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EnthusiastGroup: MembersJoined: 16-August 05Member No.: 27,496Bnet Name: fat404Bnet Realm: none







The Art Of DotA



by fat404



Last Update: June 17 2007





Preface - Winning The Game



Introduction

So here am I stuck in this hell hole with no Internet access and I haven't played DotA for almost a week now. So I've decided to write this guide down hopefully to keep me sharp at the game. Besides that, this also serves as a guide for you readers out there. Hopefully you'll learn something new by reading it. It's quite long but I'll try to keep it as concise as possible so bear with me. The stuffs that I'm writing in here are 2 long years of experience of playing this awesome game.



The main objective of this guide is of course, to teach you how to win the game. But even if you do everything right sometimes, you'd still lose due to several factors and sometimes luck is one of them. Anyway, this guide is here to teach you how to play this game to its highest level and I hope that it could raise your winning chance, even with bad luck on your side.



How To Win

To win the game is very easy, you just have to bring down the World Tree/Frozen Throne but the hardest part is reaching it. To secure a victory, we must first analyze what could make the game go wrong for us, what could prevent us from reaching the our objectives and how we could prevent it. This game is all about putting yourself beyond the possibility of defeat and see who could outlast each other before one side makes a crucial mistake.



So the key elements of winning the game are: Lane Control

Survival

Battle Techniques

Teamwork

Teambattle





Chapter 1 - Lane Control



Introduction

The first and most important part of the this game is Lane Control. It's the most crucial part of the game where it could determine how the game would grows.



Now what is lane control you might ask. It's basically about how well you manage your lane, be it going solo or sharing a double. Lane control only applies mostly during early game where stuffs like experience, gold, creep stats and so on are taken into consideration.



There are several things that we need to master to have a better lane control and the first one of them is last hitting.



Why Last Hit?

Let me get this straight so that each and everyone of you that are reading this could understand. If you don't do last hitting on the creeps, you're not playing DotA at all. Last hitting plays the biggest role in deciding which side has more lane control. I bet you're probably bored by people telling you or reading in all the guides telling you to last hit. Like it or not, it's the core of the game. If you don't at least try to do it, you're going to be outplayed and pwned.



Most of the guide around tells you to do last hit on the creeps but most of them didn't even mention why. Well last hitting can do a lot more than just getting gold and denying experience. It can also be used to prevent ganks. It's very common nowadays to see people blaming their teammates just because they fail to report missing heroes well guess what? Instead of relying on your teammate and blaming them, you should just practice your last hitting and lane control.



Some of my friends which laned with me early on request for lane switching just because they can't get the creeps because I last hit everyone of it. What's worst is that some of them wouldn't even try to last hit at all. To be honest, the only person that can only screw up my last hitting after I've been playing DotA for so long is my bro. Yes, he is a giant noob for knowing how to kill steal only but he's the only one that could outsmart me in last hitting the creeps. Other than that, no one could outlast-hit me.



There's an old saying that "you can't fail if you don't give up," and everytime whenever I see my teammates just give up last hitting, I would get really, really pissed. Which bring me back to my main point, if you're not doing last hitting, you're not playing DotA at all. Being competative is what DotA is all about and if you wouldn't even try to outplay your own teammate, you're taking the route down to loser-hill.



How To Last Hit?

To really last hit well and produce positive result, there are two parts that you should really have to master and understand. The first one is the micro (micromanagement) aspect and the other one is the macro (macromanagement) aspect. Micro simply means how well you control your hero. For example, how good you are with your keyboard and mouse. While the macro aspect focus more on the bigger picture.



Micro Of Last Hit

I know most of you know how to last hit but for those of you who don't, practice makes perfect. The key to effective last hitting lies in the ranged druid/necro creep. Try to keep your Alt button pressed at all times to see the creeps health and focus your eyes movement between the creeps health and the druid/necro's animation shots. While waiting for the creeps' health to go low, move your heroes left and right or back and forth. This is where tempo builds up. Believe it or not, the sound plays a big role in last hitting too. Let your mind wander off while you are focusing on the druid/necro shots and just move your hero according to the sound tempo. When it's time to score a creep, Right-Click it.



Macro Of Last Hit

This technique or theory is something I would like to call the Ying & Yang factor.



First you have to imagine that each creeps represents a tin of beer and a wave makes a pack of it. Like the diagram below.



(IMG: http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5260/creeplinegk3.jpg



Now each of the single red square represents the creep health points. The creep wave in DotA is well balanced with both sides having the same number of creeps and having the similiar attack speed and attack damage. Now the theory here is that if you don't request your hero to deal any damage to the enemy wave, the place where the creeps from both side meet will always be the same.



(IMG: http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9514/creepline2na0.jpg



If your hero takes one hit on the creep, the balance of the creep waves are disturbed (and move to the right, just like the picture above). So basically, in order to restore the balance and make the creep waves stay in a constant place, for each of the hit that you deal with the enemy creep, you have to deal the same amount of damage back to your creep. It's a simple concept of 'give and take'.



Consistency plays a major role in this advance last hitting technique. So whenever you're last hitting, it is better that you train yourself to last hit with only ONE hit on each creep and not two nor three hits, due to the fact that allied creep can only be denied when their HP are lower than half. That way, it would be easier for you to control the balance.



With this knowledge in mind, you can manipulate and make the creep waves to meet whenever you want. And this thus far has helped me a lot in staying in a lane farming from a very safe distance that kept me from being ganked. There were several times that an enemy stood in the forest waiting for me to push futher so that he could gank me, but I just keep the creep waves balanced the waves can't be pushed. Eventually, he took off after waiting for like minutes.



Besides that, you can also counter-push your creep back to your towers. It is something called 'lane deny'. Basically it's just denying your creeps whenever they're at half HP, just to maximize the deny output. That is, pushing the balance to your side.



Creep Pulling & Creep Blocking

Besides the Ying & Yang technique, you can also use these two techniques to pull your creeps closer to your tower so that it would be difficult for the enemy to gank you.



Creep pulling is a technique of pulling the neutral creeps out of their lair far enough so that your creep wave can engage them and get their travel course changed. The key to creep pulling successfully is through timing. Just check your minimap on your creep wave's location and their movement speed. Then just time your hit on the neutral creeps and lead them out so that they'll bump into your creep wave.



As for creep blocking, it's a technique of using your hero to block the creep by standing in front of them. It always ticks me off whenever I see people blocking creeps everytime the first wave of the game comes out because they don't even know what creep blocking is for, they just do it because pros are doing it without even asking why. For example, the Sentinel bottom lane, blocking the first wave would just engage the Sentinel tower with the enemy's creep wave and what happens next is the second wave being pushed further to the enemy's side. Which is a bad thing because it leaves you vulnerable to gank. Only creep block whenever you have to, not whenever you want to.



Minimap & Map-Awareness

The minimap is by far the most famous tool in DotA. It tells you everything you need to know about the happenings of the map. It tells you the the enemy's location and it helps you time your attacks, etc.



For me, I like to set the colour option so that each and every single heroes on the map has different colours. Everytime at the start of the match, I'd like to memorize and match the colours the enemy to the hero that they're using so that I could tell the location of each hero whenever I just look at the minimap later.



It is very common in DotA that the player whine and bitch whenever they are killed by a missing hero whom his teammate fail to report earlier. Well most of them are noobs who just fail to make use of the minimap. All of this wouldn't have happen if he checked his minimap constantly. By 'constantly' I mean every few seconds. For me, personally, I would check the minimap whenever after a creep wave.



5 is a very small number and counting it by looking at the minimap could save your ass.



Animation Canceling

Animation canceling is the act of canceling your hero backswing animation so that he could do another attack or cast another spell after the first one.



The reason why peole do animation cancel is to maximize the damage output and to counter Silencer's Last Word aura. Basically, Silencer's Last Word only kicks in after the whole animation for a spell has finished but if you manage to cancel the animation after the spell has dealt the damage, the aura won't affect you.



To do animation canceling, you just cast your spell and immediately commands your hero to move forward then cast another spell. The trick here is when you're ordering your hero to move, be sure to only click it ONCE and not spam it after the projectile or the spell has already hit your enemy. After you has canceled the animation, be sure to wait for a quick pause before you continue with the second spell. It's something called 'canceling too early' because the whole animation canceling won't be that much effective.



For more infomation, watch



Summary Always practice Last Hitting.

Be consistance when last hitting. Always remember the 'Give and Take' concept, the 'Ying and Yang' factor. One hit for one.

Pull the creeps or block the creeps whenever your lane is pushed far away.

Remember the colours of the enemy heroes.

Always check your minimap for missing hero everytime a new creep wave comes out.

Always practice Animation Canceling.

Stay Alive!





Chapter 2 - Survival



Introduction

Now that you know how to manage a lane, it's time to learn how to survive and not getting killed. In this chapter, I will talk about the concept of surviving and how to avoid from feeding.



