middle lane is usually the easiest to play early on as you can farm relatively near to your first tower, as well as your base, with easy access to the secret forest shop, as well as the two other lanes if you should be needed there. The lane closest to your forest shop (Left lane for the sentinel and right lane for the Scourge) offers a similar advantage with regards to shopping in that its close proximity to the forest shop means you won’t have to waste too much time running around to buy items. However, when applying pressure to your opponent’s tower along these lanes you will be exposing yourself to ambush as you will have to hang around next to some forest access points whilst you attack the tower. This makes it relatively easy for your opponent/s to duck around into the forest and pop-up behind you, placing you in a sticky situation. The converse applies if you are playing the opposite lane from the forest shop in your territory (Bottom/right lane for the sentinel, Top/left lane for the scourge). If you are inexperienced, try to play the middle lane, pairing up, hopefully with a good ranged/support hero. The middle lane is also usually where a lot of team pushing occurs, so you should prioritize the defence of this lane. Familiarizing yourself with all the various pathways that aren’t on the lanes is very important as it will help you to pick the fastest routes when running away or chasing someone down, as well as good ambush spots and places to farm neutral creeps
1.2: Map Awareness:
The most obvious and important aspect of map awareness involves knowing exactly where your hero is at all times. The best way to do this is to keep your screen over your hero unless it is absolutely necessary to have it elsewhere and then only for the briefest of moments possible. All too often inexperienced players tell their hero to run back to base, become distracted elsewhere, and fail to notice when their hero veers off course, runs back into the fray or is attacked, resulting in an unnecessary death. One possible reason to take your eyes off of your hero would be to observe how a particular scuffle that you’re running towards is going, since you don’t want to run into a battle that your opponents have already convincingly won, becoming their next victim. So, try to keep your hero selected at all times. Pressing the F1 key will select your hero whilst hitting it twice will instantly centre your screen on your hero. This is very useful.
1.3: The Mini-Map:
Keep an eye on your mini-map in the bottom-left corner of your screen. Maintain some form of awareness concerning the locations of your allies (this can be very helpful when running away from an enemy as often you will need to head for the place where you are mostly likely to receive assistance as soon as possible. Remember: Safety in numbers). Some players find it helpful to toggle the map setting so that allies, and enemies, are displayed separately as two distinct colours over a black background. Also watch out for ping-signals on your mini-map as these could indicate the possible locations of hidden enemies or mines, the location of allies who need assistance, situations where towers are under threat and need to be defended or the intentions of your allies regarding the setting up of ambushes or attacks. You can transmit pings yourself (Alt + left click), but do so only when necessary – you don’t want to be the guy who cries wolf or gets accused of spamming. The most common usage of pings is to signal when an enemy has taken a course through the river. Setting out a string of 3-4 pings in quick succession will indicate the direction an enemy is taking.
1.4: Communication:
Keep an eye out for written messages from your allies at the bottom of your screen, whilst trying to remain communicative throughout the game yourself. Share information about the opposing players and suggestions concerning the best course of action, keeping your team aware of potential hazards or advantages as well as conferring on your overall game-plan and situation constantly. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or suggestions, your allies want to win and if you’re the weakest link in the chain then it is in their best interest to assist you.
2: HEROES
2.1: Getting Started:
If you are new to DOTA your best bet is to choose an agility based ranged hero. This is because attacking from range allows you to stay at a safer distance away from enemy heroes and creeps, granting you a wider margin for error. In other words, being further away, it is more difficult for an opponent to exploit any mistakes you may make because they’ll have to do more to get to you.
