How to be a smarter carry player

…AKA what you should think about more in the safelane

I will again preface this by saying I am not a top tier Dota 2 player. I peaked at a mere 4.8k (and am currently about a hundred MMR below that), but I’d like to share my thoughts on a role that hasn’t been talked about too much in Dota, and unlike mid/support, hasn’t been discussed in detail. Most of the things I talk about, I have learned by watching pro player replays. If you feel anything I say is wrong in any way, feel free to contact me either on Medium or on Discord (Madsen#1964) or even Steam (steamcommunity.com/id/madsenx03/). I’m always very open to discussion, as the theoretical side of Dota is a huge interest of mine.

The last thing I will say before continuing on to the actual content is that all of this started as a pretty long and sloppily written Discord rant after someone asked to talk about the carry role as it is my main position, so I apologize in advance for any grammatical mistakes and for the flow of the post being slightly off. Shoutout to Spotify’s Daily Mixes because they’re getting me through this. Also, Pusha T, release your album. Please.

I will split this post up into a total of three parts so that I can go into more detail for every section.

1. LEARN TO LAST HIT

It may sound stupid, but this is a big issue for a lot of lower MMR players. Missing CS is devastating. What can you do to get better?

Find out and remember how many times a tower can hit a creep before you can kill it with your current damage. There are lots of excellent guides on how to last hit under tower, so rather than pointlessly rewriting things that have been said much better than I could, I’ll just link you this Steam guide by user esvban and this reddit post by /u/PhysicsMathMan.

Practice last hitting a lot. If you miss like 20 creeps in the laning stage you lose like ~800g which is half an item often. Go into lobbies, bot games, play 1v1’s, anything you think will help.

Don’t rely too heavily on crutches when learning to last hit; put that time into learning all your heroes attack animations and practicing them; for example, you might be tempted to use Searing Arrows to last hit but you should to learn to use Clinkz’s right click to last hit instead, using Searing Arrows only to get CS you otherwise wouldn’t be able to get (let’s say you have double range creeps hitting a creep and your base attack damage isn’t enough to kill it). This doesn’t mean you should avoid getting items like Quelling Blade, but you need to consider if you really need it on some heroes and if you need it. Remember, you only need around 5 LH for it to pay off! For example, the new QB is amazing on a hero like Meepo or Naga (or even Lone Druid’s bear, thanks luckskillvictory from the learndota2 Discord) who have very low base attack because the new QB is a flat amount of damage, and the old QB didn’t improve their early damage like the new one. Then there’s some heroes like Slark, who have decent base damage and are going to get stat items that help them farm really soon but they can still get a QB because they plan on farming a lot of jungle camps early.

The best way to learn last hitting well isnt some stupid Kobold challenge; just think about what the carries you want to play are and practice with no skills, items or level ups to get a hang for their attack animation.

Remember that you’re not done with focusing on your last hits past 10 minutes. A lot of players seem to stop paying attention to getting the actual last hit past the laning stage. You need to be focused on getting each last hit you can for the entire game — if you’re a Luna walking up to an empty lane to push it dont just A-click and miss all of the creeps because of glaives — the push can wait half a second for you to get that 40 gold.

An easy way to get better at last hitting is to look at your allied range creep as your guide/metronome as to when you should last hit, because he does the most damage.

2. Be efficient in your patterns

While farming, think about where the next place you’re going to farm at is. If you’re in the Radiant safe lane and killed the tower, you can push that lane, kill the hard camp and small camp close to lane and then return in time for the new bottom lane creep wave, as an example.

Learn to stack and pull! This is really important. If you’re playing a Dominator buying carry don’t just let the item sit there for the aura. Dominate creeps to stack with as soon as you buy the item. Domi has other uses but I’m going to get into that in a bit.

Constantly think about the camp respawn times (odd numbered minutes, so 1/3/5/7/..). Whenever you’re farming jungle, look up at the clock every now and then, and if you’re closing in on a respawn time while killing a camp, stack the camp first, then kill. An important point to that is to learn how to stack all of the new camps. You can get the hang of the stacks and pulls by messing around a lobby looking at the spawn boxes with Alt and pairing it with your in-game clock. Just in case, here’s a stack timing map, courtesy of DenisDesign. Stacking is basically free gold. You’re a carry, you like gold, take the free gold.

In line with the theme of free money, learn to pull for yourself. If, for example, the enemy offlaner leaves your lane to mess with someone else, you can have your supports go help that person, push out the lane, and then stack-pull the large camp into your lane for the next wave. Congrats, you just got all the lane creeps, a stacked hard camp, and managed to reset your lane equilibrium, without ever giving the enemies XP or Gold, just because of one single stack-pull. Don’t be afraid to pull a single camp if you need it to reset your lane equilibrium.

