Beginner’s Guide to Team Composition and Roles – DOTA 2

This is a guide written for new players as well as low-rank players (Legend or below) such as myself.

There’s a lot of great guides out there by Jenkins, Elwono and many others to help us new players, and also comprehensive introduction to Dota by Purge which is amazing. This guide is a bit different. While all of those guides focus on how to actually improve your skill and get better at the game, the purpose of this guide is to entertain you and intrigue you with some insights about team composition. If you watch pro games, you may find this interesting, and it may answer certain questions about roles and lanes. I must provide a disclaimer and say that as far as pubs are concerned at our levels, 90% of the discussion below is absolutely irrelevant and will not do anything to improve your gameplay in any way.

So first, let’s try to categorize the 5 heroes playing in one team. There are 3 different ways we can think about categorizing heroes:

Lane – The setup of which hero going in what lane
Role – What are the key job(s) of each heroes throughout the game
Win condition – This decides the farm priority of the 5 heroes

We will use the 5 most played heroes in the last 12 months (other than Pudge) as examples: Lion, Ogre Magi, Invoker, Wind Ranger, Phantom Assassin.

1. Team Composition by Lane

The first is the simplest, and the one most familiar to most of us.

Let’s say you are radiant. The bottom lane is called the safe lane, and the top lane is called the off lane. Usually, the heroes on your team will play in a 2-1-2 laning formation which means 2 heroes top (offlane), 1 hero mid, and 2 heroes bottom (safelane).

Usually we will see an Invoker going mid. The PA is likely to go bot as the Safelane Carry. Windranger can somehow hold top, so she’s the Offlane. Ogre and Lion are supports – between them, Lion is not really that dependent on items early, and can afford to be more selfless. Ogre Magi is also not that much item dependent, but craves the Arcane Boot than Lion craves his first item. So that leaves Ogre Magi as the Soft Support and Lion as the Hard Support. So the team compositions by lanes is:

Safelane Carry – Phantom Assassin
Midlane – Invoker
Offlane – Windranger
Soft Support – Ogre Magi
Hard Support – Lion

We will usually see the Soft Support go to the Offlane and the Hard Support go to the Safelane, though this is not always the case.

2. Team Composition by Roles

Now going by roles, Phantom Assassin is the carry of the team. The term “carry” means that this hero scales very well with gold (items) and levels, and is capable of carrying the team to victory in the endgame. PA is also capable of initiation, but that is not really her job int he team because there are at least 3 others who do it better.

Invoker is the CC (crowd control). Referring to traditional roles, you could think of Invoker as the Disabler, Nuker, Pusher, Initiator, and Counter-Initiator (Disengage specialist). Among these, Invoker’s primary role is Disabler and Initiator (Quas-Wex build), or Nuker and Pusher (Exort build). Invoker can control the crowd through Cold Snap, burn their mana through EMP, slow them down in the Ice Wall, disarm them using Deafening Blast. Invoker also deals massive damage (Nuke) with Chaos Meteor, and Sun Strike. It’s Forged Spirits and Alacrity are often great tools for Pushing lanes and taking objectives (buildings). Tornado is a good disabling spell, but you could think of it as Initiation or Counter-Initiation. Similar to Invoker, most mid heroes have some kind of heavy nuke power or at least some pushing power.

Windranger is our offlaner. It’s a bit of a weird choice to some because the Offlane role is often associated with a “tanky frontliner” i.e. a durable hero that can soak a lot of damage and enable its teammates to dish out damage to enemy. Essentially an Offlaner is any hero that can 2v1 or even 3v1 against the enemy, and deal with the annoying shit of enemy pulling their creeps etc. It’s windrun provides some survivability/mobility, and powershot lets it Nuke down creeps when it’s too dangerous to go near for the last hit. In this team, however, Windranger’s primary role is not a Nuker or a Disabler. Make no mistake, Shackelshot is a GREAT disable and Windranger can nuke heroes down as well. In the context of this team, Windranger is the de facto Initiator (as many Offlaners often are). With a Shadow Blade (or preferably, Blink Dagger), it can start a teamfight in a way most favorable to the team. Also, as the Offlaner, Windranger is able to create a lot of space for its carry (PA). Windranger does this in a variety of ways – it can gank enemy heroes and delete them, it can pressure a tower through its ultimate, it can make enemy heroes waste valuable time chasing it around in its windrun. This is why it’s not so hard to see why Windranger is a very capable and competent Offlaner.

Both Ogre Magi and Lion are capable of being Hard Supports, but traditionally, Lion is the less item dependent between the two. These two heroes have the role of Support and Disable. They are the primary disablers of the team. Once Lion gets its dagger, it arguably the best candidate for Initiator int the team, so that’s another of its role. Depending on the matchup, Ogre may decide to roam around and let Windranger solo the offlane. But Lion will stick to Phantom Assassin for sure, acting as a babysitting support against an aggressive lane, or a zoning support in general.

You can learn about all of the common roles here. But I will provide a brief summary below:

Role	Short Description	Frequency (how often it appears in a game)	Popular example in <4k Pubs
Carry	Heroes that scale very well with items and levels	Almost all games have multiple heroes of this role	Phantom Assassin, Juggernaut, Sniper
Support	Heroes that are able to do well at low levels without items	Typically 2 heroes per team, but sometimes there may be less in greedy or low-level teams	Lion, Crystal Maiden, Ogre Magi
Nuker	Heroes that can do huge amount of burst damage using spells	Quite popular, typically most teams will have more than 1 nukers	Lion, Invoker, Zeus, Shadow Fiend, Lina
Disabler	Heroes that can control the opposition. Stuns are the most common and “hard” disable, but there are other disables including silence, root, disarm etc.	It is difficult to have a team of 5 heroes without ANY disable, but in low-rank games, sometimes a team may lack any real hard disabler	Lion, Earthshaker, Axe
Durable	Heroes that have a great deal of survivability due to armor, magic resistance, high HP, or any other kind of damage mitigation / health regeneration. These heroes can frontline and soak damage	Usually the offlaner is the Durable hero, but sometimes there is no Durable hero in a team (this is not necessarily a problem, but it requires more skill for a team to play without any “tanky” frontliner)	Wraith King, Bristleback, Axe
Mobile	Heroes with high mobility that are capable of closing gaps or escaping easily due to a spell/ability they have	Not really essential to the team, but the sometimes may have a mobility hero	Weaver, Anti Mage, Queen of Pain, Slark
Pusher	Heroes that have the ability to push lanes well and/or take objectives. There are two kinds: (1) fast creep wave clear and (2) sieging buildings	A team should ideally have at least one good pusher, but in low-level pubs, it is a common scenario that the team lacks any real pusher – because of which it is difficult to take towers after winning a fight	Nature’s Prophet, Invoker, Jakiro are great overall pushers. Heroes like Tinker are great at shoving the lane forward and clearing creep waves but not so great at sieging buildings. Shadow Shaman and Pugna are potent at taking buildings, but not the best at clearing creep waves
Initiator	The hero on the team that can open the combat in a way that is favorable for the team. A good initiation means it’s never a fair right – its advantageous to the team that has the better initiation	Sometimes good initiators are missing in low-level games. In some cases this is due to lack of initiator heroes selected, but in many cases, it’s also because a hero that can become a very potent initiator is not played that way (for example, Lion)	Lion, Axe, Legion Commander, Earthshaker (all of them are quite blink dependent, but can also initiate without blink in certain situations)
Ganker	This is a combination of Nuker and Mobile heroes that have some kind of a high duration or hard Disable. These are heroes that have a lot of burst damage and also the potential to close down gaps in order to “hunt” lonely enemy heroes	Not many gankers are played at low-levels, and even when they are, ganking is not too common a practice as players at our level prefer to clump down together and love teamfights	Templar Assassin, Riki, Storm Spirit, Bloodseeker, Ember Spirit, Legion Commander
Counter-Initiator	These heroes are great at reacting to enemy heroes and are great at turning the tides of battle.	Typically not very favored in low-level pubs because counter-initiators are sometimes seen as boring, and not very flashy or aggressive	ALL initiators are somewhat good counter-initiators (like Tidehunter and Enigma), but I will only name heroes below that are NOT good initiators: Silencer, Omniknight, Undying, Dazzle, Winter Wyvern
Roamer	Not to be confused with gankers. Gankers are typically core/carry heroes that roam around the map in midgame looking for certain KILL. Roamers are supports that start moving around the map very early in order to establish map control and annoy key carries	Almost non-existent in low-level games. And when picked, a Roamer is usually flamed by the team because sometimes it’s difficult to appreciate and understand how good a job a Roamer is doing (for example, warding all of Alchemist’s neutral camps)	Bounty Hunter, Earth Shaker, Lion
Jungler	I will quote dotapedia here: ” Junglers are heroes that can efficiently jungle neutrals at the start of the game, rather than lane”. Almost no heroes can jungle that efficiently, and in low-level games, having a jungler usually results in auto-loss due to enemies dominating all lanes and winning the game quite early	Fortunately, not as popular as it once used to be. If you are below Ancient, please don’t level 1 jungle. Win lanes, win games. Thanks.	Nature’s Prophet, Axe, Crystal Maiden, Ursa (I did not mention Lone Druid, Chen and Enchantress because these heroes are never picked at low-level games except by smurfs)

