Death and Dota 2: Was it worth it?

Death. It happens. It happens a lot in Dota 2 since you can revive, but how does it affect you? Often players either don't know, or don't fully understand the penalties of death (applied or implied) in Dota 2. They simply type "Worth it!" in all chat and wait out the respawn timer... however long that is. So that's what we're going to examine. Was it worth it?

 Applied Death Penalties

First, let's take a look at the applied effects of dying in a Dota 2 match. When you die, you:

- Lose up to 30*(hero level) unreliable gold.
- Are removed from the game for 4*(hero level) seconds.

Level	Gold Lost	Time Dead(s)
1	30	4
2	60	8
3	90	12
4	120	16
5	150	20
6	180	24
7	210	28
8	240	32
9	270	36
10	300	40
11	330	44
12	360	48
13	390	52
14	420	56
15	450	60
16	480	64
17	510	68
18	540	72
19	570	76
20	600	80
21	630	84
22	660	88
23	690	92
24	720	96
25	750	100

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to these effects, if you die to the enemy team they gain:

- 200 gold + (your level*9) reliable gold to your killer.

- 200 bonus gold if the kill is first blood to your killer.

- 50 gold per kill streak multiplier you are on, starting at killing spree to your killer.

- an additional 125 gold + (your level*12) assist gold (single assist.)

- OR 40 + (your level*10) assist gold (double assist) each.

- OR 10 + (your level * 6) assist gold (triple assist) each.

- OR your level*6 assist gold (quad assist) each.

Gold Rewards

Level	Solo Kill	1 Assist	2 Assists	3 Assists	4 Assists
1	209	346	309	257	233
2	218	367	338	284	266
3	227	388	367	311	299
4	236	409	396	338	332
5	245	430	425	365	365
6	254	451	454	392	398
7	263	472	483	419	431
8	272	493	512	446	464
9	281	514	541	473	497
10	290	535	570	500	530
11	299	556	599	527	563
12	308	577	628	554	596
13	317	598	657	581	629
14	326	619	686	608	662
15	335	640	715	635	695
16	344	661	744	662	728
17	353	682	773	689	761
18	362	703	802	716	794
19	371	724	831	743	827
20	380	745	860	770	860
21	389	766	889	797	893
22	398	787	918	824	926
23	407	808	947	851	959
24	416	829	976	878	992
25	425	850	1005	905	1025

 

Whew, that's a ton of numbers, but what does it all mean? Well first dying is expensive to you, but the biggest thing to take away from all of this is that your life is worth a huge amount of gold to the enemy team, especially if there are assists involved. That's just gold too, they also gain experience as per the table at the bottom of this page.

Let's use an example to figure out what your life is worth:

Say you're Anti-Mage and you're trying to farm up Reaver for Heart of Tarrasque. You're level 15, have 2500g, 2000g of which is unreliable, more than enough to incur the full death penalty. You stick around on a creep wave in a risky position and get ganked by Beastmaster and let's say two other people. Ultimately you die.

You lose 450g. Beastmaster and the other two heroes gain a total of 715g +100g for your spree being ended. That's a swing of 1265g in the enemy team's favor and looking at the table, 1704 total experience! Ouch! You're also dead for the next 60 seconds, which leads us into implied penalties from dying.

Implied Death Penalties

Some of the penalties from your death aren't set in stone like gold lost or time spent dead. Instead they are things that occur as a result of other factors, specifically from your time spent dead. When you are dead:

- You (likely) can't last hit creeps.

- You have no "presence."

- You can't participate in team fights.

Let's talk about these. Firstly, the inability to last hit creeps: unless you have a controlled unit (i.e. are Chen/Visage, or have a dominated creep via Helm of the Dominator), you cannot last hit anything, barring summons with timers or illusions of course. In the example above, using Anti-Mage being off the map for 60 seconds: you miss up to two full creep waves, (depending on the timing of your death,) and for arguments' sake let's say you normally clear 3 jungle camps per neutral spawn, for this example we will use two medium camps and a large camp.

We will also assume you're between the17:30 and 34:00 mark of the game, which is the point where creep waves are 4 melee, 1 ranged.

- Creep waves are worth an average of 220 gold, and are worth 286 exp. Missing two penalizes you 440 gold and 578 experience.

- Medium camps are worth an average of 102 gold and 202 exp. Missing two penalizes you 204 gold and 404 exp.

- A large creep camp is worth an average of 124 gold and 220 exp.