A Game Of Clicking

As ridiculous as this might sound, DotA is basically just a game of selecting and clicking. So basically, to survive, just avoid being selected! Now when we talk about being targeted, we talk about focus fire.



I bet most of you probably asked yourself 'why me?' everytime you got killed. Well, there are numerous factors and they can range from you being an asshole, you're pwning hard, you being a major threat, you being the combo starter, you being the key person in your team, you being the most fragile hero in your team or just simply your enemy's skill work best on you.



So how do you avoid being focus fired? Easy, just determine the reason why they would target you and fix it. For example, for being an asshole, it's better that you just lay low and don't talk to your enemy the whole time you are playing the game. Or for being the most fragile hero in the game, fix your HP problem. Or being a combo starter, get a Blink Dagger and stay far behind the battle range.



On the contrast, being focus fired isn't necessary always a bad thing. For example, if the opposing team are too obsessed in wanting to kill you, you could always use that to your team advantage and irritate them. Make it hard for them to kill you so that they'll have to choose between killing you or killing the other 4 players on your team who are picking them off one by one.



But if you're totally run out of alternatives and distracting the enemy is hard for you, you could just hide behind your team and enter the battle last. Let's say that you're a Soulkeeper and there is a Necrolyte on the opposing team. Just lay low and wait until Necrolyte used his ultimate before you enter the battle, that way you could be safe. Make sure the stereotype threats for you are shut quiet before you enter the battle.



Juking

Like I said, DotA is just a game of selecting and clicking. One useful way of making you harder for the enemy to select is through something we called 'juking'. Juking is basically a way of hiding in the fog of war where your enemy can't see/select you.



To juke, just walk into places that could hide you from enemy's sight, for example the forest. When you are escaping, always walk close to the tree, that way, the trees would cover you. Or you could walk into some of the secret forest paths if you know them. Try to explore the map if you have the time because you won't know when this extra knowledge might save your ass.



Juking is best combined with the teleport scroll. If the situation gets really tight, you could always just hide in the juke spots and teleport out to to safety.



Appearing What You're Not: The Psychological Approach

This is a technique that is very effective against beginner or intermediate player. The idea is basically keeping your HP full at all time so that the enemy doesn't has the urge to nuke/kill you.



It's common human psychology that people tend to score an easy kill. Mostly in pubs where it's all about who's the best in kill stealing. If you're HP is always full, most people would let their teammates nuke you first until you have low HP enough then they'll take the one last shot at you. So if you are able to keep out of their range and avoid being nuked to red HP, they mostly won't have the urge to kill you.



Other than that, this could also train you not to rely much on your HP regeneration items. I once read a user criticizing the my guide not having any HP regeneration item early game and wondered how could I even managed to farm up a Radiance, well here's your answer.



Not getting nuked > HP regeneration. As simple as that.



Learn how the creep and tower AI work and keep yourself from being focused. Optimised your damaged taken to be as low as possible and you'll be out of trouble.



Just like any health/medical tips, 'preventing is better than fixing'.



Plan B For Backup

Anyone with half a brain would know about this but yet, we always fail to keep it. I think most people have a backup plan, the only problem is sticking to it.



Anyway it is always important to have a backup plan so that when things go wrong, it won't get worst or uglier. For example, it's always funny for me to see a Magina who blinks towards me just so that he thinks he could kill me. I just let him hit me until my HP is red enough and run. He blinks towards me thinking that a few more hits then I would be dead, but what he doesn't know is that I have a full pack of combo that could kill him under my sleeve. What happened next is that the Magina died with frustration.



The lesson that I'm trying to teach from the story above is that the Magina should have saved his Blink incase things have gone bad. He should have used his movement speed to harass and if he had calculated well enough, he could have killed me instead of having the idea of chasing.



Obsession And Greed

Believe me when I say this that 80% of the deaths in DotA was caused the by player himself. It is part of human nature, be it in life or in DotA, it is hard for people to let go, even the smallest stuffs.



From what I observed during the time that I am play this game is that I died not because I was careless or I wanted to, but it's because I allow the enemy to be able to do so. It really sucks to see a red HP enemy hero running away from you but what sucks even more is chasing him and dying along the way.



We are our own worst enemy and greed is something we have to overcome at the end of the day, not the enemy that got away.



Always remember that your death isn't worth a kill, especially if you had already outleveled everyone. If your enemy got away, let it be because he has to waste his time going back to base and regen. Make that a consolation.



But still, it's better if you could kill that guy but do it the safe way. To do so, always remember to have an attack plan and set how far you would go before you execute it. Always follow your attack plan and don't force yourself to do anything other than it because that is when things starts to go wrong. Always stick to the rules of engagement.



Learn how to let go because if you don't, obsession is what comes right after. And if you're not able to shake out of it, that can really screw up your entire match.



Summary DotA is just a game of selecting and clicking.

Find out the reason why you're being targeted and overcome it.

Disturb/taunt your enemy if they likes to focus you and use that to your team advantage.

Know when it is safe for you to enter the battle.

Juke whenever you're in danger.

Explore the map if you have the time.

Always carry a teleport scroll with you.

Preventing is always better than fixing.

Try to keep your HP as green as possible to avoid the urge of being nuked.

Always have a backup plan and stick with it.

We are our own worst enemy.

Learn how to let things go.

A death is not worth a kill.

Always plan your attacks, set your limits and have rules of engagement.

Never ever disobey your own rules of engagement.





Chapter 3 - Battle Techniques



Introduction

Now that you know how to survive, it's time to learn how to face your enemy. I was planning to make this chapter 2 but in DotA, surviving is more important than killing. Besides, defence is the best offence and you will learn why in this chapter. In this chapter, I will talk about the various way of battle techniques on how to approach your enemy and fight them.



The Greatest Weapon

Patience. Believe me when I say that 'patience' is the greatest weapon in DotA. The ability to wait, endure with great fortitute from the harassment and not losing it for 60 minutes is what seperates the pro and noobs. An average game could last as long as 60 minutes and if a player can't hold it for that long, that really can mess up the whole game.



There are a lot of thing that could break up a player's patience and that all boils down to how the player take it. For example, a death like First Blood could just break off someone's limit and probably make that person leaves the game. Keeping the cool and rational is the key. It doesn't matter if you're a teenager, a kid or an adult, whatever happens, don't act according to your emotion and just focus on the right thing to do. Obssession comes after you lose your rational and patience. Remember, outlast your enemy.



The Scariest Weapon

Confidence. Yes, you heard me. Confidence is the scariest weapon of all, not a hero with imba items nor a hero with imba scores. I've been playing for 2 years now and the only thing that still scare the hell out of me is the enemy having a confidence much greater than mine.



Umm, how do I put this. Let's say that I'm all prepared to kill this player and I am confident enough that my combo would kill him but after I made the first move, the enemy didn't even hesitate to run but instead, he stayed and decided to fight me, totally making me doubt myself. Now that kind of confidence is something scary, yet honest and real.



Now this stunt is not something that everyone could pull off easily. Even after playing this game for 2 years, I'm still practicing on mastering this skill. If you can pulled it right, it can really shakes the foundation of your enemy, even for the whole game. It just totally breaks a person confidence. Really, really nasty.



Deception (Sun Tzu)

To quote Sun Tzu:

Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.



When he's in disorder, crush him.



If he is secured at all points, be prepared for him.



If he is in superior strength, evade him.



If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him.



Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.



If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, seperate them.



Attack him where he is unpreprared, appear where you are not expected.

I've been reading 'The Art of Sun Tzu' lately and boy they're really awesome. The quote that I picked above are the ones that could be applied to DotA. I must say the art of deception is a very deadly weapon.



Other than the one listed above, if you have the ability to screw the enemy's combo, use it to your advantage. For that you could turn the table around.



Besides that, make use of the cooldown advantage. For example, if your enemy needs two spells which needed to be casted twice to kill you while you only need to cast yours once, make use of that leverage. When he has casted the two spells and waiting for the cooldown, rush up and pwn him because he couldn't do anything to you until his next cast.



It's all about knowing when to engage and picking your battle wisely. Timing is of the essence.



Moreover, not only you have to learn about yourself, but also learn about your enemy, then only you can be victorious. Learn about his skill build and his capability and try to test your enemy to learn about his playstyle. Predict what's is he going to do next and always stay one step ahead of him. Expect the unexpected. Outsmart and outplay him.



Have patience and focus hard on any loophole/mistakes that you could take advantage of. Try to bait him into making a mistake, irritate him, destroy his patience. Always remember, you have to put yourself beyond the possibility of defeat, then wait for an opportunity to defeat the enemy.



Security against your own weakness/defeat = Defence

Ability to defeat/attack your enemy's weakness = Offence



Outsmarting Your Enemy: The Psychological Approach

I've always like to think that DotA is all about psychology. Every action and move that we made are based on test/experiment beforehand. Experience counts when we're making decision for our action and the ability to go break the barrier and go beyond this state of mind is something I'd like to call wisdom.



