Thread: Chavez waxes poetic about DoTA

Hello Gang!

I am Chavez/Jfkwasnoscoped/Jake. I'm looking for an area to share some DoTA insights I have for those of us who have been playing recently. I played DoTA for ~5 years before I got my hands on the DoTA 2 beta. I have never played HoN or LoL so I won't have any comments/comparisons there. Alright, let's get down to brass tacks.

Hero Selection - After the heroes are chosen in any game, your team will either be at an advantage or disadvantage before any time has elapsed. This is why your hero choice is very important and knowledge of the entire hero pool is advantageous. Choosing to 'random' a hero offers 200 extra starting gold, but is risky and should be avoided by novice players. It is vital to have a cursory (i've played it once) knowledge of all heroes, but choosing a few to master is wise.
Novice e.g. Tidehunter, Ursa, Zeus

Hero Roles - A balanced team is the best team. Generally, a team should consist of one hard carry and four support heroes. The hard carry is usually an agility, although exceptions such as Lycanthrope, Huskar, Obsidian Destroyer, Dragon Knight, and Skeleton King are available. The million dollar question for the other four players is, "what is good support?". Support to me means assisting your carry, keeping lanes pushed, buying wards/true sight, and ganking enemy heroes.

Items - The introduction of the quickbuy in DoTA 2 makes purchasing your next item much easier. You can drag any item to the quickbuy rectangle in the lower right where it will remain for you to buy provided you have the gold and are in range of the proper vendor. The recommended starting items for most heroes is usually a good choice. The plethora of hero combinations per team is so vast, it is impossible for me to recommend further items based on specific heroes. Generally, the core items are very useful against any team. Aura items such as Vlads, Mekanasm, and Assault Cuirass are very powerful for group fights, and every team should strive to maximize the benefits they provide.

Middle / Bottom / Top - (Radiant) The hero that chooses the middle lane will ideally be providing the role of hard carry or early/mid game ganker. This should almost always be a ranged hero or a very strong ganker, e.g. Pudge. Hard carries should strive to farm the lane and maximize experience gained. Ganking inclined heroes should be helping any lane that is struggling or keeping the enemy carry from farming. Any hero laning mid is responsible for controlling the runes. The Bottom lane is the lane where pulling/stacking creeps occurs for your team. This is something that is vital to understand if you choose to lane bottom. You can stack any set of neutral creeps by pulling them away from their spawn at 54 seconds; this should always be done before pulling the set into your lane. If you are not the hero dealing with creeps bottom, YOUR job is to defend the tower and keep the enemy creeps off it. Pulling/stacking the creeps in bottom lane results in denying the enemy experience and extra experience/gold for you. Top lane is perhaps the most difficult as it is typically where the enemy carry will be. Here the goal is to defend/deny as much as possible and play support to your hard carry.

4v4,4v5,5v5 - Everyone counts, even meat shields. 'Group battles' should virtually always take place at towers, runes, or near roshan. Timing is the most important aspect of these encounters and it takes practice, knowledge, and foresight (wards?) to win these high stake contests. In a nutshell: Heroes with lowest hp should be killed first. Their highest damage dealer should be focused first/thoroughly disabled/kited. Targeting enemies near you is a better choice than chasing 99.9% of the time. Everyone's priority in a group battle should be helping their weak teammates survive so that a lane push can be done. After all, you don't win by killing the enemy team, you win by destroying the enemy throne.

General Gameplay - Creep stats (cs), refer to your creep kills and denies. This combined stat is important for everyone, but only crucial for the hard carry to have exceedingly high kills for the gold. To keep the playing field even, experience and levels must be a high priority for everyone. To avoid falling behind, minimize any unnecessary damage from lane creeps or enemy heroes. Returning the fountain (to heal?) before 10 minutes will be detrimental, so be sure to keep regen available (use the courier).

Invisibility - DoTA 2 offers a much more fluid invisibility mechanic than DoTA. Heroes e.g. Rikimaru, Bounty Hunter, Clinkz make extensive use of this in ganking and escaping. There are a variety of excellent counters to invisibility heroes which must be used. Sentry wards and Dust of Appearance are effective early game, while a Gem of Truesight (700g) should be used while attempting late game ganks. Observer wards do not provide true sight, but are perhaps the best investment in DoTA 2. Every hero other than the carry should purchase observer wards when they are available.

Choosing Your Battles - Map control and map awareness may sound like cringe worthy terms but they are important facets of the game. The minimap is your best tool to help keep track of events in the game. Having foresight and knowledge of the enemy heroes' position is fundamental to doing well in DoTA.

Did you actually read all that? I hope you learned something! Cya on the trail...

- Chavez