3. Team Composition by Win Condition

Once it hits its critical mass of level and items, Phantom Assassin can single-handedly take out the enemy heroes and win its team the game. This is why it can be called the Primary Win Condition.

In the event that PA does not get the job done, Invoker can pull off some amazing combos to kill heroes, and even take objectives very fast. This is why it’s the Secondary Win Condition. The hero scales quite well with levels and items.

Windranger scales well with levels and items too, but in this game, PA and Invoker scale better. So Windranger’s job is to create space so that PA and Invoker can farm really fast. To do this, Windranger can occupy the time and attention of multiple enemy heroes simultaneously, push lanes, hit towers, force rotations. Also, during “peacetime” in midgame, it is the job of Windranger to farm the unsafe areas of the map and overextended lanes, so that the two WinCon heroes can farm the 2 jungles efficiently.

Ogre Magi’s job in this game as the Core Enabler is to make rotations, make plays and do things that help its 3 WinCon heroes (known as Core heroes) to farm efficiently. Efficient farm = farm fast + farm safe. In this process, Ogre Magi might pick up some last hits and gold here and there.

The Position 5 Hero, Lion, is the no-farm hero of the team. What Ogre does for the 3 Core heroes, Lion does for all of its teammates. An interesting difference between the two would be – if there is a Mid Tower that needs defending (mid tower should always be prioritized at it provides enemy access to jungle), and the team is hesitant to go there because enemy heroes are nearby, then it is Lion’s job to go defend that mid tower. This is one scenario, and there are many other scenario where this hero makes risky plays, sacrifices, long walks, and buys time and creates space for the rest of the team. In this process it does gather gold over time. When it is near completing a very game-changing item (such as sitting on 1900 gold, about to buy Blink Dagger), sometimes the other heroes should let Lion get some farm to quickly get Blink online.

In some team compositions, due to the nature of the two supports selected (for example, an Undying and a Crystal Maiden), it is clear that Crystal Maiden will be the No-farm support. But in many cases, if two “eligible hard supports” are selected such as Lion and Crystal Maiden, then both can be thought of as position 4.5 from the beginning of the game – and as the game evolves, more farm is allocated to the hero that is likely to have great impact of the game (this depends entirely on what are the other heroes in the team and in the enemy team). Many core heroes can be played as a Position 4 support (Core Enabler) such as Weaver, Zeus etc. But only a handful of heroes can be played effectively as a Position 5 Support. A good litmus test to know whether a particular hero would be an amazing position 5 hero is to ask this question “Will this hero be able to contribute greatly to the team even if it has only brown boots at 12 minutes?” If the answer is either “no” or “maybe”, then this is NOT a position 5 hero. Sure, in most cases even the Position 5 hero will have some small items at 15 minutes like arcane boots, Tranquil Boots, Bracer etc. but a good Position 5 hero should be prepared for the scenario where that does not happen so that it can remain effective even without farm and not fall off the game or be a burden for its team.

Putting it all together

So below is the summary of the things I have discussed thus far.

Position	Hero	Lane	Role	Farm Priority
Pos 1	Phantom Assassin	Safelane Carry	Carry	Primary Win Condition
Pos 2	Invoker	Mid hero	Nuker, Pusher, Counter-initiator, Disabler	Secondary Win Condition
Pos 3	Windranger	Offlane	Initiator, Disabler, Nuker, Pusher, Mobile	Space Creator
Pos 4	Ogre Magi	Support	Disabler, Support, Roamer, Counter-initiator	Core Enabler
Pos 5	Lion	Hard Support	Initiator, Disabler, Support	No Farm

It’s good to think about the TEAM in terms of Role (does my team have enough push, enough nukes, enough lategame potential, enough early game survivability etc.). But when deciding where to lane which hero, the approach of “most carry-type hero goes safelane, typical mid goes mid, tank goes offlane” is a safe, tried and tested approach, but sometimes it can be sub-optimal. It always depends on the enemy lineup where your heroes lane. For example, let’s say your team has 3 cores: a Juggernaut, an Invoker and a Bristleback. And your enemy team has 4 standard heroes, and then a surprise last pick Brood. You know it’s likely that Brood is going mid. And you know Brood is going to destroy Invoker (or anyone else that gets sent mid). And you know that based on the other 4 heroes of the enemy, Invoker may actually be a very valuable asset in this game. So, what you do is send your Invoker in the offlane. And Bristleback lanes middle against Brood. In this example, did Invoker get downgraded to Space Creator and Bristleback upgrade to Secondary WinCon? Nope. Bristleback is still the space creator and Invoker is the Secondary WinCon – with just swapped lanes. Farm Priority is not always linked to lanes, you see. Sometimes the safelane carry goes offlane and offlaner comes to safelane because of an unfavorable matchup (imagine your Juggernaut going against an Axe and Sand King lane – no thanks).

Dota is a beautiful game and team composition is one of the most fascinating things about it. We often don’t think about it as much for a few reasons. The biggest reason is that it’s not that relevant to whether we win or lose at lower ranks, since even the best draft of counterpicks will not win the game if you are crushed at the game of last hitting and denying. Another reason is that there is a lot of conventional wisdom about Team Composition that we all “know” and adhere to which kind of keeps our teams in check (5 heroes: 1 typical mid, agi carry in safelane, tanky strength hero in offlane, two supports, one of them can be greedy). But sometimes, the difference between winning and losing can be your 4th and 5th pick. You look at all the heroes of your team and enemy team selected so far and think “what does my team need now?” The answer will not be “Offlaner.” The answer will not be “Stuns”. The answer will not be Position 3 (Space creator). The answer will be “a hero that can offlane against those two xyz heroes that enemy is likely to put on safelane and disrupt their farm a bit while not dying too much, and this hero should have some decent disables since the rest of my team lacks any, and also the hero must not be too greedy as it needs to be a Space creator (Position 3)”. With this kind of thinking, you can great improve your picking. Also, after all 10 heroes are picked, team composition STILL can influence decision making a lot. Where are you laning your heroes? Do you want your safelane carry to dodge a dangerous lane? Do you want to help your carry trilane? Do you want to have a support as a roamer to address their annoying Mid that you don’t have any real counter for other than lane harass and warding his camps?