Let me tell you a very own experience of mine where there is this imba Naix on the Scourge side who are currently pwning my side and he managed to picked each and every single one of my teammates while they're farming freely. Then later when the 5 of us were pushing the middle lane, the arrogant Naix decided that he's imba enough to go solo my whole team altogether.



Well at first my whole team were running away until I shouted, "hey guys, Naix HP is low like crap, one hit from each one of us and he'll be dead in no time!". We were playing in a Cyber Cafe, and the Naix heard what I said but he still progressed aggresively. So what happened next is that all of us turned and starts to focus on that Naix. The Naix was still trying to kill us with his Rage on but after a few seconds later, he noticed that his HP was actually dropping quicker than the hero that he was hitting. So he turned but it was too late, his avatar ended and we hexed him and raped him to death.



That moment felt great for me because I was able to break the fear/psychological barrier of my teammates with rational arguement. Imagine what would have happened if my team were to run and get picked off by Naix one by one, he would have score a quantuple kill.



On the contrast, there are times that wisdom can be your own enemy. That happens when you underestimate your enemy because you thought you have seen it all but you haven't. The thing to remember is always expect the unexpected and always respect your enemy.



Trash-talking

Trash-talking is an art. Lots of people dispise it and some just hate it. I think those people are weak, mostly because they're the one who can't stand it. For me, trash-talking is a form of battle techniques. Not only it can irritate your enemy but it can also cause him to screw things up.



It is what makes DotA popular. Cockiness triggers wrath and wrath triggers the motivation to fight. That is what's keeping the game alive. Besides, name me one game where the players don't trash-talk.



Personally, I don't like to trash people that much unless I really have to or provoked upon. But there is one person that I know who is hands down the most annoying and good at trash-talking. He is my little bro. Almost every game he played he would just trash anyone in it. That caused many players to leave my game but that doesn't bother me much because it's not my liittle bro fault for being an ass, but it's the leaver fault being like a little girl that they can't widthstand what my brother said.



Words are mightier than swords I must say, words are mightier than swords.



Even though trash-talking is an art, but at the end of the day, no matter how much we trash our enemy, it is always important to remember that trashing is only a way of attack and after the game, everything should be forgiven and forgotten. Always respect your enemy only then your enemy would respect you.



Summary Patience is the greatest and important weapon in DotA.

Confidence can shake the foundation of your enemy. The scariest weapon ever.

Deception is a beautiful art.

Appear what you're not.

When your enemy is in disorder, crush him.

If he is secured at all points, be prepared for him.

If he is in superior strength, evade him.

If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him.

Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, seperate them.

Attack him where he is unpreprared, appear where you are not expected.

Always find a way to screw up your enemy's combo.

Take advantage of your enemy cooldown.

Pick and time your battle wisely.

Know yourself and know your enemy. Predict and always be one step ahead.

Expect the unexpected.

Wait very hard for a loophole and seek leverage.

Defence is the best offence.

Always keep your cool together and outsmart your enemy.

Act rationally, not emotionally.

Always respect your enemy.

Trash-talking is a dirty yet beautiful form of attack.





Chapter 4 - Teamwork



Introduction

I was reading The Art of Sun Tzu and I came across this line which I think is the best way to describe the term 'teamwork' in DotA.



"There are not more than 5 musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard." -Sun Tzu



Very beautiful line. Anyway, as all of you know, DotA is all about teamwork and it's one of the factors that seperate the winners and the losers.



Teamwork can be determined by: Communication

Trust & Understanding

Role & Responsibilty

Leader

Communication

There are only two forms of communication in DotA. One is through text chatting and the other one is through voice communication program. Overall, using voice communication is the better way to communicate when playing this game rather than text because it saves time and it's much fast.



Personally, I don't type that much anymore ever since the day I used a voice communication program called, TeamSpeak. Currently, there are two commonly used program for voice communication in serious gaming. TeamSpeak and Ventrillo. I personally suggest TeamSpeak because it's easy to setup but it's also convenient to use. It does the job well with simple interface. So far, I have no problem with it. Not even once.



I have a server of my own for me and my friends to hangout and play DotA with. Setting up the server was easy as hell. All you have to do is download and install the server and know something about port forwarding if you have a router and you're set. You could also have a dynamic domain account (ie. no-ip.com) if you're planning on making your server 24/7 just like mine.



To be honest, I think typing is just crap. Just ask anyone who uses texting as a way of communication and they'll tell you that they have died before while in the middle of sending the text. It happens to everyone who uses text, but not those who uses voice-comm.



Trust & Understanding

Still, even with the most advance communication technology around, it is not the most effective way to attain good teamwork. The key to great teamwork relies on how well the teammates know each other. How well is their bond and how long they have been playing with each other so that they have better understanding and readings on what each of them will do next.



This is one of the reason why most of the top clans nowadays consist of friends who played with each other for a period of time. The ability to trust each other and making their words accountable is what makes a clan powerful.



Now this not just only applies to clan but can also be used in pubs. Mostly in pubs we have to team with strangers but this can also be a personal technique. From my own experience, whenever I play pubs, I rarely type much to my team except for when I'm trying to flame but when it comes down to teamwork, I use this strategy.



What I do was I study my teammates playstyle and cope with him. If he's playing too aggresive, I would try to support him if I have the ability to do so but if I can't for example, I'm playing Bone Fletcher, I would tell him to play passively until I can animation cancel then we'll harass.



The trick here is to stick with your teammate on a safe distance but not too far so that whenever he needs you, you can help him or when it's danger for both of you, you could save your own ass.



Role & Responsibility

A team consist of 5 players and it is important for each of the player to know what's their role to play in their part so that everything runs smoothly in the team on the road to victory.



The roles we have are:



Ganker - Mostly the role of a ganker is running around the map and gank everyone. So the most important thing to remember is mobility, which is why Teleport is an important skill. It is recommended to load teleport scroll whenever needs to and when the game progresses, Boots of Travel. Support observer ward, running around the whole map and stay out of sight hiding in the fog of war. Other than that, ganker should shout a lot. He should be the one doing all the shouting and commanding the players on his team and organizing ganks, like when to charge and when to pull the creeps. That's what a ganker should do. Eg. Vengeful Spirit, Queen of Pain.



Initiator/Combo - Initiator or combo heroes usually have powerful ultimate that could detroy the whole team so the most important thing to remember for the player playing the initiator role is the stay alive. Because if the initiator dies, the whole team combo is disrupted. Besides that, positioning is also important. Which is usually why it's bread and butter for most initiator to have Kelen's Dagger so that he can have element of surprise and starts the combo first. The third crucial aspect is timing and awareness. The team initiator would have to always keep a safe distance between him and the enemy so that he could blink in and play his part whenever the opportunity comes. Besides that, he would also able to communcate well with his teammate to know when he's going to blink in because nothing is a waste more than blinking in doing all those combos without any of your teammates present to backup and die afterwards. A great initiator can bring his team to victory and a bad one would lead the fall. Initiator usually is the key. Eg. Enigma, Earthshaker, Silencer, Sand King, Queen of Pain, Warlock.



Disabler - The role of a disabler is very easy. That is to screw up the opposing team's combo. But as easy as it sounds, not everyone are able to do it. Why? Because mostly disabler are low on HP and surviving is really an issue. That is why it is recommended that any disabler stays behind the battle all the time. The only time a disabler charge up front is when one of the enemy charge up front to attack his enemy, then run back again for safety. Besides that, a disable has to be fast on micro like using 3 disablers on 3 heroes in 1 seconds. My own tips here is to use the hotkey for the item inventory using the Numpad. It's much faster than clicking and selecting. If your Numpads have a floating thingy on the Numpad 5 just like the key F and J, it would make it even easier just by feeling it. Eg. Lion, Rhasta, Bane Elemental, Silencer.



Tanker - Believe me when I say that there is no such thing as pure tank. Because no smart player in this world would hit a 3k+ HP hero. But tanker exists though. To be a tank, not only you have to have HP and armor but also damage. Like I said, no one would hit a 3k+ HP hero unless he's a threat to the team. So it is always common nowadays that we see people buy Radiance along with a Heart of Tarrasque, because Immolation synergises well with survival. The role of a tanker is to enter the battle first and get as much focus fire as possible so that the rest of his teammate can do their job. So optimimizing the damage taken is very important for a tanker. Not only a tanker needs to know how to endure pain, but also know how to cause pain. Some tanker would just enters a battle and die and that's it for them. A great tanker would not only die but also deal as much pain as possible before he dies. Now that is what I call a great tanker. Eg. Sven, Bristleback.