2.2: The Long Term Benefits of All Random:
Although everyone likes to choose their favourite hero, after you’ve come to grips with the fundamentals of DOTA it is best to play games where your hero is randomly picked for you. Although you may struggle playing with heroes that you’re unfamiliar with at first, eventually it will afford you with a broader knowledge of the skills and abilities available to all the heroes in the game. This is will benefit you in the long run because, firstly, in future games the chances of getting a hero that you are completely unfamiliar with is reduced, and secondly, you will have a better knowledge of the capabilities of the opponents you come up against. For instance, knowing how Rupture does damage is crucial to defending against it, and knowing about the ins and outs of using Pudge will allow you to better position yourself so as to be a harder target to hit with a meat-hook. Having some idea of what options are available to your opponent will help you to guess what strategies they may follow or their likely course of action in any given situation. If you can act on this knowledge, by adapting your game play accordingly, your game will greatly improve. Knowing the skills at your opponent’s disposal will allow you to anticipate his actions because you will eventually learn what situations these skills work well in. For instance if you see the Tide Hunter coming out of the shadows and making a beeline for the centre of your group, the best thing for you and your team-mates to do would be to scatter. This is because he is most likely going to use Ravage, and you don’t want to be around when that happens. Similarly if a sand king burrow strikes into the middle of a group, get out of there (or have a stun ready) as a tremor is probably coming your way.
2.3: Getting to Know You:
As soon as you’ve picked or been given a hero, familiarize yourself with his/her abilities. Read the tool-tips - all of them! Read them again once you’ve put a skill point into them as the tool-tip associated with the useable icon often introduces more information than the skill icon in the window for choosing the skill. You’ll want to spend as little time as possible doing this in actual competitive games so opening up a single player custom game of DOTA in your spare time and reading all the skill tool tips is a good idea. Also, you will need to note the associated hotkeys for each ability, placing your fingers over these on your key board so that you’re ready at all times to use them. If you are not at the point where you are using both your mouse and your keyboard in play simultaneously – learn now. Acquiring a piece of software like Dotakeys will allow you to customize these hotkeys for easy access.
2.4: Knowing Your Skills:
You will also need to learn the purpose of each skill. Some abilities are most effective at killing groups of creeps whilst not that effective against heroes (Eg: Tinker - March of The Machines). Other abilities are most effective at dealing damage to specific heroes. A good rule of thumb to apply is that abilities which do low amounts of damage to a wide area for relatively low mana cost are probably meant to kill creeps, whilst abilities which do larger damage to a single target, usually with some form of stun or slow attached, are probably meant for use against heroes. Other ability types include those that are suited to assisting allies with heals or attack speed bonuses, and almost purely defensive abilities such as the Naga Siren’s Mass-Sleep spell. Certain spells are only effective in very specific situations. For instance, when faced with a large group of enemy creeps and heroes, the Lich’s Chain-Frost is mostly useless because it bounces, and thus its damage will be distributed too widely, or in the case of a single enemy, the chain frost will simply hit once and dissipate. However if there are only two heroes by themselves, this is ideal as the frost will deal the maximum damage as it distributes all of its bounces between just two targets. Situations like this can be found for a lot of level 6 skills (notably: Juggernaut, Luna).
2.5: Mana:
Learning the ideal uses for each of your abilities and trying to use them appropriately will also go along way to maximizing your mana efficiency. Mana is precious in a tight spot, so use it wisely. Be aware of the mana-cost of your various abilities, as these can change as you put more skill points into them. Be aware of how much mana you have left to use at all times as you will probably want to keep at least the bare minimum mana required to use at least one spell in the event that something should happen. Letting an opportunity to kill an opposing hero go by because you used all your mana on killing creeps will not endear you to your team mates. Likewise, getting killed because you didn’t leave enough spare mana for a wind-walk (for instance) is not clever. If you are battling with this, get a Perseverance.