These are very interesting and amusing thoughts, and the more games you watch (both pro games and random pub games of your level), the better you will understand these things and the more fun you will have while thinking about stuff like this. But in your game, your actual game, during playing – you don’t have the luxury to think about all of these unless you are an afk Pos 5 support. Because youa are ranked lower than Legend and you should just focus on last hitting, denying, creep aggro, proper itemization according to timings and enemy heroes, taking objectives, and map control. Work on the basics first – then you can maybe think about Team Composition in your free time. But the more you think about Team Composition, watch videos of commentary during draft, or draft analysis, the better you will be about understanding the game at a macro level.

Ultimate Huskar Guide – DotA 7.24

This guide will tell you all you want to know on how to be reported after stomping all your games. Huskar is one of the best solo queue heroes in Dota and I’m going to show the ways of the Huskar.

Lane: Mid – Huskar safelane is OK too, but never take him offlane.

Counters

Counters for each position, from most annoying to lesser counters.

Ursa, Troll Warlord, Juggernaut, Weaver.
Invoker, Viper, Windranger, Timbersaw, Lina, Necrophos, Razor, Shadow Fiend.
Timbersaw, Axe, Doom, Legion Commander, Night Stalker.
Ancient Apparition, Witch Doctor, Skywrath Mage, Windranger, Zeus, Shadow Shaman, Lina, Bane.
Same as 4.

Level One Skills

Inner Fire should be taken against heroes that can mess up your cs, or you can’t harass level one. Take this against Tinker, Pugna, Lina, Windranger, Sniper, Arc Warden, Zeus, Viper, and Death Prophet.
Burning Spears should be taken level one against melee heroes and ranged heroes you can harass. You shouldn’t take this level one if you missed your creep block, since you can’t trade favorably with most heroes level one. Take this against Pudge, Timbersaw, Bloodseeker, Brood, Shadow Fiend, Naga, Tiny, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Void Spirit, Templar Assassin, Riki, Alchemist, and sometimes Outworld Devourer.
Berserker’s Blood should not usually be taken at level one. The only time you should take this skill first is when you miss your creep block badly or will be harassed very hard. Skywrath Mage is a good example of when to take this skill.

Laning Stage

Go 1-2-2 at level five. This skill build allows you to jungle effectively and survive almost any lane.
Use creep aggro and Inner Fire to secure the ranged creep.
I would recommend rushing armlet after your two bracers. Boots should be bought before armlet in matchups where you need the speed, like Razor.
If you are having a hard time in the lane, tell one of your supports to go take it so you can jungle. Huskar is one of the fastest junglers in Dota so losing lane isn’t a big deal.

Item Build

Start with two gauntlets of strength, a circlet, an iron branch, and a set of tangoes. Build into two bracers.
Rush Armlet next if you don’t need a fast boots, which you usually don’t. Buy Power Treads next, then Heaven’s Halberd. Morbid Mask if you need survivability. After that, buy BKB and Satanic. Assault Cuirass or Aghs depending on the enemy team for your 6th item.
Two Bracers -> Armlet -> Power Treads -> Heaven’s Halberd -> BKB -> Satanic -> AC or Aghs.

Best Neutral Items for Huskar

Ironwood Tree, Poor Man’s Shield, Faded Broach.
Grove Bow, Vampire Fangs, Vambrace.
Paladin Sword, Titan Sliver, Craggy Coat.
Flicker, Minotaur Horn, Havoc Hammer.
All of them except Seer Stone.

Talents

Level 10 always take 15 damage.
Level 15 almost always take 10 Burning Spears Damage
Level 20 take 20 Strength, unless they have a backliner like Sniper or Zeus.
Level 25 always take Pure Burning Spears. They also pierce spell immunity now.

Rosh Times

Many people take Rosh right after Armlet (8-9 minutes). I don’t recommend this. I would instead farm until you have Heaven’s Halberd, then take rosh. With the Huskar changes in 7.23, Heaven’s Halberd is your new powerspike. An average Armlet Treads Halberd timing would be around 15-16 minutes. Take some fights after that. In a good game, you will get BKB at around 20 minutes. Sometimes you can push highground right then, but other times you have to wait until Satanic and next Rosh.

How to Play Huskar

When playing Huskar, start by screaming into the mic “I AM THE CARRY NOW!”. After that, be the carry. Actually though, when you are playing Huskar, you are like a black hole sucking in all the farm on that map for the first 15-20 minutes. You should NOT be constantly fighting on Huskar. The way you fight is you hit hard timings and push a tower. They will come.
You should NEVER have less than 60 last hits at 10 minutes on Huskar. The hero is a farming machine, so if you can’t farm lane, go jungle.
PLEASE don’t be ganking unless you get a haste rune. You are a slow slow hero and it’s a total waste of time to walk across the map just for a gank. Instead, farm your way through the jungle towards the lane you want to gank.

Matchups

This is going to be very long.

Sniper. Use your Q to CS. He will out harass you. Can kill at 6 easily. You lose late game.
Tinker. Use your Q to get CS. You can’t really harass him. Can’t kill before 6 without a support rotation or if he misplays. After 6 just Life Break him if he lasers you. Easy kill. You lose late game.
Lina. Use your Q to get CS. You can’t harass her. One of the few matchups you should go 1-1-3 at level 5. To kill her you need to dodge her stun with your ult and jump her. Wouldn’t recommend trying until you have armlet. Sometimes leave the lane after she hits 6. Drag out the game if you are losing. You win late game.
Outworld Devourer. Use your Q to get CS, unless you have a good block, then take Burning Spears. Very difficult to kill OD. Need a support rotation. Leave the lane after he hits 6. You win late game.
Alchemist. Harass with Burning Spears. He can’t do anything against you. You win late game.
Viper. Use your Q to get CS. Another possible 1-1-3 matchup. Easy kill at 6. Life Break him after he plops down Nethertoxin. You will kill him easily. If he goes on you use Life Break to jump out of Nethertoxin. You lose late game.
Razor. Use your Q to get CS. Rush boots in this matchup. Inner Fire doesn’t stop him from attacking you in Static Link. Leave lane if it is going badly. You win late game.
Pugna. Use your Q to get CS. Easy lane for you. Can kill at 6 if he messes up. Life Break dispels Decrepify and breaks Life Drain with the spell immunity. You win late game.
All the Spirits. Harass with Burning Spears. Hard to kill after 6. Easy lane for you. You win late game.
Brood. Harass with Burning Spears. If you let her build her army you are screwed. So you have to force her out level one or lose the lane. You win late game.
Meepo. Harass with Burning Spears. Take a point in Inner Fire before 3. It pushes him far enough away to be out of poof range. You lose late game.
Templar Assassin. Harass with Burning Spears. You can kill at 6 or before if she misplays. Very easy lane. You win late game.
Shadow Fiend. Harass with Burning Spears before he can build up Souls. This matchup gets very difficult if he gets souls. You can dodge razes and his ult with Life Break. Difficult to kill at 6. You win late game.
Monkey King. Harass with Burning Spears. Rush boots in this matchup. Use Inner Fire when he gets to 3 Jingu stacks. If he stuns, turn on him. If not run for your life. You win late game as long as you stay out of his ult.
Kunkka. Harass with Burning Spears. You can use Inner Fire to prevent him from using Tidebringer. Easy matchup. You can dodge X, Torrent, and Boat with Life Break. You win late game.
Clinkz. Take Inner Fire if you have a bad block, Burning Spears if you have a good block. Pretty easy matchup. You can kill at 6 if you reach it before him. You win late game.
Death Prophet. Use your Q to get CS. Mildly difficult lane. You can kill at 6. You win late game.
Puck. Take Inner Fire if bad block, Burning Spears if good block. Puck doesn’t have enough damage to kill you but it is very hard to kill Puck. Life Break goes through Dream Coil. You win late game.
Timbersaw. Harass with Burning Spears. Rush boots. Use Inner Fire to push him away if he gets close. Whirling Death wrecks you, so don’t let him do it. You lose late game.
Bloodseeker. Harass with Burning Spears. Can’t jungle against him, so you have to stay in lane and ruin him. Easy kill at 6. You win late game.
Lone Druid. Take Burning Spears or Inner Fire. You can’t really kill the bear so just focus on CS. You lose late game.
Invoker. Quas Exort is one of your most difficult matchups. Take Inner Fire to not get cold snapped and get CS. Easy kill at 6. Use Life Break to dodge Meteor, dispel cold snap and deafening blast. Quas Wex is an easy lane for you. Not enough damage to kill you. You win late game.
Necrophos. Harass with Burning Spears. Very easy until level 6. Then just leave the lane and jungle. Later on, don’t show in fights till he uses his ult. You lose late game.
Skywrath Mage. Take Berserker’s Blood level 1. 1-1-3 at level 5. Hard to kill him. Easy to CS though. You win late game.
QoP. Kinda difficult. Take Berserker’s Blood first. Can only kill her if she misplays. You win late game.
Windranger. Use your Q to secure CS. Hard to harass her. 1-2-2 at level 5. You can kill her at 6 if she didn’t max Windrun. Use Inner Fire to disarm her if she goes on you. Heaven’s Halberd helps a lot. You lose late game.