Caster/Nuker/Killer - Well these 3 types usually have better early lane control than anyone else because they only have one purpose, which is to cause pain and nothing else. Well, there is nothing much I can say about this role because it's a no-brainer except for cooldown. Mostly these kind of heroes have short cooldowns so that they're able to nuke again so if you're in a position that you're able to kill on the next nuke, chase your enemy. Also, you have to communicate well with the gankers. Nuke first, then the ganker will enter and do their parts. If you're lucky enough and your cooldown finishes, nuke the second time and you might just have the kill. The motto is to keep spamming. Eg. Zues, Queen of Pain, Juggernaut, Tormented Soul, Lich.



Pusher - The job of a pusher is pretty straight forward. Clear creeps and get towers. Their role is to input pressure on enemy's lane as much as possible and get early towers so that their team have the early gold advantage. The pressure that I'm talking about is making your enemy defend their lane. For example, let's say that 5 enemies are pushing mid into your base, if you one person could push faster than 5 of them and make it to their tower at the same time/earlier, continue to input pressure so that it'll force them to trade raxes with raxes or they'll have to split up and defend. If one of them teleports back to face you, you do the same by teleport back to your mid lane because it would be 5 of you versus 4 of them. Besides that, you could also use this pressure to split them up to make them easier to gank. Mekansm is an item to consider, to increase creeps armor and heal them. Eg. Furion, Keeper of the Light, Death Prophet, Warlock, Lina, Tormented Soul.



Supporter - Supporter is the role that people usually doesn't give much credit to but a great supporter could also lead a team to victory. One of the important thing to know when playing the supporter role is to have a lot of mana regeneration and mana capacity. Most of the time a supporter fails his job due to limited amount of mana. Besides that, it is also recommended that supporter stay when teambattle because with that, he can use all his spells on his teammates instead of using them to save himself. Mekansm is an item to consider, to heal teammates and increase their armor. Eg. Omniknight, Treant Protector, Necrolyte, Lich, Keeper of the Light, Warlock.



DPS/Carry - Carrying is a very popular build back when the days where Aegis of the Immortal can still be bought. Divine-Aegis + attack speed would take down tower in seconds. But then all changed when Aegis can only be dropped after killing Roshan, so that makes the Divine-Aegis build no more viable. But that didn't destroy the carry role in DotA. After that, people come up with Monkey King Bar + The Butterfly for maximum DPS output to carry down the tower. It's not as good as the good old Divine-Aegis build but it's the most optimised way to pure DPS. Basically, the role of a carry is much like the role of a pusher. Applying pressure to side lanes and farm as much as possible early game. A carry must be very good at last hitting and also have a great sense of map awareness. Besides that, a carry also needs to know target piority, like knowing when to focus on taking the tower and raxes instead of killing the heroes. Other than that, a carry also needs to know about farming/helping weightage. Like placing how much time between farming and helping your teammates out.



Leader

Every clan needs a leader. A leader must have the qualities like maturity, discipline, integrity, credibility, experience and be able to think rationally.



There is no such thing as a full democracy clan because during tight situation, you need someone rational and be able to keep their head to call the shots. There would be no time for discussion or even voting on what to do. Every teambattle happens very fast and you can't really predict what might go wrong, so you need a person to make the decision, a person with a lot of experience enough that everyone else is be willing to follow his orders. But of course, during pre-battles the clan can carry out discussion on what to do and who should go first, etc.



Besides that, a leader must be able to be the bad guy of the team -a common enemy. He must be able to criticise critically and discipline or even scold his teammates based on real facts and not according to emotion. Showing maturity.



On the contrast, a leader must be able to motivate his own team -a common goal. Occasionally, throw in a few compliments for every nice moves that the teammates have made or making an improvement.



Other than that, a leader needs to know when to make jokes and when not to. For that, it will affect the credibility and integrity of his words and commands.



Summary DotA is a team game.

Use voice communication program to communicate instead of using text.

Play with people you know to have better understanding of each other.

Study your teammates move and always focus on collaborating each other.

Know your role in your team and stick with it.

Always have someone to lead and make the calls.

A leader have to be mature, discipline, integrity, credibility, experience and be able to think rationally.





Chapter 5 - Teambattle



Introduction

The most interesting and amazing thing about this game is the teambattle. Teambattle is the battle that took place between all the players from the Sentinel and the Scourge. Winning a teambattle is very crucial on deciding the fate of both teams. It could determine the outcome of the game.



When teambattle occurs, your team could be on either one side -the side that is pushing or the side that is defending.



Laying Battle Plans

According to The Art Of Sun Tzu, we can predict the outcome of a teambattle by 5 aspects: Time and distance.

Which leader is stronger.

Which team are more skilled.

Heroes lineup.

Team motivation and encouragement.

Before engaging teambattle, we must check whether the timing is good and the distance between the creep wave and our tower. We must take into the consideration of the 3 lanes and guess the enemy's attack plan. Prepare from every direction.



As for which team has the stronger leader and members, this is what training is all about. How much training and preparation before the match are the stuffs that determine which team/leader is stronger.



As for heroes lineup, before the beginning of everygame, it is best to come up with a theme or a playstyle.



The playstyles available are:



Ganking - Ganking playstyle is more to killing heroes and dominating early game until your enemy can't fought back. The key to a successful ganking playstyle is the ability to keep killing. Time and pace are the things that are important. The ability to keep killing non-stop is something hard to pull with this playstyle but if done right, it could bring victory.



Combo - Combo focuses more on getting your enemy all in just one teambattle to determine the fate of the game. The only problem here is gathering all 5 to let your side to kill. Only use this playstyle if your enemy is going for early push and you're the one defending.



Carry with support - Basically 4 players support a player who is very well farmed up to be able to carry the whole team. The problem with this playstyle is that the other 4 players have to be strong enough to hold the game until the carrier farms up the items. So it is advisable to have a really really good carrier who can farm fast and doesn't die often.



Full caster - A team of 5 nukers with short cooldown. It's all about killing whoevers that come across their sight. Quite scary. One common problem with this playstyle is that usually one or two teammates tend to stack each other's skill too quick that there is no optimisation. For example, two stuns being casted at once. Communication on who stuns first is neccessary. Other than that, late game could be a problem if early game lane controls are lost.



Early push - It's a team consist of heroes who can clean up creep waves and be able to summon creeps to tank and take down tower. It's a large army. The key to successfully pulling out this style is to farm up the basic important things as soon as possible to push early. Also, since pusher usually have the ability to jungle/clear creeps, they can outlevel others a little faster. Use this as an advantage.



Global and AOE - This playstyle is basically having players who can travel across the whole map in just a few seconds. The enemy might thought that it's just one of you but in just a blink of an eye, your whole team can be at your side and assist you. It's omnipresence. One thing to be aware of this playstyle is cooldown. Mostly global skills tend to have longer cooldowns so do not waste the ultimate unless you're sure that it's really neccessary.



Hybrid - A mix of any of the playstyles.



As for team motivation and encouragement. It's about which team has the higher burning desire to win. So it is always important for the leader to motivate his team to have a common goal. The leader must create an atmosphere where the player wants to win and they would fight until the end of it.



Defending

One of the benefits of being on the side that is defending is that you get to choose the point of engagement. That way, you can choose the spot where you can have the advantage. For example, near the tower to deal more damage.



Always have someone in your team who can clear the creeps. AOE spells with short cooldown are preferred. Have your nukers spam their AOE spells on the creeps to lower the pressure/workload of the tower. Stall as much as you can until you're comfortable to engage.



If the enemy is the one doing all the stalling, try to study what they're trying to do. For example if they're waiting for you guys to stick together to do their combos, split up.



Usually the one that is defending have the advantage of being on higher ground so use the fog of war as an advantage. If your enemy is pro enough to buy an observer ward, counter it with sentries.



If your side doesn't have a strong defence, have one or two of your teammates to push the side lane. That way they'll have to send some of their members back to defend, then you can sent yours back. That way they'll retrieve and abort their plan.



One useful tips when things really get out of hand is to use teleport scrolls to make your tower to have 9999 armor. To do that, you have to buy a Teleport Scroll and you MUST click on the tower by itself and not through the minimap or what so ever. The casting time for you to teleport to the tower is 3 seconds so time your teleport so that you won't get transferred. 3 seconds multiply by 5 makes a total 15 seconds or less if your team pulled it right.



Attacking & Pushing

Attacking or pushing is much harder than defending. Because to push, the timing must be right. Lots of thing must be taken into consideration like the distance of your creep waves to your enemy tower, the status of your other lanes, your enemy's morale, your team morale, ultimate cooldown advantage and level gap.



Before you decide to push a lane, make sure to push it starting closest to your base, that way you would be able to collect as many creeps as you can when you reach the enemy tower.



Other than that, you must also make sure that your other lanes aren't being pressured upon because if the side lanes are being attacked, you might have to abort your attack plan and defend the side lane.