2.6: Attack Order & Exit Strategy:
Plan ahead the order that you will use your abilities when attacking a hero. For instance, abilities that increase the damage your target will take (such as armour reducing) should be used first so that you get the maximum effect out of all subsequent spells and attacks. If you have slowing or stunning abilities, use these next. Your attacks will be no good if your target is able to simply run away. For instance, Pugna the Oblivion can cast a spell which increases the damage an opponent takes from magic attacks, try and use this first before you apply Nether Blast or Drain Life (or a Dagon if you have one, which you should). Conversely, if you come under attack, you should know which of your abilities are effective for buying you time to escape. These include abilities which give you speed or invisibility or which slow down or neutralize enemies. When you find yourself in a bad situation, if you’ve been ambushed, caught by your self out in the open or are just low on health, use these abilities quickly to get yourself out of harms way. Some heroes are distinctly lacking in abilities or spells that could help them in this regard. Such deficiencies can be overcome with items. For instance, the Drow Ranger has very little in the way of real defensive capabilities, so buying a Lothar’s Edge will allow her to escape from danger easily. Always remember to integrate items with charges into your attack order or exit strategy. Getting killed or allowing an opponent to escape without using any items in your inventory which may have helped is a grievous noob offence.
2.7: Ultimates:
If your ultimate ability (the one gained at level 6) is too weak to kill a hero on full health, aim to deal as much damage as you can with conventional attacks and lesser abilities first and then use your ultimate ability to finish him off. In other words, most ultimates are best used to guarantee the kill if it is clear that your more conventional attacks and lower level skills aren’t going to do it and your opponent is going to get away. Using the ultimate first is likely to scare the hero into retreating, leaving you with no possibility of a kill.
3: ITEMS
Building a powerful hero is perhaps the greatest source of entertainment in any DOTA game. Getting the right items constitutes a big part of this process.
3.1: At the Outset:
First things first: Buy Boots-of-Speed. For beginner players Boots-of-Speed are essential. Some players recommend getting stat-items (Null Talisman, Bracers), rings of regeneration, a Sobi-mask or even ironwood branches first. Many players also buy flasks of sapphire water as well, as they allow you to stay farming for longer even if you’re being harassed. These are all ok if you’re playing the middle lane, as you can usually stick closer to the tower whilst farming there, but if you are playing the left or right lanes then boots are necessary. What you buy first also depends on whether you are ranged or melee, as ranged heroes can do more anticipatory positioning (as opposed to simply reactionary) and thus won’t have to do as much running early on, whereas melee heroes are particularly vulnerable to harassment early on and so will benefit from the added speed. Either way you will eventually have to get boots of speed at some point (sooner rather than later). As a general rule, if your hero is strength or agility, you’ll upgrade these to Power Treads, if your hero is intelligence, upgrade to Boots of Travel, but that usually happens only much later.
Another useful starting item is the Carrier Chicken (see “Farming – Playing Chicken” below).
3.2: Item Recipes:
Once you’ve chosen to go for a recipe, buy the items that it requires before you buy the actual recipe. The recipe itself does nothing for you except combine the items that it specifies and so is a waste of money sitting in your inventory, whereas buying its component items first will give you small bonuses to assist you in the mean time. Learn the prices of all the recipe components. You don’t want to waste time running back to base only to discover that you’re short a hundred gold and either have to run back empty handed or spend time waiting for your gold to tick up to the required amount. The tool-tips that give you information concerning the recipe’s properties, price and components are readable from anywhere on the map. A good idea is to open a single-player custom game of DOTA and read all the item tool-tips thoroughly.
3.2: What Items to Choose:
Have a general plan concerning what items you’re going to get when you start out, but don’t be afraid to chop and change as the need arises. For instance you may get a Perseverance with the aim of using it to make a Battle-Fury, however if you are constantly encountering an opponent who is spamming you with a particularly annoying direct-damage spell, and is severely stunting your game-play, feel free to use the perseverance to make a Linkin’s Sphere. Although you will eventually learn which items or item combinations suit each specific hero, there are some general rules of thumb to follow when just starting out. For instance, intelligence heroes will benefit the most from items that boost intelligence and mana regeneration (and least from those which enhance their conventional attacks, either through increased attack speed, damage or critical strikes). Strength heroes benefit from health regeneration, strength boosts, and armour bonuses as well as items that enhance their conventional attacks. Agility heroes benefit the most from agility boosts, items which give critical strike and movement and attack speed bonuses. Some heroes however tend to overlap in their play style between hero types. Some agility heroes, for instance, have a lot of spells at their disposal and so require additional mana and intelligence in order to be effective (EG: Moon Rider), whilst some intelligence heroes are very attack centred, and so also benefit from boosts to their attack speed and damage (EG: The Enchantress). If you are in a game and are not sure what the best items are for your hero - ask your team mates. You may be reluctant to do this for fear of letting them know that you are a noob, but getting the wrong items will do this anyway AND guarantee that you play like a noob as well because of your ineffective hero.
