DOTA 2: What do I need to know?

The Game Room
1

So, I’ve just taken up playing DOTA 2 with a friend from across the country. I’ve played Warcraft 3, though never the original DOTA mod, so some of the game is familiar to me. I’m sure there’s plenty I don’t know, though. Like, teams are usually five players, right? Can I arrange for my buddy and I to always be on the same team? How are duties generally divided within a team: Is it “You three take the three lanes, and the two of us will wander around to support as needed”? Is there some standard balance of hero types that are expected? Should I focus on abilities that are good against creeps, or on abilities that are good against enemy heroes? Are there any other questions that I should be asking, but don’t know enough to ask?

Oh, and how can I get the game to override my Mac’s hot corners? It’s annoying to be scrolling up diagonally and all of a sudden finding myself looking at my desktop.

2

Welcome to DOTA! You are playing a game that does not have a learning curve so much as a wall that leans inwards towards you, threatening to always collapse. You will die and suck and suck and die for a while, and then things will get awesome. I love DOTA.

Here’s a thread that goes into a certain amount of detail:

I have no good answer for your Mac question.

I’m Cale Knight on steam, and I’m a member of the SDMB gaming group. Feel free to hit me up and I’ll be happy to hop onto the SDMB Mumble server and talk you through a bot match or two. If you don’t have speakers with a microphone you might consider spending 30 bucks for a cheap set at Best Buy or wherever. Being able to effectively communicate makes the game much more enjoyable.

3

OK, I’m sure that that thread has plenty of useful information in it. What language is it written in, and is there an English translation available somewhere? Like, a “carry” is a hero whose goal is to get a lot of gold… But what do you do with that gold? How does that help your teammates? And then things like

So, when the carries are strong enough that the other players can kill the carries… Huh?

And you want to try to keep the creep equilibrium point near your own tower… By making sure your own creeps die quickly? Isn’t that counterproductive? And doesn’t that risk the enemy pushing hard on that lane to kill your own tower? Yes, that’s not what teams actually do… But why not?

5

That was one of several unfortunate typos in my post. It should read “impossible” instead of “possible.”

Yeah, you want to kill your own creeps so that the wave remains within the pocket of protection offered by your tower. It doesn’t matter if the enemy tries to push your tower, since they don’t have the strength to destroy it early in the game. Towers do a significant amount of damage, plus your teammates can teleport over to the tower within seconds to assist in the defense.

Some strategies are based around taking towers very quickly, but those are rare in unorganized public games. Recognizing them isn’t important at the beginner stage.

6

This is why you need to watch videos and play bot matches. The body of knowledge is a bit too dense and specialized to get much out of reading. You’re going to have to build some background knowledge first.

7

OK, let’s just start with the basics, then. Heroes are classified as “gankers”, “carries”, and “support”; I’m clear on that so far. Just what do those terms mean? A “ganker”, I’m guessing, is a hero primarily intended for killing enemy heroes? What kinds of skills make a hero a ganker? I’m guessing high-damage single-target attacks and stuns?

What does a “carry” do? They gather a bunch of gold, but that’s not what they do, that’s how they do it. Can gold and/or purchased items be transferred to your teammates? What sorts of abilities make a hero a good carry?

Likewise with supports: What do they do, and how do they do it? What sorts of abilities make a hero good at support?

And what are some examples of heroes in each of the three categories, preferably ones relatively easy for a newbie to pick up?

Back to the “creep equilibrium point”: How is fighting near your own tower worth killing your own creeps for? The equilibrium point starts off at the river, if nobody does anything, right? Well, if one team fights more effectively than the other, that’ll shift the equilibrium towards the other team’s tower. Whereupon that team starts fighting more effectively, because the tower helps… Which moves the equilibrium back away from that tower. It looks like the benefit of fighting near your tower is that you get away from your tower.

8

A “carry” is a character who is very weak early game but whose power level exceeds that of other characters around the latter portion of the mid game. They “carry” their team to victory. They typically need a level advantage alongside a gold/item advantage. Gold and (most) items cannot be transferred between players, so it’s imperative that carries get lots of gold and experience early on. Carries can be “hard” or “soft.” Soft carries have a certain amount of utility beyond getting kills. Hard carries are completely useless if they aren’t winning the game for their team.

This is typically accomplished by having the carry do the mid lane, which means faster experience points since it’s a solo lane.

“Ganking” is simply a word for getting a kill outside of a teamfight. You’re off in the jungle killing some creeps and Drow Ranger pops up out of nowhere and kills you? You just got ganked.

Ganking usually happens right around the time the guy in mid lane hits level 6-8, depending on the character. At that time, a good mid will begin ganking, or ask if one of the other lanes needs a gank.

A support is a character who is less dependent on levels and items than carries. Their job is to buy the courier at the beginning of the game, to purchase and place wards, and to purchase items that help everyone on the team (Mekenesm, Pipe of Insight, mana boots, etc). Good support players are skilled at laning with a carry and focusing on denying, pulling creeps (advanced tactic) and letting the carry gather gold. Some supports have ults that are very strong early game, and poor/greedy players will sometimes try to ‘carry’ with them, stealing lots of kills early on rather than trying to let the carry get them. Supports nearly always fall off in power as the game progresses, though, and a real carry is always better than a faux-carry support if the game happens to last a while.

When you’re in the character select screen, you’ll see that all of the characters have symbols on the top right that show what that character is good at. I think they are: carry, support, jungler, durable, nuker, disabler, and escape. I might be forgetting one. If you hover over each of those symbols, it will show between one and three stars. The more stars, the stronger the character is in that category. Three stars in carry means that character is a hard carry. So you don’t really need to ask “what skills make a character a good support?” If the character has a support logo, they’re considered a support.