Moreoever, you have to take into the considerations of your enemy's morale, like how well are they farming, what items do they have and whether they will grow any stronger.



Besides that, you have to judge your team's own morale too. Discuss and set a goal. For example, some having Mekansm at level 11 so that you guys could push earlier or what not. Have your base items set up as soon as possible.



Also, try to grasp every mistake that you could find from your enemy. For example, if the Spectre on the other side accidently used his ultimate just to check your teams location, gather up and push mid altogether because your enemy just lost one ultimate.



Finally, attack if your side has the level advantage. For example, if most of your heroes reached level 16 first while your enemy aren't, then push. Other than that, if your enemies just died a few heroes and they're currently being outnumbered, push and attack.



If your side is the one that is doing the attacks and pushing, one important thing that every member of your team should have is the ability to teleport. Because if anything else was to go wrong with your other lanes, you could transfer some of your members back to defend it.



Summary Factor in time and place before making any huge attacks.

Train as much as you can with your team to have better chemistry.

Always plan your playstyle, know what you want to play.

Always have a goal. Create a burning desire.

Choose the point of engagement of teambattle wisely. Make use of it.

Use your nukers to stall the creeps and decrease your tower's workload.

Know how your enemies are going to attack and don't make it easy for them.

Take advantage of the high ground when you're defending. Beware of the Observer Wards.

Pressure your enemy's side lanes if you want to make them abord their plan of attack.

Always force yourself and your teammates to carry teleport scrolls.

Use teleport scrolls to the fullest.

Start your pushing close to your base then slowly to your enemy's tower.

ake sure your side lanes are well pushed so that you don't have to abort your attack plan just to go back and defend it.

Set a goal on the base items that your team should have to start the pushing as early as possible.

Make use of the enemy's mistake.

If your side has the level advantage or outnumbering your enemy, go for it.

Conclusion - The Journey After



As a conclusion, this is not the end. DotA is something that is growing day by day and there will always be something new to learn everyday. Even I for an example are still learning after playing it for 2 years.



There are a lot of ways to improve yourself. The way I learn is by reading the forums constantly and also checking out the replays, mostly league replays to see what's going on in the competitive scene and also the replays where I lost, just to see what gone wrong.



My last piece of advice is for those who is learning by following other people's item build. Please don't just follow blindly, ask yourself why the pro buy the particular items and is there another way to play the particular hero and how can you improve, etc.



Before I end this, there is just one more thing, winning isn't everything. The most important thing to remember is to have fun. It's the tough moments that make us stronger.



"It's not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce."



That has always been my motto. Good luck and thank you.