3.3: Going For the Big One:
Saving up for a very powerful item from the start is risky. This is because it will probably take you some time to save up the required amount to buy the relatively expensive components, meaning that you’ll spend a fair portion of the early game with no substantial items at all to assist you. This can compound the difficulty as aiming for the high cost of an advanced item will be more difficult over this period if you’re more vulnerable to being dominated by your opponents. Often as a beginner it is better to build your hero up by increments, investing in cheaper, lower-level recipes early on to assist you through all the phases of the game. Because the items that make up lower-level recipes are also cheaper, you can make sure that as you acquire a relatively small amount of gold, you can quickly spend it, thus reducing the risk of you losing that money in the event of your death.
4: FARMING
Farming refers to the activity of killing creeps. This is your primary source of experience and money and so is vital to your efforts if you want to win.
4.1: Harassment:
Most farming, especially earlier in the game, is done with an enemy hero standing on the opposite side of the battling groups of creeps, no doubt farming themselves. Try to disrupt this process for you opponent as much as possible. For instance if your opponent is a melee hero, he/she will need to be close in to the action in order to farm effectively. Every time your opponent draws forward to hit a creep, hit him/her with a few shots/spells. This is not an attempt to kill your opponent, although you may get lucky, but rather to force him/her to run away because of low health, or even annoyance. Every second that you are farming and your opponent is not means a greater gold and experience advantage that you get over them. This is especially crucial during the opening stages of a game as any small advantages you gain over your enemy then are compounded over the rest of the game. If you are being harassed, put your mouse pointer over a patch of ground behind you whilst your hero is attack creeps, as soon as you see your opponent making a move forward, that is, within the minimum range they need to maintain in order to attack the creeps, right click to back away, and hopefully out of the range of whatever your opponent was going to throw at you. If you're being harassed to much to get close into the creeps, try to stay just behind your ranged creep at the very least. This will allow you to accumulate experience, even if you aren't getting kills/gold. As a rule you should always be moving, constantly trying to keep as many obstacles as possible between you and your opposing hero.
4.2: Using the ALT key:
Holding down the ALT key allows you to see the health bars of every unit on the screen (Using Dotakeys or Warkeys both have functions which allow you to keep this on permanently without having to press a button). When faced with a large gang battle, use the ALT key to quickly assess which enemy hero is the most vulnerable to attack, supply that attack yourself and reap the kill. When farming creeps, use this to see which creeps are low enough on health to be killed with a single shot, supply that shot yourself and reap the gold. This last technique takes a lot of skill and expert timing to get right consistently but is well worth it since it allows you to make a lot of gold and decreases the time you have to spend right up near the creeps in a position where you are vulnerable to being harassed. Needless to say, picking off one-shot kills on creeps is easier with a ranged hero since you don’t have to take into account the time it takes to actually run up to the creep to attack.
4.3: Denying:
The flip side of the above mentioned skill, and a real indicator of a truly skilled player, involves using your ALT key to land the killing blow on your own creeps. If you can see a friendly creep that is about to die, say from one or two shots, and an enemy hero is around, force attack that creep yourself (using the A key) to deny your opponent the experience and gold that they could potentially gain from its demise. The Lich King’s dark ritual and Enigma’s summon are especially effective for denying kills.