All right I think that’s everyone. If I forget one or you want to know more ask me in the comments.

Power Spikes

Huskar’s power spikes are kind of funky. He spikes at 9 minutes (Armlet), 15 minutes (Halberd), 20-22 minutes (BKB), and 26-28 minutes (Satanic). His hardest spike is Halberd. Huskar actually scales very well. So if you are losing, drag out the game and chances are you will win. Burning Spears pierces spell immunity and is pure damage at level 25, and Life Break also pierces spell immunity. When BKBs are short durations, Huskar destroys. The other day I 1v4ed an OD with rapier, 6 slotted Faceless Void, Lion, and Undying, and killed them all.

Random Tips

Inner Fire ignores terrain. So you can cliff people.
You are spell immune during Life Break. So it breaks undispellable stuff like Pugna’s Life Drain.
You can also dodge abilities, like Magic Missile (venge) and Wraithfire Blast (wraith king).
Use Inner Fire to push SF away from you when he is ulting, or to push MK out of Wukong’s command.
Wait until Necro/AA uses their ults before you show in a fight.
Don’t stand in nethertoxin.
USE YOUR HALBERD. So many people forget to use this item.
You can dispel Spirit Vessel, but not Heaven’s Halberd, with Life Break.

Best Teammates

In order by positions, after that no particular order.

Ursa, Bloodseeker, Drow, Troll, Juggernaut, Monkey King, Slark, and Phantom Lancer.
This is You.
Tidehunter, Ogre Magi, Centaur (retaliate aura on Huskar lol), Axe, Dark Seer, Underlord, Tusk, Omniknight, Phoenix, and Slardar.
Tiny, Earthshaker, Nyx, Dazzle, Oracle, Shadow Shaman, Phoenix, Treant, OmniknightOgre Magi, Shadow Demon, Lion, Chen, and Io.
Same as 4, but without Tiny, Earthshaker, and Nyx.

The End

Yeah I think that is pretty much it, if you have any more questions leave a comment.

How has DotA changed since OG’s dominant win in TI9?

Usually, when TI is won so dominantly, teams usually follow in some way to mimic that winner’s play-style. The most prominent example I could think of was when Wings won the TI, where people started to make more interesting line ups and changed how they played the game. With OG, and I don’t know if I am just not seeing it, I don’t really see much difference in teams playing.

It’s really hard to play OG’s playstyle especially if one belongs to a much lower bracket. What gives them (OG) the freedom to play that way is their skill and game knowledge. After the recent TI9, there was an uptick of Io usage. However, without the OG level skill and game knowledge, Io carry line-ups can only take you so far even with a coordinated team.

Their influence has to do more with team dynamics. A lot of pro teams can play “run at you” type of line-ups but to have the same confidence as them is very hard to replicate (like Liquid tried to do game 3 iirc). They trust each other so much that they always pull through even with non-traditional lineups.

Personally though, OG’s play-style has taught me that no matter what line-up you are playing, the most important thing is that you still have fun with the game no matter what the outcome. Winning is just a bonus.

OG’s influence perhaps has been more on team dynamics than play style. It’s no secret why Secret and other teams have been taking time off at the beginning of each season since TI8. Perhaps we’ll start seeing more team psychologists as well. OG sports psychologist said she didn’t have much work to do with the team since they were already on a good stat of mind already.

For everyone saying OG changed the team meta as opposed to the game meta, you’re right, but OG has also massively changed the game meta too. OG relies on fighting early and often. It’s not uncommon for OG to leave lanes and instantly start going for 4 man maneuvers around the map to make space for Ana, but it’s also not uncommon for Ana to join in these early fights. The days of ratting and farming in DotA are over. When was the last time you saw an am pick who didn’t participate in a fight until minute 25? It doesn’t happen anymore. Teams know that if you aren’t ready for OG to come at you at 15 minutes, you’re going to get rolled over and picked off constantly by their mobile and aggressive play style.

What OG has been doing to win the TIs they have been doing for years, it’s not some breakthrough thing.

Notail’s obssesion for years has been about :

Buffs
Sustain

You will see this in all their Major wins/TI wins.

Lots of Chen, lots of Wisp, Ench, BM, auras, buffs and heals. They literally won a major by picking 2 of WW/Undying/Wisp/Dazzle almost every game.

They are not a “sophisticated” team that revolutionizes the game.

What OG i think did do is prove that resource prioritization is a thing, what do i mean by that ? 5k gold by min 10 might be better on your offlaner than your carry, so you prioritize the offlaner’s lane.

Another aspect is their superior understanding of Roshan, knowing when to contest/when not to. I think Secret copied their approach to it a lot last season.

Start with picking a generic support/buff hero such as Vengeful Spirit, Dazzle, Winter Wyvern. Over a set of games swap your item build from a ‘standard’ boots-force-glimmer to basilius-headdress-buckler in different combinations and build orders. This will give you the basic appreciation of aura/buff impact as you will typically get them very early before big flashy plays matter.

Once you get the hang of it you will find that you more naturally notice the correct auras and team items for a given line-up.

Are RNG Neutral Items Bad for DOTA?

Regardless of what anyone thinks of neutral items, what I have been missing in the discussion about them is that the discussion never goes beyond “RNG bad”. For instance rarely does anybody even state the question how much RNG are neutral items actually?

That is imo a much more interesting topic. What type of RNG is acceptable and what type of RNG isn’t? How can the effects of RNG be mitigated through gameplay or by designing the neutral item drop system? But most of those question don’t even pop up because the discussion does not progress that far. So I’ll do it here:)

In order to answer these more interesting questions I will go through:

The RNG Factor, RNG basics
Playing around RNG
The RNG factors of neutral items
How the neutral item system is designed with regards to these RNG factors/how it has been changed to accomodate for them
Conclusion: on the RNG element, what do neutral items add to the game?, were neutral items worth being implemented?

1. The RNG Factor, RNG basics

Essentially the RNG Factor is the proc chance with regards to the strength of the proc, in particular over a limited amount of throws with the dice.

Every attack, or in Multicasts’ case spellcast, is a throw with the dice with a chance to trigger the respective event, with enough throws the results will average out, naturally. If we are only talking 3 attacks though the probability to have reached the average are low. A low number of throws with the dice increases the variance/RNG factor.