Creep equilibrium: the primary benefit of fighting near your tower is that it forces the other team to move away from their tower, which pulls them out of position and opens up potential ganks from the mid hero. Early in the game, you can hide under your tower from most heroes because the tower will kill dead anyone who gets too close.

9

OK, so Johhny Bravo says that the carry should be in the middle lane, while Palooka says it should be the ganker. Both of you seem to agree, though, that the middle lane should be the solo one. What would happen if a team decided to make some other lane the solo one?

If a carry is relatively strong in the late game and relatively weak in the early game, while a support is the reverse, what’s a ganker? Why wouldn’t one just gank with supports in the early game, and gank with carries in the late game?

Palooka says that one should treat the safe lane and the off lane differently. How can one tell which is which?

If both teams are killing their own creeps to try to move the point where they meet, why do they ever meet at all? It seems like it should be relatively easy to kill all of your own creeps before any of them ever reach the river.

10

One of the rules of Dota is that you’re only able to kill a friendly unit once it’s below 50% HP. Don’t worry about most of the things that I wrote in those posts. They’re targeted at a player whose more familiar with the game than you are. Just dive in and have some fun. They’ll make more sense once you can reflect back on your own matches and experience.

Why don’t teams just gank with supports? They do! The ganker is just a support that’s given a boost in experience so that hero has an edge against others. This boost comes from going to the mid-lane solo, where they aren’t forced to split experience with a teammate. There is an expectation that the ganker will lead the team’s ganking. Call out ganks for the other supports to assist with 'n such. In classifying heroes, some people don’t even bother with the ganker designation. If you’re not the carry, you’re a support.

The difference between the safe-lane and the off-lane is pretty simple once you understand why the safe-lane is called safe. This image of the Radiant safe-lane will help. The safe lane contains a pocket of safety where ganks can only comes from one direction or passed the tower. It’s difficult to gank heroes inside that region. Keeping the creep wave within that pocket of safety is why managing the creep equilibrium matters. Carries prefer the safe-lane since they’re prime gank targets. While the Radiant heroes are safe in that pocket, the Dire heroes are vulnerable due to all the routes for sneaking up on them. That’s why it’s the off-lane from the Dire perspective. Off-laners want to play conservatively, such as backing up when the enemy hero is missing from mid. Safe-laners don’t need to be so concerned.

11

You can’t attack your own creeps (or towers or allies) until they’re at low health otherwise, yes, everyone would just murder their own creeps well before hitting the river. Killing your own creeps at just the right moment is called denying and is an important skill.

There is no such thing as a “ganker,” really. A “gank” is any time one character kills another unexpectedly. A lot of carries rely on a few early ganks for that necessary gold/experience boost. A support can definitely gank (or facilitate a gank) in the early phase.

The solo lane: mid is almost always going to be solo. Sometimes a team will try a double or even triple mid in an attempt for a quick overwhelm, but that’s not something you’ll really see.

More common is if somebody picks a character who is capable of jungling right from level one. In that case, you’ll have a double lane, a solo mid, a solo off-lane, and a solo jungler. If all goes well (no ganks or otherwise dying) the team with the jungler will be in a very strong position because the solo off-lane will have been sucking up a ton of experience that he would have been otherwise sharing with a lane partner. This requires that the jungler AND the solo off-laner know what they’re doing, because both of them are alone and are prime targets for, you guessed it, being ganked.

Safe lane and off lane: the creeps don’t meet in the river - they meet in front of it. The safe lane is the one where the creeps meet on your side of the river. The off lane is the one where you have to cross the river to engage the creeps.

12

OK, I think I’m beginning to understand. Some heroes seem to have limited flight ability-- Those would be one example of a good “jungler”, right? Because they could go off into the jungle on routes that most enemy heroes can’t take?

13

No, junglers are characters who have abilities that let them take on the creep camps at level 1. Most heroes can’t do it effectively.

That’s pretty much the go-to guide for jungling.

14

Welcome to Dota you suck this is a good start for research. Reddit also has a very active dota forum including a newbie subforum. Your best bet is to play with friends with voip who can babysit you through your first dozen games. This game has proably the largest skill cliffs of any game I have ever played. Your first dozen games you will literally be useless, and having someone to hold your hand is invaluable. In the topleft corner of your screen there will be an icon that looks like an open book. If you click on that you can choose from suggested builds for the hero that you are playing. It will tell you what items to buy, and even highlight what skill you should be leveling up. When I first started out I tried to pick guides that went into detail on why certain levels or items were worthwile. Also when trying a hero I would generally try to watch a video of someone else playing the character so that you get a basic idea of how your abilities work and your heroes strengths and weaknesses.

15

I have played a ton of the original DOTA in Warcraft 3, as well as countless hours of Hero Attack in Starcraft 2, so my experience with MOBAs is pretty deep (though I never played professionally in LoL or even played it at all for example).

I’ve been playing DOTA 2 with my boyfriend for about a month and a half now and have become fairly proficient. (Still a huge noob in the grand scheme of things of course).

Chronos, and anyone else, please PM me if you’re looking to play regularly with someone who enjoys the game and is still learning a lot but doesn’t completely suck. I have a microphone headset and such so I’m good with communication.

Looks like there was a recent update which changed some things for the better so I look forward to playing more soon. Please contact me if you’re interested! I would love to get involved with fellow Dopers.