So here am I stuck in this hell hole with no Internet access and I haven't played DotA for almost a week now. So I've decided to write this guide down hopefully to keep me sharp at the game. Besides that, this also serves as a guide for you readers out there. Hopefully you'll learn something new by reading it. It's quite long but I'll try to keep it as concise as possible so bear with me. The stuffs that I'm writing in here are 2 long years of experience of playing this awesome game.The main objective of this guide is of course, to teach you how to win the game. But even if you do everything right sometimes, you'd still lose due to several factors and sometimes luck is one of them. Anyway, this guide is here to teach you how to play this game to its highest level and I hope that it could raise your winning chance, even with bad luck on your side.To win the game is very easy, you just have to bring down the World Tree/Frozen Throne but the hardest part is reaching it. To secure a victory, we must first analyze what could make the game go wrong for us, what could prevent us from reaching the our objectives and how we could prevent it. This game is all about putting yourself beyond the possibility of defeat and see who could outlast each other before one side makes a crucial mistake.So the key elements of winning the game are:The first and most important part of the this game is Lane Control. It's the most crucial part of the game where it could determine how the game would grows.Now what is lane control you might ask. It's basically about how well you manage your lane, be it going solo or sharing a double. Lane control only applies mostly during early game where stuffs like experience, gold, creep stats and so on are taken into consideration.There are several things that we need to master to have a better lane control and the first one of them is last hitting.Let me get this straight so that each and everyone of you that are reading this could understand. If you don't do last hitting on the creeps, you're not playing DotA at all. Last hitting plays the biggest role in deciding which side has more lane control. I bet you're probably bored by people telling you or reading in all the guides telling you to last hit. Like it or not, it's the core of the game. If you don't at least try to do it, you're going to be outplayed and pwned.Most of the guide around tells you to do last hit on the creeps but most of them didn't even mention why. Well last hitting can do a lot more than just getting gold and denying experience. It can also be used to prevent ganks. It's very common nowadays to see people blaming their teammates just because they fail to report missing heroes well guess what? Instead of relying on your teammate and blaming them, you should just practice your last hitting and lane control.Some of my friends which laned with me early on request for lane switching just because they can't get the creeps because I last hit everyone of it. What's worst is that some of them wouldn't even try to last hit at all. To be honest, the only person that can only screw up my last hitting after I've been playing DotA for so long is my bro. Yes, he is a giant noob for knowing how to kill steal only but he's the only one that could outsmart me in last hitting the creeps. Other than that, no one could outlast-hit me.There's an old saying that "you can't fail if you don't give up," and everytime whenever I see my teammates just give up last hitting, I would get really, really pissed. Which bring me back to my main point, if you're not doing last hitting, you're not playing DotA at all. Being competative is what DotA is all about and if you wouldn't even try to outplay your own teammate, you're taking the route down to loser-hill.To really last hit well and produce positive result, there are two parts that you should really have to master and understand. The first one is the micro (micromanagement) aspect and the other one is the macro (macromanagement) aspect. Micro simply means how well you control your hero. For example, how good you are with your keyboard and mouse. While the macro aspect focus more on the bigger picture.I know most of you know how to last hit but for those of you who don't, practice makes perfect. The key to effective last hitting lies in the ranged druid/necro creep. Try to keep your Alt button pressed at all times to see the creeps health and focus your eyes movement between the creeps health and the druid/necro's animation shots. While waiting for the creeps' health to go low, move your heroes left and right or back and forth. This is where tempo builds up. Believe it or not, the sound plays a big role in last hitting too. Let your mind wander off while you are focusing on the druid/necro shots and just move your hero according to the sound tempo. When it's time to score a creep, Right-Click it.This technique or theory is something I would like to call the Ying & Yang factor.First you have to imagine that each creeps represents a tin of beer and a wave makes a pack of it. Like the diagram below.Now each of the single red square represents the creep health points. The creep wave in DotA is well balanced with both sides having the same number of creeps and having the similiar attack speed and attack damage. Now the theory here is that if you don't request your hero to deal any damage to the enemy wave, the place where the creeps from both side meet will always be the same.If your hero takes one hit on the creep, the balance of the creep waves are disturbed (and move to the right, just like the picture above). So basically, in order to restore the balance and make the creep waves stay in a constant place, for each of the hit that you deal with the enemy creep, you have to deal the same amount of damage back to your creep. It's a simple concept of 'give and take'.Consistency plays a major role in this advance last hitting technique. So whenever you're last hitting, it is better that you train yourself to last hit with only ONE hit on each creep and not two nor three hits, due to the fact that allied creep can only be denied when their HP are lower than half. That way, it would be easier for you to control the balance.With this knowledge in mind, you can manipulate and make the creep waves to meet whenever you want. And this thus far has helped me a lot in staying in a lane farming from a very safe distance that kept me from being ganked. There were several times that an enemy stood in the forest waiting for me to push futher so that he could gank me, but I just keep the creep waves balanced the waves can't be pushed. Eventually, he took off after waiting for like minutes.Besides that, you can also counter-push your creep back to your towers. It is something called 'lane deny'. Basically it's just denying your creeps whenever they're at half HP, just to maximize the deny output. That is, pushing the balance to your side.Besides the Ying & Yang technique, you can also use these two techniques to pull your creeps closer to your tower so that it would be difficult for the enemy to gank you.Creep pulling is a technique of pulling the neutral creeps out of their lair far enough so that your creep wave can engage them and get their travel course changed. The key to creep pulling successfully is through timing. Just check your minimap on your creep wave's location and their movement speed. Then just time your hit on the neutral creeps and lead them out so that they'll bump into your creep wave.As for creep blocking, it's a technique of using your hero to block the creep by standing in front of them. It always ticks me off whenever I see people blocking creeps everytime the first wave of the game comes out because they don't even know what creep blocking is for, they just do it because pros are doing it without even asking why. For example, the Sentinel bottom lane, blocking the first wave would just engage the Sentinel tower with the enemy's creep wave and what happens next is the second wave being pushed further to the enemy's side. Which is a bad thing because it leaves you vulnerable to gank. Only creep block whenever you have to, not whenever you want to.The minimap is by far the most famous tool in DotA. It tells you everything you need to know about the happenings of the map. It tells you the the enemy's location and it helps you time your attacks, etc.For me, I like to set the colour option so that each and every single heroes on the map has different colours. Everytime at the start of the match, I'd like to memorize and match the colours the enemy to the hero that they're using so that I could tell the location of each hero whenever I just look at the minimap later.It is very common in DotA that the player whine and bitch whenever they are killed by a missing hero whom his teammate fail to report earlier. Well most of them are noobs who just fail to make use of the minimap. All of this wouldn't have happen if he checked his minimap constantly. By 'constantly' I mean every few seconds. For me, personally, I would check the minimap whenever after a creep wave.5 is a very small number and counting it by looking at the minimap could save your ass.Animation canceling is the act of canceling your hero backswing animation so that he could do another attack or cast another spell after the first one.The reason why peole do animation cancel is to maximize the damage output and to counter Silencer's Last Word aura. Basically, Silencer's Last Word only kicks in after the whole animation for a spell has finished but if you manage to cancel the animation after the spell has dealt the damage, the aura won't affect you.To do animation canceling, you just cast your spell and immediately commands your hero to move forward then cast another spell. The trick here is when you're ordering your hero to move, be sure to only click it ONCE and not spam it after the projectile or the spell has already hit your enemy. After you has canceled the animation, be sure to wait for a quick pause before you continue with the second spell. It's something called 'canceling too early' because the whole animation canceling won't be that much effective.For more infomation, watch this video made by Ironfisto.Now that you know how to manage a lane, it's time to learn how to survive and not getting killed. In this chapter, I will talk about the concept of surviving and how to avoid from feeding.As ridiculous as this might sound, DotA is basically just a game of selecting and clicking. So basically, to survive, just avoid being selected! Now when we talk about being targeted, we talk about focus fire.I bet most of you probably asked yourself 'why me?' everytime you got killed. Well, there are numerous factors and they can range from you being an asshole, you're pwning hard, you being a major threat, you being the combo starter, you being the key person in your team, you being the most fragile hero in your team or just simply your enemy's skill work best on you.So how do you avoid being focus fired? Easy, just determine the reason why they would target you and fix it. For example, for being an asshole, it's better that you just lay low and don't talk to your enemy the whole time you are playing the game. Or for being the most fragile hero in the game, fix your HP problem. Or being a combo starter, get a Blink Dagger and stay far behind the battle range.On the contrast, being focus fired isn't necessary always a bad thing. For example, if the opposing team are too obsessed in wanting to kill you, you could always use that to your team advantage and irritate them. Make it hard for them to kill you so that they'll have to choose between killing you or killing the other 4 players on your team who are picking them off one by one.But if you're totally run out of alternatives and distracting the enemy is hard for you, you could just hide behind your team and enter the battle last. Let's say that you're a Soulkeeper and there is a Necrolyte on the opposing team. Just lay low and wait until Necrolyte used his ultimate before you enter the battle, that way you could be safe. Make sure the stereotype threats for you are shut quiet before you enter the battle.Like I said, DotA is just a game of selecting and clicking. One useful way of making you harder for the enemy to select is through something we called 'juking'. Juking is basically a way of hiding in the fog of war where your enemy can't see/select you.To juke, just walk into places that could hide you from enemy's sight, for example the forest. When you are escaping, always walk close to the tree, that way, the trees would cover you. Or you could walk into some of the secret forest paths if you know them. Try to explore the map if you have the time because you won't know when this extra knowledge might save your ass.Juking is best combined with the teleport scroll. If the situation gets really tight, you could always just hide in the juke spots and teleport out to to safety.This is a technique that is very effective against beginner or intermediate player. The idea is basically keeping your HP full at all time so that the enemy doesn't has the urge to nuke/kill you.It's common human psychology that people tend to score an easy kill. Mostly in pubs where it's all about who's the best in kill stealing. If you're HP is always full, most people would let their teammates nuke you first until you have low HP enough then they'll take the one last shot at you. So if you are able to keep out of their range and avoid being nuked to red HP, they mostly won't have the urge to kill you.Other than that, this could also train you not to rely much on your HP regeneration items. I once read a user criticizing the my guide not having any HP regeneration item early game and wondered how could I even managed to farm up a Radiance, well here's your answer.Not getting nuked > HP regeneration. As simple as that.Learn how the creep and tower AI work and keep yourself from being focused. Optimised your damaged taken to be as low as possible and you'll be out of trouble.Just like any health/medical tips, 'preventing is better than fixing'.Anyone with half a brain would know about this but yet, we always fail to keep it. I think most people have a backup plan, the only problem is sticking to it.Anyway it is always important to have a backup plan so that when things go wrong, it won't get worst or uglier. For example, it's