Dota 2 is a complex game to master and can be overwhelming for those coming from a Moba free background, or even if you have experience in League of Legends. Hero's, item builds, positioning strategies and more must be part of your game plan if you are going to succeed. To get you off on the right track, here are our ten top tips that will help any new player with their first Dota 2 matches.
Dying is Very Bad - Unlike a lot of of other games, when you die in Dota 2 you don't just restart back at base with no consequences. Whenever you are killed a portion of your gold on hand get's taken by the enemy character that got the killing blow. Not only will this inflate your opponents budget, it sets you back at the same time, a bad situation to be in. For new players to the game if you find yourself not able to kill the enemy heroes, switch your tactics to limiting the amount of times you die. Your team will thank you.
Warding is Very Good - Information is power, and in Dota 2 that information comes in the form of visibility. Invest in wards to cover any blind spots or other areas you think enemies could be sneaking up on you. Seeing an enemy before they are close enough to engage will mean the difference between life and death.
Farming Creeps - Pulling off an epic gank is great and all, but the real key to victory is the ability to farm creeps effectively. Practice your last hits in a bot match before jumping into the real deal. Another good practice is to try and avoid pushing the lane too much. This will only set you up for a gank and/ or cause you to lose creeps to the turret.
Buy a TP Scroll - Having a TP scroll on hand is something a lot of new players forget to do. Picking one up has the following benefits. It allows you to quickly teleport back to base to heal up if you are getting beaten up. After teleporting back to base you can move into another lane for a potential gank faster. Finally, you can grab any items that you need immediately if the courier is out.
Sticking to your Role - Before you start your first Dota 2 match you should be familiar with all of the different roles in the game. Everyone doing their part is what makes a successful Dota 2 team, and chances are you wont be playing the same role every game so become familiar with all of them.
Avoiding Tower Damage - There's a neat trick to removing an enemies tower aggro from yourself and direct it to one of your minions that many Dota 2 players are still unaware off. If you are being attacking by a tower, right click on you of your nearby minion s to auto attack it and the tower will switch it's focus to that minion. This is a great trick to use when tower diving and it works if minions are attacking you as well.
Ask Questions - Dota 2 can be an unforgiving community to new players sometimes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for help when you need it. If you are unsure as to what lane/ role you should be playing, ask your team. They would probably prefer that to you wandering around aimlessly, or stealing your carries farm by accident.
Uphill Battle - Another member of the "things you probably didn't know about Dota 2" club, is the accuracy lost when fighting an enemy who is elevated above you. If you are attacking an enemy who is on higher elevation than yourself, you will miss 25% of your attacks. Not landing a quarter of your attacks is a massive debuff, so be sure and manoeuvre yourself so that you are at least on a level playing field with your opponent.
Flame Off - Partly why Dota 2 players can be somewhat defensive is the frequency of others who have slight "rage" issues. If you're having a bad game
keep it to yourself and try to learn from what's going wrong. Spazzing out on your team mates is only going to make them want to throw the game to get rid of you. If someone else is flaming you, you can use the mute option via the in game scoreboard to shut them up permanently.
Master the HotKeys - Nothing slows a player down like having to move their cursor and select what ability or item they want to use. That's where hotkeys come in. For almost every action in the game there is a keyboard key mapped to it. You can find the full list of actions and controls via the in game menu under "keybinds/ controls".
In a game of Dota 2, Wards are an extremely important aspect. They provide valuable vision and intel to your team, allowing you and your squad to see your opponents' movement on the map wherever you have Observer Wards, and to see invisible units using Sentry Wards. Being able to see ganks coming from the other side of the map allows you to stay relatively safe during the laning phase and sometimes even well into the mid game, which is of course key to preventing your team from falling behind in a game. The information that wards give your team opportunities to act accordingly to what your opponents are doing on the map, and when capitalized on correctly, can snowball into an insurmountable advantage.
There are, of course, several more uses for wards, which will be covered in the later sections of this guide.