4.4: Denying Towers and Summons:
The benefits of denying apply to friendly towers as well. If a friendly tower is only a few hits away from dying, force attack and kill it yourself since the amount of gold that an opponent could potentially gain from taking that tower would give him/her an advantage. Surrendering this advantage is unnecessary if the tower is simply going to die anyway, so you should prefer that it dies at your own hand rather than your enemy’s. Furthermore, be careful with any summoned units under your control. If they are on the verge of death take them out of harms way and either kill them yourself or allow their time to expire.
4.5: Playing Chicken:
If the farming is going well, you are maintaining your health, and are feeling generally confident, you will want to try and stay in your lane as long as possible to take maximum advantage of what will undoubtedly be a short-lived period of relative security, waiting only until absolutely necessary to run back to base and stock up on items. Ultimately, however, the need to stay in a lane to get gold has to be balanced against the need to go back to base to buy items at some point. In order to avoid the trade off, players often try to coincide their shopping trips with those times where they have to go back to heal, hopefully cutting the time they spend away from farming in half. A much maligned solution to this problem is to simply purchase a carrier chicken as early as possible, using it to buy and deliver items to you at the front line. However, it is never a good idea to bring a chicken past your last tower or where you think there may be opponents lurking around. A good idea is to set your hero as control-group 1 (by selecting your hero and pressing Ctrl + 1) and your chicken as control group 2 (Ctrl + 2) for easy micromanagement between them (hitting the corresponding number will select the unit, hitting it twice centre your screen on it). Chickens are useful because, by sitting right next to the shop, they allow you to spend your money on a desired item as that money becomes available, reducing the time spent running around with it in the bank and so the risk of losing it in the event of your death.
4.6: This Is Important:
Do not take unnecessary damage from creeps. If they begin to attack you, back away until they forget about you. Once they turn to attack something else, like one of your creeps, then re-engage. Remember: Let your friendly creeps take as much damage for you as possible, that’s what they’re there for.
5: TOWERS
If you’re not destroying towers, or rather more towers then your enemy, you are not going to win.
5.1: Why Towers Are Matter:
Taking towers increases the threat posed by your friendly creeps, and so the amount of time your opponents have to devote to defending their remaining towers/base. Towers give you a very large amount of gold if you land the killing blow on one, for this reason alone they help your team tremendously. Pushing more and more advanced towers, however, does place you in ever more dangerous positions in which you can be ambushed, so be careful. However, the risks are often worth it, as all too often a team has lost a game on towers even though they were consistently killing more opposing heroes.
5.2: Chipping Away:
When attacking a tower, don’t run in alone as the tower will target you (and own you). Wait until some friendly creeps start taking damage before you run in to attack the tower. Early on you should only be able to get 2 or 3 shots off at a time, anticipate when your creeps are going to bite the dust, either from the tower or from a fresh wave of opposing creeps and get out of there before the tower runs out of other targets and starts firing at you. If the tower happens to start targeting you before all your friendly creeps are dead, run just out of range and come back, hopefully you’ll have enough time to let off a few more shots. Early on you will not be able to sustain more that a few hits from the tower without putting yourself in serious danger.
Note: Towers closer to the centre of your opponent’s base (The Ancient) are progressively more powerful.
5.3: Pushing With Creeps:
Getting the killing shot on a tower will give you +-500 gold and so is worth sustaining a bit of extra damage from sticking around just a few extra seconds to get if the tower is low on health. A handy way to take down towers is to amass a large group of friendly creeps. Killing off enemy creep waves quickly, focusing especially on the ranged creeps (they do more damage to your creeps and die quicker) whilst defending/healing yours will allow you to build up strong gangs of friendly creeps to destroy towers. The closer you are to your own base when you start assisting friendly creeps, the bigger group you can build up (this happens later in the game once more towers are removed). Auras (from the Ring-of-Basilus for instance) and heals (Mekansm) are especially useful. Summons will also do well when deployed with large creep groups. Once you build up a creep group (i.e.: 2 or more creep waves combined) it can gain a certain momentum of its own and can be left to forge its way into enemy territory without your help. This will cause problems for your opposition as they will probably have to rally to protect their towers from being too badly damaged and so will be distracted from taking the initiative on pushes of their own. This gives an extra something for your opponent to worry about, even if you’re no longer assisting the creep push.