always funny for me to see a Magina who blinks towards me just so that he thinks he could kill me. I just let him hit me until my HP is red enough and run. He blinks towards me thinking that a few more hits then I would be dead, but what he doesn't know is that I have a full pack of combo that could kill him under my sleeve. What happened next is that the Magina died with frustration.The lesson that I'm trying to teach from the story above is that the Magina should have saved his Blink incase things have gone bad. He should have used his movement speed to harass and if he had calculated well enough, he could have killed me instead of having the idea of chasing.Believe me when I say this that 80% of the deaths in DotA was caused the by player himself. It is part of human nature, be it in life or in DotA, it is hard for people to let go, even the smallest stuffs.From what I observed during the time that I am play this game is that I died not because I was careless or I wanted to, but it's because I allow the enemy to be able to do so. It really sucks to see a red HP enemy hero running away from you but what sucks even more is chasing him and dying along the way.We are our own worst enemy and greed is something we have to overcome at the end of the day, not the enemy that got away.Always remember that your death isn't worth a kill, especially if you had already outleveled everyone. If your enemy got away, let it be because he has to waste his time going back to base and regen. Make that a consolation.But still, it's better if you could kill that guy but do it the safe way. To do so, always remember to have an attack plan and set how far you would go before you execute it. Always follow your attack plan and don't force yourself to do anything other than it because that is when things starts to go wrong. Always stick to the rules of engagement.Learn how to let go because if you don't, obsession is what comes right after. And if you're not able to shake out of it, that can really screw up your entire match.Now that you know how to survive, it's time to learn how to face your enemy. I was planning to make this chapter 2 but in DotA, surviving is more important than killing. Besides, defence is the best offence and you will learn why in this chapter. In this chapter, I will talk about the various way of battle techniques on how to approach your enemy and fight them.Patience. Believe me when I say that 'patience' is the greatest weapon in DotA. The ability to wait, endure with great fortitute from the harassment and not losing it for 60 minutes is what seperates the pro and noobs. An average game could last as long as 60 minutes and if a player can't hold it for that long, that really can mess up the whole game.There are a lot of thing that could break up a player's patience and that all boils down to how the player take it. For example, a death like First Blood could just break off someone's limit and probably make that person leaves the game. Keeping the cool and rational is the key. It doesn't matter if you're a teenager, a kid or an adult, whatever happens, don't act according to your emotion and just focus on the right thing to do. Obssession comes after you lose your rational and patience. Remember, outlast your enemy.Confidence. Yes, you heard me. Confidence is the scariest weapon of all, not a hero with imba items nor a hero with imba scores. I've been playing for 2 years now and the only thing that still scare the hell out of me is the enemy having a confidence much greater than mine.Umm, how do I put this. Let's say that I'm all prepared to kill this player and I am confident enough that my combo would kill him but after I made the first move, the enemy didn't even hesitate to run but instead, he stayed and decided to fight me, totally making me doubt myself. Now that kind of confidence is something scary, yet honest and real.Now this stunt is not something that everyone could pull off easily. Even after playing this game for 2 years, I'm still practicing on mastering this skill. If you can pulled it right, it can really shakes the foundation of your enemy, even for the whole game. It just totally breaks a person confidence. Really, really nasty.To quote Sun Tzu:I've been reading 'The Art of Sun Tzu' lately and boy they're really awesome. The quote that I picked above are the ones that could be applied to DotA. I must say the art of deception is a very deadly weapon.Other than the one listed above, if you have the ability to screw the enemy's combo, use it to your advantage. For that you could turn the table around.Besides that, make use of the cooldown advantage. For example, if your enemy needs two spells which needed to be casted twice to kill you while you only need to cast yours once, make use of that leverage. When he has casted the two spells and waiting for the cooldown, rush up and pwn him because he couldn't do anything to you until his next cast.It's all about knowing when to engage and picking your battle wisely. Timing is of the essence.Moreover, not only you have to learn about yourself, but also learn about your enemy, then only you can be victorious. Learn about his skill build and his capability and try to test your enemy to learn about his playstyle. Predict what's is he going to do next and always stay one step ahead of him. Expect the unexpected. Outsmart and outplay him.Have patience and focus hard on any loophole/mistakes that you could take advantage of. Try to bait him into making a mistake, irritate him, destroy his patience. Always remember, you have to put yourself beyond the possibility of defeat, then wait for an opportunity to defeat the enemy.Security against your own weakness/defeat = DefenceAbility to defeat/attack your enemy's weakness = OffenceI've always like to think that DotA is all about psychology. Every action and move that we made are based on test/experiment beforehand. Experience counts when we're making decision for our action and the ability to go break the barrier and go beyond this state of mind is something I'd like to call wisdom.Let me tell you a very own experience of mine where there is this imba Naix on the Scourge side who are currently pwning my side and he managed to picked each and every single one of my teammates while they're farming freely. Then later when the 5 of us were pushing the middle lane, the arrogant Naix decided that he's imba enough to go solo my whole team altogether.Well at first my whole team were running away until I shouted, "hey guys, Naix HP is low like crap, one hit from each one of us and he'll be dead in no time!". We were playing in a Cyber Cafe, and the Naix heard what I said but he still progressed aggresively. So what happened next is that all of us turned and starts to focus on that Naix. The Naix was still trying to kill us with his Rage on but after a few seconds later, he noticed that his HP was actually dropping quicker than the hero that he was hitting. So he turned but it was too late, his avatar ended and we hexed him and raped him to death.That moment felt great for me because I was able to break the fear/psychological barrier of my teammates with rational arguement. Imagine what would have happened if my team were to run and get picked off by Naix one by one, he would have score a quantuple kill.On the contrast, there are times that wisdom can be your own enemy. That happens when you underestimate your enemy because you thought you have seen it all but you haven't. The thing to remember is always expect the unexpected and always respect your enemy.Trash-talking is an art. Lots of people dispise it and some just hate it. I think those people are weak, mostly because they're the one who can't stand it. For me, trash-talking is a form of battle techniques. Not only it can irritate your enemy but it can also cause him to screw things up.It is what makes DotA popular. Cockiness triggers wrath and wrath triggers the motivation to fight. That is what's keeping the game alive. Besides, name me one game where the players don't trash-talk.Personally, I don't like to trash people that much unless I really have to or provoked upon. But there is one person that I know who is hands down the most annoying and good at trash-talking. He is my little bro. Almost every game he played he would just trash anyone in it. That caused many players to leave my game but that doesn't bother me much because it's not my liittle bro fault for being an ass, but it's the leaver fault being like a little girl that they can't widthstand what my brother said.Words are mightier than swords I must say, words are mightier than swords.Even though trash-talking is an art, but at the end of the day, no matter how much we trash our enemy, it is always important to remember that trashing is only a way of attack and after the game, everything should be forgiven and forgotten. Always respect your enemy only then your enemy would respect you.I was reading The Art of Sun Tzu and I came across this line which I think is the best way to describe the term 'teamwork' in DotA."There are not more than 5 musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard." -Sun TzuVery beautiful line. Anyway, as all of you know, DotA is all about teamwork and it's one of the factors that seperate the winners and the losers.Teamwork can be determined by:There are only two forms of communication in DotA. One is through text chatting and the other one is through voice communication program. Overall, using voice communication is the better way to communicate when playing this game rather than text because it saves time and it's much fast.Personally, I don't type that much anymore ever since the day I used a voice communication program called, TeamSpeak. Currently, there are two commonly used program for voice communication in serious gaming. TeamSpeak and Ventrillo. I personally suggest TeamSpeak because it's easy to setup but it's also convenient to use. It does the job well with simple interface. So far, I have no problem with it. Not even once.I have a server of my own for me and my friends to hangout and play DotA with. Setting up the server was easy as hell. All you have to do is download and install the server and know something about port forwarding if you have a router and you're set. You could also have a dynamic domain account (ie. no-ip.com) if you're planning on making your server 24/7 just like mine.To be honest, I think typing is just crap. Just ask anyone who uses texting as a way of communication and they'll tell you that they have died before while in the middle of sending the text. It happens to everyone who uses text, but not those who uses voice-comm.Still, even with the most advance communication technology around, it is not the most effective way to attain good teamwork. The key to great teamwork relies on how well the teammates know each other. How well is their bond and how long they have been playing with each other so that they have better understanding and readings on what each of them will do next.This is one of the reason why most of the top clans nowadays consist of friends who played with each other for a period of time. The ability to trust each other and making their words accountable is what makes a clan powerful.Now this not just only applies to clan but can also be used in pubs. Mostly in pubs we have to team with strangers but this can also be a personal technique. From my own experience, whenever I play pubs, I rarely type much to my team except for when I'm trying to flame but when it comes down to teamwork, I use this strategy.What I do was I study my teammates playstyle and cope with him. If he's playing too aggresive, I would try to support him if I have the ability to do so but if I can't for example, I'm playing Bone Fletcher, I would tell him to play passively until I can animation cancel then we'll harass.The trick here is to stick with your teammate on a safe distance but not too far so that whenever he needs you, you can help him or when it's danger for both of you, you could save your own ass.A team consist of 5 players and it is important for each of the player to know what's their role to play in their part so that everything runs smoothly in the team on the road to victory.The roles we have are:Ganker - Mostly the role of a ganker is running around the map and gank everyone. So the most important thing to remember is mobility, which is why Teleport is an important skill. It is recommended to load teleport scroll whenever needs to and when the game progresses, Boots of Travel. Support observer ward, running around the whole map and stay out of sight hiding in the fog of war. Other than that, ganker should shout a lot. He should be the one doing all the shouting and commanding the players on his team and organizing ganks, like when to charge and when to pull the creeps. That's what a ganker should do. Eg. Vengeful Spirit, Queen of Pain.Initiator/Combo - Initiator or combo heroes usually have powerful ultimate that could detroy the whole team so the most important thing to remember for the player playing the initiator role is the stay alive. Because if the initiator dies, the whole team combo is disrupted. Besides that, positioning is also important. Which is usually why it's bread and butter for most initiator to have Kelen's Dagger so that he can have element of surprise and starts the combo first. The third crucial aspect is timing and awareness. The team initiator would have to always keep a safe distance between him and the enemy so that he could blink in and play his part whenever the opportunity comes. Besides that, he would also able to communcate well with his teammate to know when he's going to blink in because nothing is a waste more than blinking in doing all those combos without any of your teammates present to backup and die afterwards. A great initiator can bring his team to victory and a bad one would lead the fall. Initiator usually is the key. Eg. Enigma, Earthshaker, Silencer, Sand King, Queen of Pain, Warlock.Disabler - The role of a disabler is very easy. That is to screw up the opposing team's combo. But as easy as it sounds, not everyone are able to do it. Why? Because mostly disabler are low on HP and surviving is really an issue. That is why it is recommended that any disabler stays behind the battle all the time. The only time a disabler charge up front is when one of the enemy