Wards are typically purchased by players using support heroes, as supports are normally designed to be useful despite not having as much farm as core heroes such as carries and gankers. In addition, core heroes need to allocate almost all of their gold towards their items, and thus they often cannot afford to buy wards themselves. It stands to reason that this is a guide aimed at support players, but this guide is also very useful for all players in general.
Needless to say, wards are absolutely essential to victory in any game of Dota 2.
Basic Information
Observer Wards cost 150 gold, while Sentry Wards cost 200 gold. Both of these prices are for bundles of two wards which cannot be bought individually. Observer Wards come in yellow, while Sentry Wards come in blue.
The purpose of Observer Wards is to provide vision over a radius of 1600 units. This vision is not flying vision, however, and will be blocked by most higher obstacles such as cliffs and trees. Observer Wards last for 7 minutes when placed, and have 200 hit points. Sentry Wards have the same stats except that they do not provide any vision--instead they provide True Sight over a radius of 800 units. Their lifespans are also three minutes shorter than their cheaper counterparts.
Both types of wards are invisible, and can only be revealed by True Sight from other Sentry Wards or from a Gem of True Sight. This is commonly referred to as "counterwarding". They cannot be revealed using Dust of Appearance. Both types of wards also block neutral creeps from spawning (just like how standing near a neutral creep camp at spawn time blocks the spawn), as they are considered units.
Observer Wards start with just one stack at the beginning of the game, and replenish themselves every 6 minutes for a maximum of two stacks in stock. This discourages overly defensive play by stacking Observer Wards and placing them all over the map all at once. This does not apply to Sentry Wards, which have unlimited stock.
Rune warding
Perhaps the most basic method of warding is rune warding, which involves placing Observer Wards to provide vision of the spots in the river where runes spawn every two minutes. This is extremely important to mid players, who usually rely on runes to gain an advantage over their opponents in lane or to give them opportunities to gank the sidelanes or the jungle. Rune wards are commonly seen on the cliffs near the rune spawn spots, though other nearby spots can also provide vision of the runes.
This also serves to notify your team of what specific rune types your opponents are able to secure, in case rune control is not on your side (i.e. your opponents' mid hero has a blink/teleport skill to allow easy rune control). For example, if your carry is in the safe lane and the enemy mid hero manages to snag a haste rune that your rune ward detects, your carry would take this as a signal to stay near or behind the tower until the rune wears off.
Lastly, rune wards can cover the entrances to the jungle areas depending on their placement, specifically the northwestern entrance to the Dire jungle and the southeastern entrance to the Radiant jungle. This provides vision of any gank attemps coming from those areas.
Examples of the most common rune wards:
26 - Top rune common ward and deward 2
Top rune wards. These provide vision of the rune spawn and the Dire jungle entrance.
Bottom lane rune wards
Bottom rune wards. These provide vision of the rune spawn and the Radiant jungle entrance.
Offensive/aggressive warding versus defensive warding
During the laning phase, the difference between choosing to ward aggressively or defensively usually depends on your team composition. If your team is running a more aggressive lineup that relies on early rotations and ganks, then warding further into the enemy lanes would be useful. If your lineup is more defensive and plays more for the mid or late game, then warding closer to your own base would help you protect yourselves from gank attempts and focus on farming and getting levels.
Aggressive wards are placed in the opposing team's jungle and lanes, as well as in their neutral creep camps to help block the spawns. Blocking the safe lanes' respective pull camps is very important to keeping lane control for your team's offlane, as it completely prevents the opposing safe lane support from pulling that lane's creep wave closer to their tower and denying you experience and gold
Aggressive wards provide offensive lanes opportunities to score early kills in lane, which is crucial to gaining early levels and farm. In the mid game, even deeper aggressive wards allow your team to further disrupt your opponents' farm and net your team more kills. In the case of a team being behind, offensive wards can be used to catch up by catching lone heroes out of position. In the late game, aggressive wards allow you to know whether or not it's safe to push a lane, as your team will likely see the enemy coming to defend towers with such wards.