An ability with a low proc rate and a high power level, like PA’s Coup de Grace, has a much higher RNG factor than Juggernaut’s crit which has a much higher proc rate and a much lower power level on top of that.

Generally speaking the abilities with a high RNG factor are much more likely to be perceived as bullshit due to the much higher variance in outcomes, especially if the number of dice-throws is limited. If a Juggernaut walks up to you and crits you 2 times in 3 attacks then the difference in outcome is not compareable to PA throwing a dagger, it critting, and then getting another crit on either her first or second attack from phantom strike, which also happens to proc almost simultaneously with the dagger crit proc.

PA’s item choices and mobility causes the feeling of RNG to be amplified further since the time Juggernaut spends walking up to you with his manta and butterfly, PA spends daggering and phantom striking you already with a deso and a basher, further fueling her crit.

As a result even assuming if both abilities had the same average damage amplification, which clearly they do not, PA’s crit would be considered much more lame because of its significantly higher variance which is supported by her gameplay, consequently the RNG factor on Coup de Grace is increasing the power of this ability which probably restricts the devs in how powerful PA and her crit can be before it starts causing problems on a pub game level, which is probably why it is this ability that is frequently tinkered around with, even on smaller scales, whenever PA is being changed, in particular when too strong.

An example of how Icefrog has handled things like that in the past is Ogre’s multicast from 6.82, in it Iceforg increased the proc rate of multicast significantly for a 2x proc, resulting in more multicasting, but at the same time the base strength of fire blast was reduced meaningfully, as a result the RNG Factor and variance went down. Multicast moved a bit away from being a Coup de Grace type ability towards being a bit more of a juggernaut crit ability, more of an average amplification rather than a super high proc event, without sacrificing the multicast-feel, possibly even adding to it. Good change imo.

Note: That ogre approach would not work for Coup de Grace, since PA is actually designed around having that murder crit/this mega amplification upon proc with short bursts of attacks and retreating. She would feel wrong if what was done to Ogre were done to her. If Icefrog ever were to tackle the RNG factor on this ability I could imagine it being done by adding counter, procs on every Xth attack, since PA is very well suited/designed to do that (and it fits thematically for a Coup de Grace), while Juggernaut is not designed to have a crit working like that.

2. Playing around RNG

The example Sumail brought up which I will expand upon was the rune spawn RNG of the game. Several people however brought up that these too are an example of RNG they dislike, even if to a lesser degree.

I will argue that regardless of the opinions on runes, they are a type of RNG that is meaningfully interacted with for a very simple reason: you can control it to a large degree. The term rune-control developed specifically for that reason.

You can can neither know where on the 2 spots the rune will spawn, nor can you know which rune will spawn, nor does the game consider that a regen rune for a mid core Skywrath is more likely going to be far more powerful than it is for the enemy meepo mid laner (random example, feel free to dislike it^), in other words the effect of a rune can vary drastically depending on heroes and game situation.

However what you CAN control is vision over those areas, vision over the enemy midlaner, you can control lane equilibrium, you can control your own actions with regards to the enemy hero and potentially cut him off and you can know when the rune will spawn and plan around that accordingly. You can have the map awareness to keep track of the enemy supports and whether or not they are missing. And you can communicate with your own team and you can decide on what priority you give the rune depending on whether or not someone has a bottle or not or what your sustain situation is like.

Assuming you properly control the runes you can even wait and see which rune spawns and then base your next actions according to the rune spawn. Is it a haste rune to gank a sidelane or invade the jungle? Is it a DD/Illusion to dominate mid? Is it a regen which makes you quickly spam your abilities and potentially harass the enemy hero at his own tower?

Long story short: The RNG factor of rune spawns can be be greatly mitigated/controlled by either team. In fact, it forces you to do so.

Despite that though rune spawns are still an element that is up to discussion and evaluation, I personally preferred bounties as alternatives to the other rune spawn for those draw scenarios in even lanes where one will get the rune and the other won’t purely based on luck due to how even the lane is, which was especially fair once bottles were involved or when those bounties enabled the purchase of a bottle.

However runes currently are not an immediate concern and not game ruining, and clearly it adds meaningful levels of depth to mid-laning based on the factors which I listed that are within your control. Mid-laning would be much emptier, brain-dead and easier without runes, hence nobody ever seriously suggests actually removing runes rather than compensating for the RNG element in their problem solving suggestions.

The take-away here is, RNG that can be interacted with, that can be played around with, can not only be a non critical issue, it can add meaningful depth, which DotA prides itself on.

(felt like I had to generally defend RNG a bit here considering the last couple of weeks on reddit)

3. The RNG elements of neutral items, evaluating the RNG factor

Trying to keep this shorter, the RNG element:

a) whether or not a neutral item drops is somewhat random

b) you can not influence which neutral item drops

c) similar to runes the game does not consider what heroes are being picked, thus neutral item X can be significantly more powerful on hero Y (like Essence Ring was on Io or Clumsy Net was/is? on Skywrath)

d) a neutral item can be disproportionally more powerful in a losing or winning game (like repair kit)

e) a neutral item in the same tier can simply be worse than a other one

f) a neutral item can have almost blink-like reveal consequences

Going through the RNG factor of each:

a) pseudo random and farming alone makes neutral items actually dropping based on RNG a complete non-issue, could argue for T5 if you are turtling in your base this is a factor, since you don’t have access to the jungle, but regardless of whether or not that is a good or bad thing, it is not at all RNG related.

b)c)d) these are clearly RNG elements with a high RNG factor, beyond moving the items around in your team you can not influence this, those are legitimate RNG concerns by design.

e) this is a balance issue not unlike basic hero balance, not a design or RNG issue, we can ignore it

f) this is another design issue

4. How the neutral item system is designed with regards to these RNG factors/how it has been changed to accomodate for them

If we want to answer the question of how much RNG are neutral items actually?, we now have to compare the RNG issues with the design of neutral item drops and the changes so far.

b) you can not influence which neutral items drop

In order to compensate for this the entire neutral item drop system needs to be set up for it to not particularly matter which neutral item drops. Probably the biggest restriction on the design and it will force neutral items to be mostly relatively basic and generic stat sticks. Or it will force nerfs on those outlier/unique neutral item drops.

There have been several changes that have compensated for this RNG element since 7.23.:

The increase from 3 to 4 items reduces the RNG factor in the same way increasing the proc chance of an ability or item would, like it was done to ogre multicast in 6.82, it reduces variance.
The restriction to only being able to carry 1 neutral item further reduces the RNG factor of this element, no longer all item drops are potentially being used, they now compete amongst each other on per hero basis thus reducing the impact of favourable/unfavourable drops, if the increase from 3 to 4 neutral item drops per tier is analogue to an increase in the proc chance of a passive critical strike, then this is analogue to reducing the power of the proc, a doublewhammy identical to the Ogre fireblast and multicast change in 6.82
while this seems a bit like a cheap point, again balance amongst the items and with regards to RNG element c) will reduce the RNG factor because it will no longer matter what item drops (or barely)

c) disproportionally powerful items on hero X

This is a design issue on a per item basis, for instance Vampire fangs spell lifesteal is pretty average on most heroes, but then there is a Bristleback or an OD. Similar to Essence Ring, which was changed to no longer heal because of Io or heal amplification heroes, these features need to be either removed or nerfed. Which of course happened to vampire fangs in 7.24, reducing the spell lifesteal from 8% to 6%. This is interesting in so far that Icefrog likes to do the opposite with heroes, he pronounces their uniqueness strengths very frequently, these neutral items need to work exactly the other way round, not entirely but mostly generic (like League of Legends, lul, and no, I am not fucking saying DotA = LoL now, not at all, I am saying that’s what League by design needs to do with their entire game).