charge up front to attack his enemy, then run back again for safety. Besides that, a disable has to be fast on micro like using 3 disablers on 3 heroes in 1 seconds. My own tips here is to use the hotkey for the item inventory using the Numpad. It's much faster than clicking and selecting. If your Numpads have a floating thingy on the Numpad 5 just like the key F and J, it would make it even easier just by feeling it. Eg. Lion, Rhasta, Bane Elemental, Silencer.Tanker - Believe me when I say that there is no such thing as pure tank. Because no smart player in this world would hit a 3k+ HP hero. But tanker exists though. To be a tank, not only you have to have HP and armor but also damage. Like I said, no one would hit a 3k+ HP hero unless he's a threat to the team. So it is always common nowadays that we see people buy Radiance along with a Heart of Tarrasque, because Immolation synergises well with survival. The role of a tanker is to enter the battle first and get as much focus fire as possible so that the rest of his teammate can do their job. So optimimizing the damage taken is very important for a tanker. Not only a tanker needs to know how to endure pain, but also know how to cause pain. Some tanker would just enters a battle and die and that's it for them. A great tanker would not only die but also deal as much pain as possible before he dies. Now that is what I call a great tanker. Eg. Sven, Bristleback.Caster/Nuker/Killer - Well these 3 types usually have better early lane control than anyone else because they only have one purpose, which is to cause pain and nothing else. Well, there is nothing much I can say about this role because it's a no-brainer except for cooldown. Mostly these kind of heroes have short cooldowns so that they're able to nuke again so if you're in a position that you're able to kill on the next nuke, chase your enemy. Also, you have to communicate well with the gankers. Nuke first, then the ganker will enter and do their parts. If you're lucky enough and your cooldown finishes, nuke the second time and you might just have the kill. The motto is to keep spamming. Eg. Zues, Queen of Pain, Juggernaut, Tormented Soul, Lich.Pusher - The job of a pusher is pretty straight forward. Clear creeps and get towers. Their role is to input pressure on enemy's lane as much as possible and get early towers so that their team have the early gold advantage. The pressure that I'm talking about is making your enemy defend their lane. For example, let's say that 5 enemies are pushing mid into your base, if you one person could push faster than 5 of them and make it to their tower at the same time/earlier, continue to input pressure so that it'll force them to trade raxes with raxes or they'll have to split up and defend. If one of them teleports back to face you, you do the same by teleport back to your mid lane because it would be 5 of you versus 4 of them. Besides that, you could also use this pressure to split them up to make them easier to gank. Mekansm is an item to consider, to increase creeps armor and heal them. Eg. Furion, Keeper of the Light, Death Prophet, Warlock, Lina, Tormented Soul.Supporter - Supporter is the role that people usually doesn't give much credit to but a great supporter could also lead a team to victory. One of the important thing to know when playing the supporter role is to have a lot of mana regeneration and mana capacity. Most of the time a supporter fails his job due to limited amount of mana. Besides that, it is also recommended that supporter stay when teambattle because with that, he can use all his spells on his teammates instead of using them to save himself. Mekansm is an item to consider, to heal teammates and increase their armor. Eg. Omniknight, Treant Protector, Necrolyte, Lich, Keeper of the Light, Warlock.DPS/Carry - Carrying is a very popular build back when the days where Aegis of the Immortal can still be bought. Divine-Aegis + attack speed would take down tower in seconds. But then all changed when Aegis can only be dropped after killing Roshan, so that makes the Divine-Aegis build no more viable. But that didn't destroy the carry role in DotA. After that, people come up with Monkey King Bar + The Butterfly for maximum DPS output to carry down the tower. It's not as good as the good old Divine-Aegis build but it's the most optimised way to pure DPS. Basically, the role of a carry is much like the role of a pusher. Applying pressure to side lanes and farm as much as possible early game. A carry must be very good at last hitting and also have a great sense of map awareness. Besides that, a carry also needs to know target piority, like knowing when to focus on taking the tower and raxes instead of killing the heroes. Other than that, a carry also needs to know about farming/helping weightage. Like placing how much time between farming and helping your teammates out.Every clan needs a leader. A leader must have the qualities like maturity, discipline, integrity, credibility, experience and be able to think rationally.There is no such thing as a full democracy clan because during tight situation, you need someone rational and be able to keep their head to call the shots. There would be no time for discussion or even voting on what to do. Every teambattle happens very fast and you can't really predict what might go wrong, so you need a person to make the decision, a person with a lot of experience enough that everyone else is be willing to follow his orders. But of course, during pre-battles the clan can carry out discussion on what to do and who should go first, etc.Besides that, a leader must be able to be the bad guy of the team -a common enemy. He must be able to criticise critically and discipline or even scold his teammates based on real facts and not according to emotion. Showing maturity.On the contrast, a leader must be able to motivate his own team -a common goal. Occasionally, throw in a few compliments for every nice moves that the teammates have made or making an improvement.Other than that, a leader needs to know when to make jokes and when not to. For that, it will affect the credibility and integrity of his words and commands.The most interesting and amazing thing about this game is the teambattle. Teambattle is the battle that took place between all the players from the Sentinel and the Scourge. Winning a teambattle is very crucial on deciding the fate of both teams. It could determine the outcome of the game.When teambattle occurs, your team could be on either one side -the side that is pushing or the side that is defending.According to The Art Of Sun Tzu, we can predict the outcome of a teambattle by 5 aspects:Before engaging teambattle, we must check whether the timing is good and the distance between the creep wave and our tower. We must take into the consideration of the 3 lanes and guess the enemy's attack plan. Prepare from every direction.As for which team has the stronger leader and members, this is what training is all about. How much training and preparation before the match are the stuffs that determine which team/leader is stronger.As for heroes lineup, before the beginning of everygame, it is best to come up with a theme or a playstyle.The playstyles available are:Ganking - Ganking playstyle is more to killing heroes and dominating early game until your enemy can't fought back. The key to a successful ganking playstyle is the ability to keep killing. Time and pace are the things that are important. The ability to keep killing non-stop is something hard to pull with this playstyle but if done right, it could bring victory.Combo - Combo focuses more on getting your enemy all in just one teambattle to determine the fate of the game. The only problem here is gathering all 5 to let your side to kill. Only use this playstyle if your enemy is going for early push and you're the one defending.Carry with support - Basically 4 players support a player who is very well farmed up to be able to carry the whole team. The problem with this playstyle is that the other 4 players have to be strong enough to hold the game until the carrier farms up the items. So it is advisable to have a really really good carrier who can farm fast and doesn't die often.Full caster - A team of 5 nukers with short cooldown. It's all about killing whoevers that come across their sight. Quite scary. One common problem with this playstyle is that usually one or two teammates tend to stack each other's skill too quick that there is no optimisation. For example, two stuns being casted at once. Communication on who stuns first is neccessary. Other than that, late game could be a problem if early game lane controls are lost.Early push - It's a team consist of heroes who can clean up creep waves and be able to summon creeps to tank and take down tower. It's a large army. The key to successfully pulling out this style is to farm up the basic important things as soon as possible to push early. Also, since pusher usually have the ability to jungle/clear creeps, they can outlevel others a little faster. Use this as an advantage.Global and AOE - This playstyle is basically having players who can travel across the whole map in just a few seconds. The enemy might thought that it's just one of you but in just a blink of an eye, your whole team can be at your side and assist you. It's omnipresence. One thing to be aware of this playstyle is cooldown. Mostly global skills tend to have longer cooldowns so do not waste the ultimate unless you're sure that it's really neccessary.Hybrid - A mix of any of the playstyles.As for team motivation and encouragement. It's about which team has the higher burning desire to win. So it is always important for the leader to motivate his team to have a common goal. The leader must create an atmosphere where the player wants to win and they would fight until the end of it.One of the benefits of being on the side that is defending is that you get to choose the point of engagement. That way, you can choose the spot where you can have the advantage. For example, near the tower to deal more damage.Always have someone in your team who can clear the creeps. AOE spells with short cooldown are preferred. Have your nukers spam their AOE spells on the creeps to lower the pressure/workload of the tower. Stall as much as you can until you're comfortable to engage.If the enemy is the one doing all the stalling, try to study what they're trying to do. For example if they're waiting for you guys to stick together to do their combos, split up.Usually the one that is defending have the advantage of being on higher ground so use the fog of war as an advantage. If your enemy is pro enough to buy an observer ward, counter it with sentries.If your side doesn't have a strong defence, have one or two of your teammates to push the side lane. That way they'll have to send some of their members back to defend, then you can sent yours back. That way they'll retrieve and abort their plan.One useful tips when things really get out of hand is to use teleport scrolls to make your tower to have 9999 armor. To do that, you have to buy a Teleport Scroll and you MUST click on the tower by itself and not through the minimap or what so ever. The casting time for you to teleport to the tower is 3 seconds so time your teleport so that you won't get transferred. 3 seconds multiply by 5 makes a total 15 seconds or less if your team pulled it right.Attacking or pushing is much harder than defending. Because to push, the timing must be right. Lots of thing must be taken into consideration like the distance of your creep waves to your enemy tower, the status of your other lanes, your enemy's morale, your team morale, ultimate cooldown advantage and level gap.Before you decide to push a lane, make sure to push it starting closest to your base, that way you would be able to collect as many creeps as you can when you reach the enemy tower.Other than that, you must also make sure that your other lanes aren't being pressured upon because if the side lanes are being attacked, you might have to abort your attack plan and defend the side lane.Moreoever, you have to take into the considerations of your enemy's morale, like how well are they farming, what items do they have and whether they will grow any stronger.Besides that, you have to judge your team's own morale too. Discuss and set a goal. For example, some having Mekansm at level 11 so that you guys could push earlier or what not. Have your base items set up as soon as possible.Also, try to grasp every mistake that you could find from your enemy. For example, if the Spectre on the other side accidently used his ultimate just to check your teams location, gather up and push mid altogether because your enemy just lost one ultimate.Finally, attack if your side has the level advantage. For example, if most of your heroes reached level 16 first while your enemy aren't, then push. Other than that, if your enemies just died a few heroes and they're currently being outnumbered, push and attack.If your side is the one that is doing the attacks and pushing, one important thing that every member of your team should have is the ability to teleport. Because if anything else was to go wrong with your other lanes, you could transfer some of your members back to defend it.As a conclusion, this is not the end. DotA is something that is growing day by day and there will always be something new to learn everyday. Even I for an example are still learning after playing it for 2 years.There are a lot of ways to improve yourself. The way I learn is by reading the forums constantly and also checking out the replays, mostly league replays to see what's going on in the competitive scene and also the replays where I lost, just to see what gone wrong.My last piece of advice is for those who is learning by following other people's item build. Please don't just follow blindly, ask yourself why the pro buy the particular items and is there another way to play the particular hero and how can you improve, etc.Before I end this, there is just one more thing, winning isn't everything. The most important thing to remember is to have fun. It's the tough moments that make us stronger."It's not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce."That has always been my motto. Good luck and thank you.



This post has been edited by fat404: Jun 18 2007, 11:14 AM