Defensive wards are placed at the jungle entrances and inside the jungles themselves, in certain areas of the lane, and sometimes near the ancient creep spawn camps. For the safe lane, the rune wards near the jungle entrances are usually enough to see gank attempts coming from the mid lane, but for attempts by the offlane, wards in the jungle area near the tier 1 tower may be required. Defensive wards allow your team to keep up with the opponents' item and level progression by preventing them from stunting your own through ganks and pushes.
Advanced Warding
There are, of course, ward spots for the advanced player, such as wards on the edges of the sidelanes and places to hide Sentry Wards from plain sight, but they will not be covered in this basic guide. You can try experimenting with these advanced spots in a bots game or in a lobby with no one else in it. For now, this guide will provide one example:
General tips for warding and Counterwarding
When going out to place wards, always assume that the enemy team already has wards placed and are in position to contest your attempts to ward, unless you are 100% sure otherwise. It doesn't pay to force yourself to ward only to end up paying for it with your life, especially if your team is already far enough behind. If your opponents pay even the slightest bit of attention, they can get both you and the wards you placed, rendering your effort completely in vain. It is for this reason that asking one or two of your teammates to accompany you while warding is good practice, just in case you encounter enemy heroes along the way. This of course applies as well to counterwarding. In fact, counterwarding alone is even riskier due to the fact that it takes a long time to kill wards, especially if the uphill miss chance goes against you. That being said, not warding at all is far worse than simply trying to ward and counterward.
Try not to ward in the exact same spots all the time, especially for the rune wards. This increases your predictability as a support and gives your opponents a pattern to follow when they go out to kill your wards. Also, don't ward in spots where you know Sentry Wards are placed, unless you have Sentry Wards of your own.
Try your best to not let your opponents see you warding. This can be done by warding from fogged areas, and by warding areas that your opponents don't already have their own wards in. The less you reveal to your enemies, the better chances for your own wards to last the full duration without being countered.
While it is impossible to place wards directly inside the Roshan pit, warding the area around it is vital to controlling his lair. This is especially true in the mid game when most Roshan attempts happen, or when certain heroes that can solo Roshan such as Lycan and Ursa are on the other team.
Using a Gem of True Sight is an expensive and somewhat risky method of counterwarding, but it pays off quickly. Having a Gem around allows you to sweep the map of wards and completely blind your opponents. The only way your opponents can prevent this is by killing the Gem holder and capturing the dropped Gem for themselves.
Wards win games
It's easy to see why wards are such valuable items in Dota 2. As a support player, it is up to you to ensure that your team has as much vision as is possible and reasonable at any given situation, and to ensure that the opponents get as little of it in turn. If your supports aren't warding and you're playing a core hero, sometimes you will have to sacrifice a little bit of gold in order to secure your team some much needed intel, or suffer the dire consequences. It's a simple concept that requires good judgment to make the most out of, but even the most basic of warding can help boost your team to victory.
Runes are magic items that can be collected by any hero, and when used give that hero a temporary power. On the Dota 2 map, two runes will spawn every even minute (0:00, 2:00, 4:00...) unless no one picks it up, in that case a new rune will not spawn unless the one that is there is collected. The two spawn locations are located in the river about half way between the middle and top/ bottom lanes (pictured on map).
There are two ways to use runes. They can be picked up immediately, or placed in a bottle for future use. Once a hero has captured a rune, they have up to two minutes to use that rune before it automatically activates. A bottled rune cannot be transferred to another character. Once that rune has been used, the bottle will be fully charged to 3/3.
There are five different types of runes that can spawn, each of which offers a different advantage to the hero that uses it. The same type of rune will not spawn two times in a row.
Types of Runes
Haste - The haste rune gives your hero a movements speed buff of 100% for 30 seconds. This is a great rune to have for ganking, or possibly if you need to escape in a hurry.