6: TEAM PLAY
6.1: Team Composition, Strategy and Synergy:
It is important to know the composition of heroes in your team and play accordingly. Strength heroes, for instance, usually get very strong near the end of the game, whilst intelligence heroes are usually stronger around the middle portion of the game (this is because their main means of dealing damage usually hits a certain ceiling around this time whilst the health/armour of other heroes continues to progress). So, for instance, if your team consists mostly of strength heroes, the early stage of your game will mostly be an effort to stay alive and maintain your towers as you wait for the game to progress to the point where you can really take advantage. Likewise, if your team is mostly made up of casters, you will need to push hard early on and in the middle portion of the game, in order to end the game before your heroes become too weak relative to your opponents’. If you’re lucky enough to have a nicely balanced team, learn which heroes work the best together. Effective hero combinations are potentially the most devastating weapon in any team. This includes combining or stacking slowing effects, armour reductions and area-of-effect damage on your opponents.
6.2: Know Thyself:
Certain heroes are purposefully built to fulfil certain roles on the battle field. Understanding your own hero’s role within the team will also help you to know exactly what you should be doing at any given moment, whether it’s pushing a tower, attempting to hunt down and kill an enemy hero, or simply farming and playing it safe until your hero can get the skills and items it needs to be most effective. Hero archetypes in DOTA fall into three broad categories, with some substantial overlaps. They are: Support, Duelling and Damage.
Support heroes often have auras of some sort, summoning abilities and various protection, buffing or healing spells. They’re often very good at assisting other heroes and pushing large groups of creeps to take enemy towers. Examples: Omni-Knight, Furion and Keeper of the Light.
Duelling heroes usually have some abilities that boost their own attack power (speed or damage), speed boosts and negative buffs. Examples: Night Stalker and Blood Seeker.
Damage heroes usually have more than one ability that projects damage over a wide area or a number of opponents. Other abilities may help to do these two things more often or more effectively. Examples: The Lich King.
(For a much better break down of the various roles you might be called on to play in a game, see: The Art of Dota by fat404
6.3: Ganging Up:
As the opening stage of separate lane farming begins to wane, DOTA can quickly become a game of players grouping together to ambush opponents and push towers. Once this stage of the game has been entered, being slow to adapt could mean that you become the victim of just such a group. Pay attention to when the more experienced players on your team are congregating in a specific area. If you are in good shape health and mana wise, staying close and following their lead is probably a good idea. Try and identify the player who is doing the best on your team and shadow him (without obstructing his mobility). If he is gracious he will be able save you in a sticky situation, or you will act as a sacrifice to keep him alive, either way, hopefully, you will be of some assistance to him and the team as a whole. Once your are apart of such a group endeavour, anticipate a large battle ahead as your opponents will either rally together to oppose you or will likely come the aid of any single enemy hero you happen to come across or ambush. These situations, possibly deep in enemy territory, are often the most difficult to navigate. You will have to have both your exit strategy and your attack order ready at all times. If your ultimate or some other important ability isn’t ready, let your team know so that you can possibly stall any attack until you’re at full strength. You will have to know which enemy hero represents the greatest threat (this conclusion should be reached after some conference and agreement with your team mates) and be ready to target this hero first with whatever neutralizing abilities or negative buffs you have available when he shows his face in the battle. Hostilities are usually opened by one specific member of the team with an ability well suited to the task of either drawing in or holding opponents or taking the fight to an opponent quickly and delivering some kind of slow/stun or neutralize, thus forcing a fight. Don’t be too trigger happy however, using a stun or a negative buff when your team mates are not in a position to capitalise on it. Furthermore, don’t let yourself be drawn to far away from your team mates and into a position where they are less able to help you or your opponents are more able to hit you with a stun, slow or neutralize ability. It takes only one misstep to put you in a position where you’ll be isolated and picked off. This can all happen very quickly so monitor the situation constantly whilst adapting your position relative to that of your team mates, trying always to stay together (although not too close if one of your opponents possesses a neat area-of-effect spell, such as the Slayer’s Light Strike Array).
