An Introduction to roles and how they work.

There are various roles to fill when playing a MOBA game and getting to familiarize yourself with them will be your greatest tool and asset when playing these games. This article will cover the basics of each role and explain why it’s necessary and important. 

So you’ve decided to jump into the MOBA scene and you want to start playing right away? There is a couple of things you might want to learn before jumping into the fire or you might just be the Trial by Ordeal kind of person. In this first part of a series of articles we will only provide you with an overview so you can get a feel for what each role does and how it contributes to the team. 

Here is a list where we will summarize what each role does and give you an example of a beginner hero for that role.

Carry - A carry is a hero that has a slow start and relies on gold to become stronger and win you games . He will achieve this by farming in your lane and keep growing by getting kills as the game goes on. A pretty straight forward carry for beginners would be someone like Drow Ranger or Sniper.

Support - The person who nurtures the carry as he grows and makes sure to help the team by providing them with a courier, wards and many items that will assist them in many ways such as healing. An example of a support character would be Lich and is actually an excellent beginner one too.

Ganker - A ganker is a hero which pretty much does as his title suggest Gank. If you are not familiar with the term gank it essentially means that they will go around ambushing people and making it easier for your team to get kills by catching your opponents by surprise . Lina and Lion are simple gankers and are recommended for beginners.

Initiator - An initiator will usually and most likely always be the first one to go into a battle unless something suggest otherwise. The initiator for the most part will be resilient and be able to take several hits before having to back out of a battle , they usually come armed with slows, stuns or any other form of crowd control. Tidehunter makes an excellent initiator for beginners.

Pusher - A pusher is a person that applies pressure to a lane and causes the opponents to react by having them keep an eye on you at all times and distract them from other duties they have to attend to such as farming and ganking. Broodmother is a great pusher for beginners.

Keep in mind that these are just the 5 primary roles and as we go in-depth into each one we will cover sub-roles and a variety of heroes that can perform them. We will also be looking at play styles and mentalities for those specific heroes as well as builds for them.