Uses: Good for escaping certain death, or quickly moving to another lane to gank.
Illusion - Using the illusion rune will create two "copies" of your hero on either side of you for 75 seconds. These copies can attack, but only do 35% of your damage. They also take more damage than you as well, melee copies taking 200% more, and ranged 300%.
Uses: You can use the illusions to scout for you, increase your damage output, and as a defense by confusing the enemy team.
Invisibility - Probably the best rune for ganking an enemy player, the invisibility rune renders the hero invisible for 45 seconds.There are some exceptions however as any building/ unit with trues sight can spot the invisible player. These include things like towers and sentry wards. Also, any action like attacking or using abilities and items will break the invisibility spell permanently.
Uses: A gankers best friend, use it to sneak up on unsuspecting enemy heroes. Other uses could be as a surefire escape, or to scout the map more safely.
Regeneration - This buff gives heroes greatly increase health and mana regeneration for 30 seconds. The increase is 100 health/second and 67 mana/second. Once the hero has reached full health, the spell fades. Being attacked will also cancel the regenerative effect, so best save it for when you're in the clear.
Uses: Try saving it for use during/ after a team fight. Once you get low, disengage from the fight, fill your health/ mana back up and dive right in again.
Double Damage - This rune will increase the base damage of your hero and any illusions you control by 100% for 45 seconds. One thing to note is that only attack damage is affected by the double damage rune, not spell damage. As well, any items that cause raw damage, like the divine rapier, are not affected by the buff.
The game of Dota 2 seems fairly simple from the surface but when you launch your first game, it quickly becomes clear that it's a much more complicated beast. This steep learning curve can often turn off new players and cause them to abandon the game altogether. In this guide we hope to prevent new player frustration by laying out some of the most common Noob mistakes. By learning them early and knowing how to avoid them, you can make your first Dota 2 days pleasant ones that hopefully continue as you progress.
Taking Damage From Creeps - Sometimes it's unavoidable but for the most part you should not be taking any damage from creeps during the laning phase. Taking damage not only makes you vulnerable to enemy hero attacks, it wastes your valuable resources in the form of health potions. Use your friendly creeps or the tower as a buffer between yourself and the enemy while you pick off the last hits.
Controlling the Courier by Accident - We've all done this by accident, clicking on the map while our hero stands motionless and we wonder what could be going on. Meanwhile the courier is on an epic journey through the middle of nowhere while your teammates wonder where their items are. Accidentally controlling the courier manually is as easy as pressing the wrong hotkey. If you find yourself doing this often, open up your keybinds and switch it to something out of reach of your usual keys.
Not Using a Proper Item Build - Even if you are using the same hero game in game out, you may not want to use the same item build depending on the team you are playing against and/ or the position you are playing. Make use of the extremely convenient built in build finder in the top left corner to find a build for every occasion. Having the right build for the job will make your life, and that of your teams, a lot easier.
Pushing Lanes too Early - If you're new to the game it's easy to see why one would think that pushing a lane = success, you want to kill the towers right? Not always the case, especially for the early stages of the game. Pushing a lane should only be done if you have a significant advantage over your lane opponent, or there are no enemies nearby. Pushing early only serves to leave you exposed to ganks, giving the enemy gold they can use to dominate your lane later.
Not Buying Wards - Knowing where the enemy is and where they are going is a huge advantage in any game. No matter what position you are playing investing in a ward is never a waste of gold and could possibly save your life if you use them to illuminate any paths the enemy could use to get a jump on you. Warding objectives like runes and Roshan are great ways to make sure they stay under your teams control.
Not Buying TP Scrolls - TP scrolls are a great purchase for a couple of reasons. One, they are a fast way to get back to base and heal/ regen your mana. Two, They can allow you to sneakily move to another lane quickly to gank an enemy. Three, if you are on the run from the other team and manage to lose them in the jungle you can use a TP scroll to return safely to your base.