In extreme case scenarios restriction or changes like for essence ring need to occur or have occurred,in worst case scenarios these items need to be removed, like Book of Aghanim was gutted instantly.

As a result, as mentioned, this forces most of the neutral item drops to become rather basic stat sticks. Total elimination of unique features like the vampire fangs spell lifesteal will not be necessary, but several neutral items, like Ballista in 7.24, will have that unique feature nerfed while gaining another side feature. Grove bow for instance gained a universal feature on top of its rather unique core feature for similar reasons I presume.

A minor element of RNG will always remain with regards to item X on hero Y, but we have plenty of evidence by now that not only will this be mitigated quickly, since this is a design and not a balance issue and those need to be hit quickly, the RNG factor of this element has already reduced drastically.

Imo this is a very solveable issue.

d) neutral item being stronger when winning or losing

Those are extremely limited, repair kit is basically the only one, could argue the leveller is an offender here too, but similar to grove bow or ballista again, the leveller has such a solid base secondary stat that it is generic/basic enough except maybe when it happens to drop for Tiny or Spirit Bear, which seems awkward. This could require demolish abilities like spirit bear/Tree Grab/Leveller to not stack with each other for instance.

Similar to c) this seems entirely solveable, actually much less of an issue. I’d argue repair kit is much closer to being removed than it is to being acceptable, but that’s really the only item that is relevant here. And even repair kit is not even compareable to its splitshot iteration from the last patch.

f) a neutral item can have almost blink-like reveal consequences

The poster boy for this right now I’d say is mindbreaker. Book of aghanim is a perfect example of this too. There are barely any of these left, most can be reacted to during combat. Mindbreaker clearly is an issue here atm. These type of items basically should not exist imo. Iron Talon is an invisible but annoying offender to this rule aswell, cause the jungle AM which you beat up on lane might suddenly show up wiht battlefury and manta at minute 22 despite getting his ass kicked hard on lane and you are just like “wtf?”.

Almost all changes since introduction of the neutral item drop system follow the pattern of either removing/nerfing a trademark feature, removing an item that offends against RNG in any way too much, and go for balance beyond that.

It is imo being made VERY clear with those changes that RNG is not meant to be, and not going to be, relevant with regards to neutral item drops.

5. Conclusion:

on the RNG element
what do neutral items add to the game?
were neutral items worth being implemented?

Whatever the RNG element of neutral drops originally was, by now it is a fraction of what it used to be, that much is certain. That however might not mean much though, because even while it got reduced massively maybe the RNG factor is still so high that it is game-deciding/ruining, right?

At this point I’d say though that within the next patches RNG will basically not be a particularly meaningful factor anymore, if it isn’t already. Not any more meaningful than that of regular proc based items and abilities, except for tier 5 maybe. The reasons for me stating this are:

the improving balance among the tiers negating 1 of the RNG elements
the removal of offenders like Book of Aghanim or recently Fusion Rune (like repair kit eventually?), reducing another massive source of RNG
the nerfs of disproportionally powerful features like spell lifesteal on vampire fangs for instance making the extreme outlier items less of a problem, including something like clumsy net on skywrath since 7.24
the reduction of the RNG factor by increasing the drop rate from 3 to 4 on top of the recent 1 item only restriction really damn near negated any other RNG factor beyond those I just listed that have been improved upon

I’d expect tier 5 to take longer than that purely because of the low sample size to get these into a better place. However based on 7.24 it might not take long either.

I’d be curious and interested if someone could actually argue how they still think neutral item drops are deciding games based on RNG. Because even though the drops essentially are random, it really damn near does not matter anymore by design. Even if currently the RNG factor of a specific drop combination is still an issue, there is so much evidence by now that this will most likely be removed/changed sooner than later, that I do not consider RNG an issue in the discussion about neutral items anymore, or at least not for much longer, it’s merely a shortterm issue.

What neutral items add to the game on the other hand, that is a different topic, since something not being a problem does not mean it existing is a good thing for the game either. Especially considering that in order for them to exist, they must necessarily be relatively generic, as I have laid out.

Currently I’d argue that it is questionable if adding them was worth the effort, if it was worth adding them considering the initial damage, polarization and uproar they caused. I think an answer to this question would strongly depend on the results of the discussion on what neutral items actually add to the game, if we were to agree on a variety of upsides down the road, then they might have been worth the trouble, however this is something we will probably be able to reflect upon only further down the road.

And as a final word, at this point I personally think neutral items are a surprisingly small element when compared to what they were on 7.23 release, basic economy, tempo of the game and regular item balance, business as usual imo, are bigger deals than the neutral items at this point. Regardless of whether you love or hate them, the importance of them is just not on a tier high enough anymore to strongly influence my opinion on the game/meta and even if they still are and always will be, their existence is not something I’d judge based on RNG at all anymore.

But that’s just me, feel free to disagree:)

High MMR Support Tip: Do not always instantly deward an enemy sentry.

Learn to check a few points first before dewarding it:

Will it matter if you give away your current position to the enemy team? Often I have seen Supports mindlessly hitting an enemy Sentry when there is a Storm on the other side who will gladly take your face showing on the minimap and zip to you for a free kill. More advanced teams will maybe smell a 5v4 chance elsewhere on the map as you give away your location.
You can actually outmindgame the enemy by palacing an Observer on a Ward hill that only has an enemy sentry on it. If you deward a sentry and place an Observer there the enemy Support will usually take the chance to re-deward your sentry and possibly obs right back given the chance. However if you just leave his lonely Sentry up there it might lul them into a false sense of security. “There is a Sentry on this hill so there cant be a ward there!”.
Should they be onto you that you are placing Observers on already existing Sentries then go to the next level. Still keep the enemy Sentry there and place your own obs JUST outside of its range for another fakeout into false security.

Just make sure that leaving an enemy Sentry up doesn’t immediately sabotage your own Rikis and the like you have on your own team.

The Fundamentals of DOTA

A recent game got me thinking about stuff I could consistently point out that everyone messes up from time to time and none of them involve tread swapping. You all probably know all of this already, but some things are worth repeating.

Unwillingness to trade objectives – Too many times I’ve seen people give up on a guaranteed tier 3/rax/rosh to instead defend against someone taking a tier 2 or even a tier 1.
Fighting for every single objective – Sometimes you have a late game hero that needs time to farm and the enemy team punishes that by grouping early and rotating to different lanes taking different towers. You are most likely expected to lose those towers. Stop porting into them and feeding the enemy team. You will never lose a game off the enemy team taking t1s and t2s but you will certainly lose the game if you die pointlessly defending them, propelling the enemy even further along. Get other heroes farming other lanes and jungle areas. With luck, your enemy team might lose focus of their objective and port out to defend towers they shouldn’t, stopping the deathball (point 1).
Not buying a stick/upgrading to a wand – Even divine players are guilty of this far too often. Best item in the sideshop that gets ignored far too often. Depending on the matchup you can justify certain other items first (quelling blade or boots) but 99% of the time you will want this item fairly quickly in the lane (this does not mean take the courier at the first min to fly your wand recipe out when your midlaner needs their salve).
Raindrops – Same as above. Just buy them when you can. They’ll pay for themselves nearly every match. Upgrades into an urn as well. Sometimes I buy them a second time. Not dying once means it’s worth it.
Pay attention to the numbers – When you’re waiting on bounties to spawn look around at people’s attack damage, armor, hp and movement speed. You’ll start to feel a lot more confident about taking early fights and skirmishes once you’ve got ideas on which heroes have low armor and which don’t. Also, if your hero has some fixed spell damage you can do some quick math (spell damage * .75) to figure out how much right clicking you need to do to get kills.
Adult daycare – Stop responding to people who have no intention of making peace with you or someone else on your team. Maybe they lost their lane, maybe they’re having a bad day or maybe they’re just a troll. It doesn’t matter. If someone doesn’t accept that you didn’t have the mana as to why you didn’t cast that spell that would have totally changed them from being beat down by four players then it’s not worth going in circles with them. You have dota to play and someone is distracting you from doing your best. Mute and move on.
Not valuing the ranged creep – Mid players prep the ranged creep before nuking the wave. I’ll deny it everytime if you don’t. Supports and cores, try to coordinate the denies if you can. If your carry looks like he can’t get to the ranged in time and you have a nuke, just take the creep.
Farming towards a goal – Basically applicable to all roles. Please tell your team that you are farming specifically so you can then go do a thing (push, rosh, fight, gank, w.e).
Backpack your smokes – I’m extremely guilty of this myself but as you rank up in dota things become more and more time sensitive. Sometimes your window to do certain things lasts only a matter of seconds. Just put your damn smokes in your backpack so you don’t have to tell your team to wait for the courier to ferry it out to you. You might lose some vital opportunities because it took 40 mins for you to remember that the item exists.
Coordinate courier usage in the laning phase – It has 9 slots. Use them. One of my pet peeves is a sidelane using a courier to deliver stuff to one hero, then going back to the base and coming back to the same lane to deliver stuff to the other hero.