6.4: Staying Alive:
If a full on gang battle breaks out, try and remain on the periphery (preferably on the side closest to your planned path of escape), just close enough to contribute your assistance, but not right in the thick of it as this will expose you to attacks from too many sources, unless, of course, if you’re planning to use an area of effect which works outwards from your character, such as Treant Protector’s Entangling Roots or the Tide Hunter’s Ravage, in which case you’ll want to get into the middle of a group of your opponents to maximize the effect, but only for this reason. Getting stuck in the middle of a battle also increases the amount of obstructions you could encounter if you have to run away. If it is necessary for you to run away, either from a battle or in anticipation of one, say if your health is critically low, let the rest of your team know by typing “out” or “I’m out” or even “brb” - anything. Players often fight, and die, under the mistaken belief that their team mates are close by and ready to help them. Don’t let this happen. For more on the subject of running away, see the disclaimer in the section on Dying below.
6.5: Helping Out:
Once in an all out battle, there will be a lot of things which you will be doing. Staying alive, trying to kill your opponents and trying to keep them from doing the same to your team mates. Some useful things you can do to help an ally who is in trouble include:
Healing them
Making them invisible
Boosting their armour, regeneration or move speed
Or indirectly:
Attacking (to scare) or otherwise attempting to kill chasing enemies
Slowing, stunning or otherwise disabling chasing enemies
Blocking off chasing enemies with your hero (risky. See sub-entry “Blocking” below)
Using yourself as bait to lure opponents away (again – risky)
Or, using more specific skills like the Vengeful Spirit’s Swap, Pudge’s Hook or Pugna’s Banish (which makes your ally immune to physical attacks but slower and vulnerable to magic - so only in specific situations).
6.6: Blocking:
Basically, blocking involves using your character to obstruct or hamper the movements of an enemy for some reason. For instance, if an ally of yours has low health and is being chased, and you have enough health so that you are not in any immediate danger, you can zig-zag your character in front of the chasing enemy, thus slowing him down and allowing your ally to escape. Alternatively, you can use blocking to obstruct an enemy who is trying to escape, especially if your team has no available stun or slow abilities and you have a high enough move speed to make the required manoeuvring easier. This is most effective, and also less dangerous, if you are invisible. Although it is applicable in only a few rare occasions, blocking is nonetheless a useful skill to have in your repertoire.
6.7: Politics:
DOTA has many players who absolutely love blaming their deaths on the actions, or inaction, of their team mates. Although there are many situations where you can and should assist your team mates in getting out of harms way, there are however also situations where helping out will only get you killed. Giving your opponents two kills out of a situation where only one is truly necessary will not be good for you or your team’s overall performance. This represents a bit of a catch-22. If you don’t at least appear to care about helping your team mates you will incur a lot of whining and moaning, and yet taking foolish risks will also get you killed a lot of the time. In such cases you may be able to get away with simply throwing a few shots or spells at an offending enemy (although mostly for show), being careful to keep yourself out of harms way, and then apologizing later for not being able to do more.
7: DYING AND HOW TO AVOID IT
7.1: Risk Management:
DOTA is largely a game about risks, calculated risks, and taking risks in DOTA is a luxury acquired from many, many hours of game-play. In light of this fact, there are a number of rules the beginner can follow to minimize risk. They are:
If you are taking damage: Run Away (if only briefly).
If enemy creeps are approaching and you have no friendly creeps in sight: Run Away.
If 2 or more enemy heroes are approaching and you have no friendly creeps in sight: Run Away.
If you are low on health: Run Away.