Not Leaving the Lane - Knowing when to leave your lane to pursue a gank, or take part in a teamfight is something that you will learn with experience but there are still some things to look out for. IF you notice one of your lanes is pushed back to their tower and the enemy heroes are pushed up, it may be a good time to go in for the gank. If you see your team grouping up for an objective, join them. Eventually you will know the different phases of the game (laning, mid, late etc) and can more effectively adjust your positions taking into account other factors as well.
Only Playing One Hero - If you only take the time to play one hero you will not only be out of luck if that hero gets chosen by someone else, you will also not know what to expect from other heroes when you play against them. Load up some bot matches and take a variety of heroes out for a test drive. The more you know about the heroes, the more prepared you will be to play with and against them.
Skipping Bot Matches - Bot matches are a great way to sharpen your skills and get familiar with heroes. Often many new players will want to dive into the action immediately and will skip the easy bots in favor of the remorseless humans that await them in the live game. Same yourself some tears and fire up a bunch of bot matches before you take on your fellow humans. You can even adjust the difficulty of the bots as you get better and learn more about the game.
No Communication - Dota 2 is a team game, meaning to win you will often need to combine the efforts of all your teams members. Nothing goes better with good teamwork than communication. Let your team know what's going on and where you plan on going via the in game chat or even just via pings. The more your team communicates, the more coordinated your efforts will be, which means an even higher chance your team will come out on top.
Whether you're a new player to Dota 2 or a seasoned veteran you've probably ran across a hero or two that you found difficult or tedious to control. Sometimes this is just a case of personal preference, but others it's just because a hero is plain hard to play. Whether it be because they're attacks are all hard to land skill shots, or they require precise timing and coordination to operate these heroes all have one thing in common, they take a skilled hand to control.
Invoker
A popular hero with a bad reputation as a difficult one to play, the Invoker has a total of 14 skills you have to remember. Of course not only do you have to remember the skills themselves, you have to remember the combinations and order to use in certain situations. When compared with a hero that has four skills that can be mixed and matched, you can see why many have abandoned the Invoker altogether.
Visage
Instead of having a whole whack of abilities to control like the Invoker, Visage gets to play RTS by summoning two familiars to aid him in combat. The hard part comes in when you have to micro manage the two familiars as well as Visage himself. This may not seem that difficult, especially if you've played an RTS before, but add in the frantic chaos that is most team fights and you can see where the problems may arise.
Chen
Another Hero that requires a good deal of micro. Chen specializes in taking control of minions and having them do his bidding. These minions are not limited to the simple lane minions, but instead Chen can make greater use of his power by highjacking the more powerful minions in the jungle.
Here's where another problem comes in, each of these minions really only has one job their good at so you've got to know which one's to control when. For example the wolf is great for doing damage, but if you want to farm creeps you're better off taking a bird. Figure out which creeps to control when and you've figured out Chen.
Meepo
Probably one of the most well known Dota 2 heroes out there, Meepo takes the learning curve to a new level. Like most of the other entries on this list Meepo requires a lot of micro management. Every time you put a point into Meepo's ultimate ability a new clone of Meepo is made which can be controlled exactly the same as the primary Meepo and has all of his abilities, but cannot carry any items.
Sounds great right? Well there's a catch, if even one of the Meepo replicas dies so does main Meepo. If you thought keeping one Hero alive was a challenge, try 3- 5 at one time. Of course with great risk comes great reward, as a skilled Meepo player can carry a game their army of Meepo clones.
Earth Spirit
No clones or familiars this time instead the Earth Spirit's sticky point is his reliance on positioning, specifically the positioning of his "remnants". Stone Remnants can be placed by the Earth Spirit at a target location and can be used in conjunction with any of his abilities to make them much more effective. For example, his Rolling Boulder ability transforms Earth Spirit into a boulder that causes damage and stuns enemies when he collides with them. If you run over a remnant while using this ability both the speed and range of Rolling Boulder are increased along with applying a movements and attack speed debuff to any enemies that are hit.
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