Always win mid: 8 Tips on how to crush the lane!

I watched around 50 replays of high MMR midlaners in the span of a few days. And I will point out 8 best tips on how they win lanes or salvage them from destruction. Midlaners I spectated include, but are not only: (Sumail, Limmp, Noone, Xcalibur, Cancel, Abed, IYD)

Almost always fight before runes, and before creeps start. I watched Abed, Sumail, and Xcalibur, almost always go to fight before the runes. They do as much damage as possible to the enemies and try to secure both runes. Go to the lane in which you have the highest kill potential.
Almost always push your creeps under the enemy’s tower, when your position 4 is ganking mid. By doing that the creeps will tank the tower for you, and you will end up killing the enemy easily, without losing hp. In the video, we see exactly how IYD does it, and how the enemy midlaner does it as well, both scenarios resulting in clean kills. This happens in ~85% of high MMR games, I’ve watched.
If you are playing a ranged hero. Try to last hit with abilities, and auto-attack the enemy at the same time. Good examples with that can be (Necro, Puck, qop, Storm, pugna, leshrac Lina.) In the video Abed shows us how it’s done, completely crushing a lane, securing last hits in the first 3 minutes only with abilities, while constantly killing his opponent with Storm.
If you are countered hard, (example – playing as kunkka vs od/monkey king), **just cheese the lane.**Don’t try to trade fair, you can’t. Push the wave under their tower with your spells, so it will eventually push back safely under your tower. If you are playing a hero that has no pushing spells, ask your pos 4 (not necessary) to push the lane into the enemy tower. That way the creeps will bounce from tower to tower, salvaging you the midlane. After you push the lane every time, just go to the jungle, stack, and farm! I can’t tell you how many games this has won me. Jungle! In the video, Cancel ends up winning the net worth and impact fight vs an OD!!!!
Always push the lane and play aggressively on odd minutes wave that meets at the 15-second mark. Play passively on even minutes and save resources for the time to come. That way you will secure most of the runes. Limmp is one of the best in doing this.
If your enemy has an advantage over you, (example Lina vs Qop, lina can always burst ranged creeps especially on higher levels) abuse the enemy’s strength, by staying next to your ranged creeps, before lina is level 4, and if your creeps are full hp. That way if she uses a spell to harass you, she will lower the hp of your creep, and you can safely deny it. This is something I have mentioned before, but rarely see in my games. (High divine and low immortal games)
If you have last pick, good, if you don’t – don’t pick a hero that can get completely countered on the lane, or cannot deal with meepo/brood or other cheese picks, without coming back afterwards.
Draw agro toward ranged creeps, when your spells are ready, and when the enemy’s spell is on cooldown. Do that also if you have more mele creeps that the enemy. If they contest the ranged creep, start hitting them, if they hit back, your creeps will deal more. Every second in dota matters, don’t do things randomly.

TL;DR: (Fight before start; Push creeps before a gank on mid; Last hit with abilities on ranged heroes, while attacking enemy; Cheese the lane, if countered; Push on odd minutes, play passively on even; Stay near ranged creeps during first levels, when they are on full hp; Pick smart, don’t get countered.)

PL is underrated as a counter pick

When to pick PL

I think Phantom lancer is super underrated right now, I never see this hero picked in my pub games. If you get a late pick in the draft and the enemy team doesn’t have a lot of AoE spells than pick this hero and you will probably win. This does not mean you need to last pick this hero, if the enemy has 3-4 heroes without much AoE already that should be more than enough to have a good game. I use my double downs very often with PL games that look like they are easy draft wins.

Role in a game

Phantom lancer basically plays like spectre or similar, a hard farming carry early game that will win the game. You get a pretty strong early spike once you get a diffusal though so you can look to fight around that timing if you will survive in fights. Of course once you get like manta and heart you will become unkillable essentially in the right draft.

Early Game/Lane

I find that maxing Phantom Rush is much better than Spirit Lance as it will let you transition into jungling very fast. I think Spirit Lance max is okay if you want to go for kills in lane or think you can zone the enemy with it as it has a pretty low cd just keep in mind your farm will suffer. Doppelganger is super strong for the dispel and disjoint if either are useful definitely get a point in this.

Phantom Lancer – as one we die, as one we rise.

General Tips

Make sure not to click anywhere once you are in phantom rush or it will cancel, make it a habit to just take your hands off till PL finishes running up and hitting once
Think about spells that are crucial to dodge and save doppelganger for them, a lot of the time not wasting it too early will save you
Make sure to have a key bound to “Select All Other Units”, use this to send your illusions at the enemy, just press the hotkey and right click someone. This makes micro with PL very easy.
Also add a hotkey for “Select All Controlled Units”. After doppelganger a lot of the time you just want to man up and hit the enemies with everything to hide your hero among the illusions. Use this hotkey for that so you don’t accidentally micro your hero only and give it away.
Send your illusions at tanky strength heroes to drain their mana. If the enemy centaur doesn’t have mana he is much less scary.
Farm a lot, I can’t stress this enough but a lot of the time you should not come to fights and just farm.
Use your illusions to farm dangerous places, manta illusions will clear waves easily and you can farm jungle out of vision while pushing waves.

That’s it, go out there and win some MMR!

Dota Basics: What many players lack. What you should keep in mind.

Here are a few points that will make you a better player and teammate while resulting in a more enjoyable game overall.

As for credentials, tier 1-2 player in the scene.

Creeps. Killing creeps is the most important thing to do in dota. Support or core, if there’s a chance for you to last hit creeps, you should have a very high accuracy on last hitting. this is the single most important skill in dota. The better you farm, the earlier you hit your timings. You survive ganks, you kill heroes, simply by having more items than usual.

That is not to say that you should farm all game. It is only when given the chance, you ought to be able to utilize it fully.

2. Itemization. Don’t be afraid to experiment. 95% of players from my experience, will report others for perfectly valid builds if they are out of the “agreed norm”. The most fun thing you can do is figure out a unique item progression on a certain hero that works for you. If you’re facing a mobile hero that is killing you while being uncatchable (think storm), buy a hex. IF you’re against alot of stuns, buy BKB. IF you’re against high cooldown instant death wombocombos, buy Aeon disk. If you’re against a slark/ursa/troll, buy a heavens halberd or pike. these are general example that could apply in certain games. The gist of it is being flexible with itemization will make a huge difference. A cookie cutter build sometimes is gamelosing.