If at any point you are in doubt about the application of this rule: Run Away.
Disclaimer: Running away can get you into trouble if your team is involved in some form of a gang battle or group push, whether in a lane or on some forest path. If things go badly you could be blamed for not lending your support to the effort, if things go well, you could’ve missed out on some the kills and the glory (as well as the fun).
7.2: Why To Avoid Death:
The reason for these rules is very simple. In DOTA, as in life, dying is bad. Not only does your death feed gold and experience to your opponents, it also severely stunts your ability to acquire gold and experience for yourself. Dying not only takes away a useful chunk of gold from you, but also keeps you from the battlefield as you wait to re-spawn, thus depriving you of the additional money and experience you would be getting from killing creeps. If you are a noob, and die a lot, your deaths could give enough of an experience and gold advantage to the enemy to result in the loss of your team.
The reason for the second to last rule above is that having less health means that making an effort to find and kill you is less of a risk to whoever does so. Hanging around with low health, especially in sight of your enemies, is a incentive for someone willing to take a gamble. The lower your health, the greater the incentive but to an experienced player even a slight drop in your health could tip the scale in their calculations to shift their conclusion from “not worth the risk” to “I could kill him and make it out of there in a second”.
7.3: Be Aware:
The best way to guard against being killed by an enemy hero is to know, or at least have some idea, of where they are or what they’re doing. During the initial stages of the game, the location of most of your opposing heroes should be known to you as they stick to farming their respective lanes. Making allowance for those times when they return to base to heal or purchase items, if you notice any prolonged absence of an opposing hero (especially if you know there was no apparent reason why they should be missing) then notify your team mates and keep a look out. This is because your opponent may have ducked off from their lane in order to hunt or ambush one of your allies. If a number of enemy heroes are absent, then something big is going down, either a large ambush or push, or they’re going after Roshan. Be extra aware if you:
are pushing with a large number of creeps
are by yourself
are on low health
In these cases you will be a particularly tempting target for any enemy to stop what he is doing to come and kill you.
7.4: Knowing Where Your Hero Stands:
You should constantly try and maintain some kind of a gauge on where your hero stands in terms of ability, relative to the other players in the game. This takes a bit of practice, but will eventually allow you to know exactly what individual battles you can and can’t win. Don’t persistently try to go toe-to-toe with a player who is more powerful than you. Good indicators of the power of another hero include:
Hero Level: If the hero you are fighting is at a higher level than you, be very sure what you are doing. However, 1 or 2 levels difference is usually not too significant, especially as the game progresses.If 2 or more of the above factors indicate that an enemy player has the odds advantage over you - run like hell.
Items: Pay attention to the items being wielded (or built) by your opponents, some will come with special abilities which will drastically change the odds of surviving any battle you might have with them.
Hero type: Some heroes are well suited to duelling one-on-one with other heroes, if you are facing such a hero be very wary, especially if you are not yourself a duelling hero.
The Player: You should learn soon enough which players are just more skilled than you (or anyone else for that matter) or are simply having a particularly good game at the time. In pretty much every game there is at least one player who is on fire, so try your level best not to get caught alone with this person and only attempt to fight them when you have backup.
8: FINAL NOTES:
8.1: Don’ts:
Don’t whine, don’t quit prematurely, don’t be rude, don’t steal kills if at all possible and don’t get angry - it makes you less effective. Never give up! Skill, persistence and concentration can allow you to pull of the most surprising manoeuvres in DOTA in the face of overwhelming odds.
8.2: Taking it Further:
Practice. Play as many of the main game formats (-dm, -ap, -ar) as often as possible. Play in as many different settings as you can; friendly lans, lan tournaments, online etc. Play AI, but only to practice farming techniques and item builds. AI bots don’t behave like humans and you can develop bad habits from playing them too often. Visit Dota-Allstars.com and check out the forums for hero builds. You can also look through the item and hero database to learn more about both.
thx to 1st post
have a great game...
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