So You Started Playing Dota 2

If Dota 2 is your first MOBA style game, start reading from here. If you’re highly familiar with LoL and are just looking for a brief rundown of heroes, start from the section titled 'Played an Action RTS/MOBA Before'.

Brand new to the Genre

It seems you’ve come to gain access to DOTA 2. Fantastic! If you’re worrying about looking like a total “noob” since you haven’t played any other games in this genre, stop worrying! Here I will explain some basic things for playing the game, mostly focusing on the early game/interactions with others while in your lane.

In a moba, there are 3 lanes. For the most part, at the beginning of a game, 2 heroes go in the top lane, 2 go in the bottom lane, and one in the middle lane. The hero in the middle lane is generally a ranged hero who becomes incredibly powerful while levelling up, more so than other heroes. However, there is an 80% chance you won’t be asked to go into that lane on your first few games, and, if playing single-draft (which I highly recommend and will explain in the next paragraph). You will likely be going in the top lane or the bottom lane.

The game mode I would recommend playing to learn the ropes quickly is called “single-draft”. In single-draft, the player can choose from 3 heroes as which to play. If you’re in your first few games – and playing single draft where things are generally less stressful/serious as in all-pick – look at the pictures of your heroes, and choose one that has a carry symbol on it (it will say carry if you hover over it).

Generally, one carry and one support are wanted in each lane. The role of the carry is to get last hits on the creeps that spawn by the other team. The support is generally there to help lower the enemy creeps health, but not to get last hits, as they focus on killing friendly creeps when they get to low health, which is called denying. For getting last hits or denies, you generally don’t want to be auto-attacking the creeps. You ideally want to pace around and attack it when it has just enough health to die from one attack by you. This way, the heroes are more likely to get the credit for the last hit instead of a friendly creep doing it or a tower. Denying is useful as for each creep that is last hit, the last hitter gains about 25 gold. Denying prevents the enemy units from getting that gold and subsequently weakens them, causing them to not be able to buy new items as quickly.

As for buying your items, at the start of a single draft game, you get 600 gold. As you are just starting, there is no problem with buying the recommended items you see in the top left of the shop screen. You will have enough gold to buy those items, and then head to your lane. Ideally, one player will buy a courier. The courier will be used to deliver items to the players on your team to prevent you from needing to return to base frequently. Otherwise, I still feel the items that are suggested in the shop screen are effective enough for a new player to use.

When you’re in a lane with another hero, generally you will be against 2 heroes on the enemy team. In the early game, they will generally mind their own business, only attacking you with auto-attacks from time to time to get you to back off. For the most part, in this phase of the game, just kill creeps. If you notice that an enemy hero has left, it is imperative that you say in chat “mia top/bottom”, to let people know that a hero is no longer there. A hero would leave the lane to go try and kill someone in a different lane while they have a 1 or 2 hero advantage.

There are two final things you need to know for your first few times playing: if the tower is targeting you, DO NOT STAND THERE AND TAKE IT. IT IS STRONGER THAN YOU. As well, don’t go on the otherside of a wave of creeps. It leaves you incredibly vulnerable to being killed and you can’t move through creeps to get away easily.

Seriously, they hurt you.

Played an Action RTS/MOBA before

Even if you are familiar to this type of game, I would still recommend starting out playing in single-draft. This way you will become familiar with a variety of heroes, get a feel for what you like in dota and get familiar with the items.

If you’re wondering which heroes you will encounter frequently, here is a list I just made up for heroes you will see played any time they’re available in single-draft: Drow Ranger, Zeus, Ursa, Lifestealer, Gyrocopter, Lina. You only really need to worry about Drow, Zeus and Lifestealer, though.

Drow ranger is a nuisance. She is different from any other hero in that she has an INCREDIBLY powerful slow + damage effect she can effectively spam. Her abilities include a silence, the spamable death filled frost arrows, and two buffs that scale to be insanely powerful if she gets to be strong. How do you counter Drow? There are two options: crying, admitting defeat and uninstalling dota out of frustration, or killing her as many times as you can early on, stunting her growth severely. The latter is much harder than the former.

Lifestealer is a pain if you are a melee hero. It does exactly what its name suggests. If you are in melee range of it, attacking it, and it is hitting you, chances are it’s healing itself for more than you hit it for. An easy solution to this is having a ranged hero try to deal with it.

Zeus, however, isn’t a huge threat like these other two units are. He is just something you need to be aware of when he’s on the map. Zeus’ ultimate ability hits EVERYONE on the map for a large amount of damage. For this reason, if you are low on health and running back to the base to heal up, you may want to hurry with that. He can hit you wherever you are. Watch out.