3. Don’t take random fights. Don’t fight unless you have the upperhand(you got vision, highground advantage, item/hero advantage). Don’t fight enemies unless you have a plan in mind on what to do after the fight ( think killing towers, going roshan).

4. lategame map movement. As a clueless player, the easiest way to play the game is stay with your allies, but try your best not to reveal yourself, stay in the trees, stay hidden out of range, do your best to trick the enemies into thinking your allies are alone. That makes easy counter initiates. The most important thing in lategame is not to show on the map.

5. vision. I don’t expect much from you in this regard, but gem is priceless when it comes to killing enemy wards. You will only truly understand vision after playing for a while, and when that happens you’ll understand how important it is and how to go about it. i could write a seperate guide for it.

If you have any questions or require help in gaining mmr. tell me your situation and i can give you pointers. I wrote this as a general guide with heralds-archon level players in mind.

Archon 3 to legend in a week (80% winrate, 45 games – and how i did it)

23 games with lone druid (74% winrate)

Lone druid is very high difficulty but super effective

16 games with new broken tanky atos viper (87% winrate)

Viper with a rod of ATOS tears through enemies while rendering them useless

So how did i do it?

A month ago (I was approx 1800mmr, 40% winrate) I committed to improving my DOTA experience. I created a google doc and started to document everything. I watched replays, wrote down what I should improve on, wrote down YouTube coaches tips etc. So I’ve been watching A LOT of BSJ on YouTube. Probably 15-20 hours in total, and I’ve learned a ton from him. This month i have 62% win rate instead of 40%. I will try to make a list of stuff i changed in my game play that made me improve. In no particular order I guess.

I play strictly ranked roles mid, so this information is aimed at that, but most applies to all other roles as well

This information is general and there will always be exceptions

You should backpack your items when taking shrine / healing salve / mango (you get a lot more value)
Map awareness is insane, and you should practice it big time. I got help from GOSU.AI with this, after the game it sends you a match report, showing you how many times you checked the map during early – mid – late game.
I became aware of how you’re supposed to win games, and this might shock you. You focus objectives, not killing heroes. That’s why lone druid was a great hero. You stay mid until tower is dead. Then you move to THEIR SAFE LANE and push that tower. Then the last tier 1 tower. You’re supposed to APPLY PRESSURE as much as you possibly can – while you do this, map awareness is key. You hit the tower, and you watch the other heroes, see if they go missing, if they TP etc. You don’t even watch the tower you’re hitting, you watch the map. Before all this, you think about who can actually kill you. If your LD and dazzle teleport, what’s he gonna do? You need to make up your mind before hitting the tower how long you should be able to stand there, then you back away when conditions are met. Don’t be surprised when you die at their Tier 2 with all heroes missing. Put yourself in their shoes. If you are fed, they really want to kill you, and will jump at any chance they get. Push a bit, TP away. Its not worth taking the tower if you die. The tower wont go anywhere, get back later and take it. You have already managed to put PRESSURE, and people have started rotating your way. Creating space for you team, and less farm for your enemies. A tower is much more valuable than a kill. By taking a tower you make it harder for the enemy to farm and TP GANK while creating more space for your team to farm. This sounds obvious, but try to keep it in mind. Objectives > kills. That enemy jugg might have free farm and completely crushes the lane and you (as mid) might not be able to kill him. What do you do? You push the other lanes! Either you get a bunch of towers or the jugg is forced to tp (you back away, and their jugg is wasting time + farm). Now go push that tower jugg has been holding because he cant TP for 80 seconds.
Never over extend, and focus objectives. I see in literally every game 1-2 people chasing the supports into the base while the rest is trying to kill the barracks after a team fight. While this guy chases, the others cant really hit barracks either because they are running back and forth wondering what to do and if they should save the guy. YOU WIN BY TAKING OBJECTIVES, NOT KILLING DAZZLE. Dazzle will just save time for the team to come back.
Jungle is at the very bottom of the list. If you are not safe ANYWHERE else, you go jungle. Otherwise, push out lanes and apply pressure.
Learn countering heroes (sounds stupid coming from me spamming 2 heroes but well). Every game i google “phantom assassin counter”, “chaos knight counter”. You learn SO MUCH by doing this. How to itemize, what their weak spot is etc. Viper is great against PA. You remove his passive evasion. while LD is very bad, because PA one shots your bear. Knowing what counters your hero allows you to pick whatever is fitting even if you only play a few. http://howdoiplay.com is a great site to look up tips and tricks about all heroes. How to counter them and how to play them.
Before playing a hero, start by watching a quick YouTube guide to get the basics (you will always learn something). And then go to dotabuff, look up the hero, and find a top player that has played that hero recently (this patch) and watch how he does it. You will learn so so much it’s beyond incredible. Did you know that you can casually stack a camp with your spell? To cut down that tree to maximize farm? When does this hero start joining team fights? When is he strong? After X item? List goes on forever really. EDIT: You start by watching the basic YouTube guide – otherwise you will have a hard time seeing/understanding why the pro player does what he does. For example i recently learned that necros W amplifies his regen by a ton, so its often really good to use after you get a kill in a team fight (aggressively), rather than to use it solely to escape. Stuff like this could be hard to understand from a replay if you don’t know the basics. Also dotabuff is great to check itemization. Look at what items the pro player is buying against what heroes and so on. Try to understand why the itemization differentiates so much between the games.
At the start of games, while waiting for those bounties and everything else. Think about how you should itemize this game. Do they have a lot of physical damage? Magic? Do we have enough catch/stun? As ursa maybe you dont need blink dagger as early if you have great stuns in your team. Pick vlads before, for example. This stuff is important to consider. Don’t blindly follow ~~torte~~ guides.
Check map during downtime (taking shrine, jungling, etc). You want to check position and enemy/teammates items. This prevents double radiance, double greaves, double vlads, etc. And you can buy MKB against that jugg that just started building his butterfly.
Finally, perhaps the hardest one. Never tilt. We’re in this for the mmr, and we learn by mistakes. It’s all good, make the best of every game. If you bash someone, they will play MUCH worse. And you will too, if you get upset. The entire team will play worse by only 2 people arguing. We want to maximize our win rate here, tilting and being unfriendly to others does exactly nothing to improve it. If you have a player on your team that is toxic, you either have to be a super human that is completely unaffected by it or mute them. Even if you think you can handle it, you still get a little upset, and you will play worse. Mute them, and use pings to communicate. A toxic player will never give you any useful information – you’re not missing out.
Use smoke. Apparently you’re not detected by sentries lol.
Abuse currently OP heroes / items, check dotabuff win rates, then guide, then pro-player game play.
That’s all i can think of right now. Hope this will be helpful to someone. AMA. Sorry for spelling mistakes etc
More stuff (mid specific). Never stand around with half health, send salves and mangoes to keep the agression up.
Never gank a lane which is ungankable, you’re just wasting time. Before ganking, you look at the lane and picture the scenario in your head. Is void level 6 and has ult ready? Do they have enough mana for spells? Is it possible? If the answer is an obvious yes. Do it, and get back asap. You don’t want linger in the lane and lose mid because you’re suddenly giving your mid opponent free farm.
Do your absolute best to save your towers. Before ganking (if possible) push out the lane, so you have time to gank and get back before the creep wave is hitting your tower.
Buy your own wards if the supports doesn’t do as you wish, it’s worth it. And if you know for sure where the enemy put a ward, you wont even lose any money by dewarding. (And it helps you a lot)

PS. There is no trench. Every single excuse you have about bad teammates and all that, the enemy has those problems as well. If YOU play better, your team has a bigger chance of winning. You will lose games where you played flawlessly, but come on. In the long run, you come out on top. Instead of being pissed at that guy that made you lose. Think about what YOU could have done different to win the game. That’s all that matters.