This means that dying not only carries a 450 unreliable gold penalty at level 15, but at this particular rate of farm it also carries an implied penalty of 768g and 1202 exp. Now, obviously not everyone has this level of farm, some have better some have worse, but the point remains. This Anti-Mage's death is worth a swing of up to 2033 gold and 2906 experience in total. In addition, you're dead and the enemy knows it. Now they can farm that lane, and or the jungle you were in. This leads us into "presence."

 

Map Presence

The simple lack of you being on the map is a huge boon to the enemy. It goes beyond the inherent disadvantage in team fights that your team has being down a player. In the example we've been using, your team may simply not be able to fight at all, and be forced to sacrifice towers or Roshan. The enemy also knows that you can't appear from the fog of war and kill them. Now they can farm the jungle with relative peace of mind because your team is probably in a defensive posture.  This particular attribute of death is vastly more pronounced when the hero off the map is a stealth hero.

The knowledge that one can safely farm without being instantly vaporized by Nyx Assassin or Clinkz lends a world of confidence to the ability to go farm a lane or the jungle. In addition to all of this, the enemy team can further tax your death by pressuring objectives like the barracks or Roshan and force you to buy back to mitigate long term losses, costing you even more gold.

 

Positives

All in all, dying is a really bad thing (surprised?) but there are potential benefits of dying in Dota 2.  You're probably asking yourself how there could possibly be any benefit to dying, especially after I painted such a... Dire... picture of just how bad dying is. Here are a few examples of actual, factual positives from your death:

- Saving someone else, especially a carry.

- Inflicting all of those horrid things on the enemy team (i.e. killing them)

- Reduced travel time.

Saving Your Team

Saving other members of your team, especially multiple members or your carry is often a worthwhile endeavor. If you're a support, all of those potential creeps that you could have (or more appropriately, should have) last hit probably amounted to zero. Your presence is often less missed than a farmed up carry and you're also probably a lower level and likely don't have a kill streak bonus to give away. While not strictly the best thing in the world (dying is still bad,) you're definitely making the best of a bad situation. Any mitigated losses for your team is always a positive. Sometimes you just get out played, and the only thing you can do is try to minimize the damage. A swing of 1000g for the enemy team is better than a swing of 2000g.

 

Killing the Enemy

Sometimes you're presented with the option of escaping a team fight, or manning up and taking the whole enemy team with you... such as a Blink->Ravage as Tidehunter that gets 4 enemy team members killed in the process. Remember this is all about weighing your options! I'm not going to do the math, but I'm pretty sure 4 kills for your team vs. 1 kill for the enemy team is a net gain. It pretty much goes hand in hand with the first point, sometimes sacrificial plays are beneficial to the team.

 

Saving Time

Finally we come to reduced travel time. Often at low levels it can be beneficial to suicide onto neutral creeps in order to reduce the time it takes you to return to base and heal up. Most often this applies to junglers. Consider the following:

- With ~300 move speed, it takes in the range of 25-35 seconds to get from the jungle to the fountain or vice-versa depending on what camp you're going to or coming from.

- The fountain heals at 4% hp per second, from 20% health, that's 20 seconds to full health, minus about 3 seconds, since the fountain heals for a short time after leaving it.

- Dying to neutral creeps gives nothing to the enemy team.

- If you have no unreliable gold to lose (because you spent it,) you can't lose any gold.

Basically, if you lose no gold and the enemy gains nothing, the death to neutrals becomes a matter of figuring out what's most efficient time wise. Running back to the fountain and healing, or re-spawning. Which one you choose largely depends on your level. At level 3 it takes 12 seconds to respawn. That means that you save 4 seconds or so of healing at the fountain, and an additional 30 from walking back. Of course this only applies if you happen to be able to afford a particular item down to a few gold. Also, the higher level you get, the harder the saved seconds are to justify, as you run into the aforementioned "presence on the map" issue.

Now, sometimes there is just no way that your death can be beneficial. You die and it sucks. You can however make the most of it by:

- Acting as the eyes in the sky for your team. Watch the mini-map and call potential ganks, or watch for enemy supports placing wards etc.

- Taking the time to analyze what happened and learn from it.

- Take a breather. Try to relax and cool down, playing frustrated does you no good. Morale is important!

- Eat something or take a drink. We're all gamers. Sometimes we forget.

- Berate your team for being bad Don't do that. 

Thumper with the sick burns... "Walks funny." Bambi is clearly a noob.

So, now you've armed yourself with information on death and it's penalties in Dota 2, think back to your last few games. Have your trades been "worth it?" Hopefully more of them will be in the future now that you know some of the more intricate details of death in Dota 2. Remember, knowledge is power. The more tricks and facts you know about Dota 2, the more your game will improve.