Learning a Few Great Dota 2 Lanes

Dota 2 is a very snowball oriented game and by that I mean that if you can do good in the early game you make your life a lot easier for the mid and late game as you will be far stronger. The way to do this is to pick good lanes and try and beat your opponent in the laning phase. In this guide I talk about which heroes lane well with others and can create an easy lane for you and your friend.

This guide will not cover all the great duo lanes out there but it will give you some good lanes to try out.

Lane #1: Crystal Maiden and Juggernaut

 
The Crystal Maiden/ Juggernaut lane is a lane that most players know about. The benefits of this lane are quite obvious, Juggernaut has a massive early damage potential with his Blade Fury ability but his main concern is being close enough to actually do the full damage of the spin. This is where Crystal Maiden excels as she has a very long range slow with a huge aoe that she can use by the name of Crystal Nova in order to get Juggernaut into position.

Juggernaut also finds himself lacking mana to do more than one Blade Fury before running out of mana (a good way to counter this is to also get one or two points into stats before level 6 as this will allow you to use both your ultimate and your spin at level 6 where otherwise you would be out of mana) and Crystal Maiden’s Arcane Aura gives Juggernaut the mana regen he needs to be able to cast Blade Fury more often in the lane.

Crystal Maiden can also harass the enemy if they try to deal damage to Juggernaut during his last hits but the CM player must be careful as if she goes too far forward it may result in a death.

This lane can be played in the safe lane, hard lane, or even mid lane if you feel like it. It is strong everywhere but most likely you will like to play it in the safe lane and get your juggernaut the easy last hits as well as any lane kills you can pick up.

#2 Shadow Demon and Leshrac

 
For those of you that don’t know Leshrac can be played as both a support or a semi-carry. A semi-carry Leshrac is actually one of my personal favorite semi-carries in the game, with a large hp and mana pool he will be able to dish out a ton of damage in the team fights. So having a Leshrac take the farm in a lane is not as bad as some people may think.

Starting off with the basics of this lane, a huge plus is that both of the people in the lane are ranged heroes. This means that if you are laning against a melee hero that their life will be hell during the laning phase. Every time they go up for a last hit you have the possibility of getting somewhere between 2-4 hits on them.

However the main reason that these two are a dynamic duo together is sort of a two-part explanation. The first reason is because Leshrac needs someone to set up his Split Earth for him. Leshrac’s Split Earth is what is considered a “followup stun” or a stun that preferably needs someone else to crowd control the enemy first in order to ensure the stun will hit. Shadow Demon’s Disruption is the perfect ability for follow up stuns! The enemy hero is removed for exactly 2.5 seconds at all levels and once the Leshrac player masters the timing he will be hitting his Split Earth everytime.

The other big reason that these two lane so well together is because Leshrac’s Diabolic Edict already does very high damage in the laning phase and when the enemy hero is also affected by the bonus damage from Soul Catcher then there is almost no chance of survival. It’s important to note that Leshrac recently did get a cast time on his Diabolic Edict so don’t forget! You don’t want that to be the reason that a kill slips away.

#3 Undying and Venomancer

 
Undying and Venomancer go together like peas in a pod, both of them are known for their very early game potential. Undying is a good hero to have farming your lane because once he gets his items such as vanguard and arcane boots in the early stages of the game he will become very powerful and a giant pain for your opponents to deal with. While Undying is farming Venomancer can be harassing the lane opposition with his passive ability Poison Sting which not only slows but also deals damage over time.

Once you hit around level 3 (even level 2 is fine in some circumstances) you can go on your opponents with a Poison Gale and begin chasing them down. Undyings nuke Decay will do an outrageous amount of damage as well as steal the strength of the targeted person you are going on. Since your opponent is slowed from Venomancers abilities they will find themselves having a very hard time running away from Undying’s Tombstone and most likely will get chased down by a bunch of zombies.

If Dirge steals enough strength he will very likely be tanky enough to even take one or two tower hits if that’s what it takes to secure the kill.

The good thing about this too is that as the enemy is losing strength they are also becoming more and more squishy, making Venomancer’s damage over time spells that much stronger as his prey finds themself having under 400 base life.

#4 Shadow Shaman and Ursa

 

I thought I would throw this lane in here because this is one of my personal favorite lanes. I solo que in the very high MMR and have yet to lose a game as Ursa with a score of 15-0 on him. I find laning Ursa to be absolutely magnificent and I rarely ever jungle him. The lane farm is just so much better and with the correct laning partner Ursa can prove to have a devastating laning presence.

Much like the Undying Venomancer lane where the Undying was farming and the Venomancer was harassing we see the same roles here. Ursa is to be farming his last hits while Shadow Shaman does what harass he can. Unfortunately Shadow Shaman is not as good at harassing his opponents as Venomancer is but nonetheless it is ok.

The reason that Shadow Shaman and Ursa work so well together is because Ursa can deal very very high amounts of burst damage early in the game if he can simply get someone to lock down or slow his target enemy. Shadow Shaman is fantastic at doing this due to his Shackles ability.

Shackles is a 2.5 second stun at level 1, which is more than enough time for ursa to get his attacks in on his opponent! With this lane I encourage going on your opponents not at level 1, but at level 2 when Ursa will have both his Overpower and Fury Swipes abilities to ensure the kill.

Unfortunately this lane can get countered if the opposing lane has TWO stunners. If the opposing lane only has one way of interrupting Shadow Shaman’s Shackling then it’s important for the Shadow Shaman to try and shackle that enemy instead of the other one. In fact Shackling the other target might actually just be a waste of time unless the other person is someone with a low base mana pool and will not be able to stun again anytime soon (example: sven, skeleton king, tiny, etc).

Also I recommend going for Phase boots before Vladimirs Offering if you are just farming DK Burning status (which for those of you who don’t know means you are farming really really well). Getting that early Phase boots practically ensures that you will be able to chase and mow down your opponents as they try and run away from you and Shadow Shaman at this stage of the game. And Rosh won’t mind waiting an extra 3-4 minutes before you pay him a visit in his den =).

That’s it for now, again I highly recommend trying some of these lanes with a friend if you are either having trouble winning your lanes in pub games or if you just feel like experimenting with something new.