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.

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.

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.

Venomancer is disgusting to play against right now

The change in 7.23 was that Poison sting applies 30% Regen reduction.

Poison sting is also applied by plague wards. So if a ward hits you, and you also get auto attacked by veno with poison sting, it applies 2 separate instances of poison sting, which it used to do earlier as well. But now it cuts your HP regen by 30 + 30% = 60%

Tested it out in Demo vs Axe. Initial Regen 40.9, after auto attack, 28.6. With auto attack and wards, 16.4. That combined with Spirit Vessel became -8.2

Combined with Spirit Vessel, the Regen wasn’t 8.2, IT WAS -8.2. NEGATIVE REGEN

This may be obvious to some of you but it wasn’t to me. Apparently Spirit vessel reduces 60% of your total, non reduced Regen, not your current Regen. That’s why when stacked with poison sting and plague wards, the Regen drops to negative.

It’s not (1-0.6) * 16.4 = 6.56.

It’s 16.4 – (0.6*40.9) = -8.14

Apparently the tl;Dr is Spirit vessel on Veno gives 120% Regen reduction.

So Huskar will straight up kill himself with his passive if you get all 3 reductions on him. That sounds fairly unbeatable. I tried this against Huskar to see the interaction against Berserker’s Blood. Since his HP regen increases, the effect of Spirit Vessel also increases. I was able to get him to -30 HP regen before he eventually died. The more health he loses the faster the negative regen ramps up.

You should put first skill into passive and then max out wards, Q is highly situational during first few levels even ulti can be skilled later. Almost always build spirit vessel, but there are some times when your teammate says that he buys it and there may not be a way to talk him out of it. Then u can build veil/pipe/force, basically anything that fits the game.

But in just sub 4k scrub, feel free to hate and better even advise.

How to Counter a Bristleback [Dota 2]

As someone who plays alot of Bristleback, Viper is the most painful to play against. Getting stunned into his w just kills you if you’re not snowballing. Silver edge carriers are effective but if you outlast the purge – it’s not hard to deal with. Viper’s W plus a stun or hold absolutely shreds you. Viper + Shaman combo is deadly against Bristles.

Core silencer is probably the second hardest for me to deal with, the pure damage and the inability to cast spells without refreshing curse is really difficult to play against.

As a Bristle against a Silencer it’s advisable to get a lotus orb – to dispel.

Besides for the two heroes, spirit vessel is good, long disables (shadow shaman) As well as people who force you to face them (legion, axe)

Also fighting against any six slotted hc seems impossible, a six slotted bristle gets melted by a six slotted am or void or drow.

Slark is another hard counter – but you need to snowball pretty quickly and survive the laning phase to be effective. I’d recommend playing a few games as bristle and see how the enemy team deals with you, then do so yourself next time you face him. I know for me Riki seemed unbeatable until I played as him and got sentried and dusted into oblivion, doesn’t scare me at all anymore.

Buy a fast wand and prepare salves. When BB spams quill spray, he is either a) over-extending just to refresh the debuff b) Low on mana. If he doesn’t kill you when he starts spamming quill, he will lose out because you will have a 20 charge wand and full health( from salves). Once you have full hp, go and trade with him to force him to spend gold on regen. Item progression on BB is quite important as his mid-game is quite weak if he doesn’t have the tank items. He also can’t spam quill to farm waves because of mana issues so his farming isn’t great and he has pretty bad stat growth for a strength hero.

In team fights, your team shouldn’t be committing spells/ over-committing to kill him unless he over-extends by a lot. Quill takes quite a few casts for it to start to hurt so you should just go completely ignore him go for his team. He is a tanky af hero but he can’t 1v5. The best thing to do is ignore him. Bristleback wants to be hit and if you hit him even if he dies he still does his job. You waste your time not killing his supports or his carry and you’re getting quilled the whole time. Just ignore him and focus the rest of his team. When his team dies 5v1 him and kill him last.

Heroes that are good against him would be:

Lion( Mana drain, Stuns for repositioning),
Nyx (Mana burn, Stuns for repositioning),
Axe( Call, spin),
Viper (Magic resist shred + Break),
Legion Commander( PTA purge, duel),
Lifestealer,
Ursa,
Ancient Apparition (ulti)

If you follow any of the above tips – Bristleback will be the least of your worries.

What to do when your lane mate is taking your farm? [Dota 2]

It seems like a terrible situation. You need farm but your lane mate is fighting you for last hits. He has higher damage/attack animation so he has advantage over you. As a result, your timing is delayed.

10 minutes in, you got shit tier level of last hits and you are a gimped carry.

What would you recommend in this situation?

Some things you can do. They’re not all ideal but after a few items you should be able to do more dmg and get last hits easier.

Ask him not to last hit and explain why.
Buy small stat items (wraith band for example) for more dmg.
Buy quelling blade if you’re melee (he should not have one).
Farm small jungle camp until you have more dmg (because of small stat item).
Try to dmg creeps so there are two creeps to last hit in which case you can take the one hé doesn’t get.
Use spells to get last hits.

Also, positioning. You can stand closer to the creeps so you can last hit them before his projectile finishes off the creep.

You can also just think of your support as another ranged creep. 🙂

I had some luck with, instead of saying, “Don’t hit the creeps!”, saying “Harass the other carry.” That way they’ll feel like they’re doing something, especially if you harass at the same time and can force the opposing carry out of lane.

It is much more effective to tell them something you want to do “will you please hit that ogre magi as much as possible” or, “would you mind stacking a jungle camp or two” instead of telling them to not do something.

Human psychology in a nutshell. It’s like we are built to go against someone telling us not to something.

7 Tips to get better at playing support in DOTA 2

A few things I’ve learnt from playing as a Support:

1. Don’t feed by showing in lane and greedily farming multiple waves of creeps

(unless you’re creating space worth your death). If it feels like you’re “pushing the lane” you actually could just be a just a greedy pig.

2.If you find an enemy sentry on a high-ground ward spot, don’t kill it: place an observer ward there and beg your team to leave the enemy sentry alone.

3. Full mana during laning stage = major pussy alert.

4. Buy sentries as starting items especially if invis heroes on map.

5. Use observer vision in mid lane to scout out mid lane obs wards.

6. After dying, TP back to lane for XP, but also bear in mind that TP may be needed to save your mid / other lane from GANK.

7. My own: as a support in the offlane, if the enemy messes up their lane and a big push comes down early, it can be a good time to leave the lane and GANK mid. This helps win mid and also gives your offlane core some high XP while the enemy is trying to pull their lane and recover balance.