Farming efficiency is all about the small details. Whenever you’re going from camp to camp, think a step ahead. When, for example, you leave your bottom Radiant safelane to go farm your Radiant bottom jungle you need to already have an idea of where you’re gonna go after farming that and how you’re gonna farm the jungle in general. You might say to yourself: “I’m gonna start at the hard camp, move on to the small camp, go left to the medium camp beneath the bounty rune, then keep going left to the medium camp closest to base then go to the hard camp close to Shrine,

then if I’m strong enough to take ancients I’ll take ancients, if not, I’ll proceed into the closest free lane”.

then if I’m strong enough to take ancients I’ll take ancients, if not, I’ll proceed into the closest free lane”. In general, in the mid game, you should generally take a couple creep waves, pushing out the lane, back off when you feel threatened and repeat the above jungle pattern, and you can do the above every 2 minutes. You should be able farm it fast enough that you can get 1–2 lane creep waves by the time the jungle respawns.

If you feel extremely threatened and don’t want to go back to lane, you can go to the offlane jungle or even the enemy jungle, just constantly keep thinking about the best farming patterns possible, what’s the best camp to camp rotation in your situation, things like that. If you really can’t get the hang of it while playing, think about it like this. Split the map’s jungle into 4 areas (Radiant Safelane jungle, Radiant Offlane jungle, Dire Safelane jungle, Dire Offlane jungle), and farm these separately, clockwise, starting from the closest camp to where you are at any given point. This will do an okay job until you get a better feel for how to rotate between farming spots more efficiently (that is, starting to include the lanes into this rotation, but I’ll get into that in a bit.).

Other little efficiency things are Tread Switching for spells, figuring out how to use Blink efficiently when farming, cutting down trees to create new paths, which can save a lot of time, etc. Other things you can do now in the new patch is make use of the Shrine while farming if you can call someone else to come us it as well. Another big farming efficiency and farm pattern thing is to always carry a tp, possibly even two at all times; whenever farming you might see a lane being pushed in by like a double or triple wave of enemy creeps. By the time you walk over there they’d all die, so having a tp to get there can get you anywhere from 2–6 enemy creep waves, as well as putting you into position to transition into the enemy jungle.

Learn to micro! A big element of a lot of carry heroes is being able to micro properly, and there’s so many different ways this is applicable in.

First, most common and obvious, are illusion heroes. Being able to spread out your illusions so that one pushes a lane and one farms a camp while you take care of other camps with your hero is amazing. The best tips I can give on that are:

First, most common and obvious, are illusion heroes. Being able to spread out your illusions so that one pushes a lane and one farms a camp while you take care of other camps with your hero is amazing. The best tips I can give on that are: Figure out how to micro multiple illus; I use cloning, ie when you select all your illus, you a-move them to a lane, then shift deselect one, then issue another command, like a-clicking a jungle camp. That makes one illu go push out a lane because it remembers the command issued before you shift clicked it, and the other follows the newly issued command because it was still selected. Rinse and repeat for as many illusions as you have.

You can also bind all your illus to different control groups depending on your hero and use those hotkeys to micro.

Another tip for this is that you can put different amounts of attention towards the micro of each of these illus. You need to do less precise actions for your illu in the jungle because your illu is the only thing hitting creeps, therefore insuring you get the last hits; the only micro you might want to do with it is make it kill the big creep, the one that does the most damage, first. Meanwhile, as your hero and jungle illus clear camps, you actively try to cs with your lane illu, because you have to keep track of your allied creeps in lane.

The other things you want to learn micro for are heroes who are specifically reliant on it, like Lone Druid or Meepo if you want to play those, or…

Heroes that buy a Helm of the Dominator. This is really important in this patch (7.01) specifically, since the Helm is really strong right now. If you’re not using Domi to stack, use it to get a very strong utility or aura creep. I’m going to list and talk about some of the best creeps to get. Remember that all of these creeps when dominated get 425 movespeed and 1.4k hp, making even the worst jungle creeps really good.

Small Satyr — 4 sec cooldown purge; This can significantly slow someone you’re chasing, it can purge stuff like Flame Guard from an Ember you’re fighting, you can purge Hex off of yourself, all in all, a good creep — one of the best.

Harpy— Chain Lightning is great early game; its huge range and very nice damage make it a great teamfight creep, being able to bully early-mid game supports.

Kobold — The Movespeed aura is very good (moreso on some heroes than others), and like the Harpy this is a nice creep to get if you can’t, or don’t have time to, find some better creep.

Hill Troll Priest — A good laning stage creep, this creep gives you passive mana aura in lane and a small heal.

Centaur — Great stun, which gets much easier to hit once this creep has 425 MS.

Wolf — Ridiculous damage aura, one of the best creeps.

Big Satyr — Really nice nuke early game and really nice hp regen aura (6hp/s!) which paired with dominators 8hp/s aura is pretty ridiculous for pushing. Also a really good creep to push lane alone, with a decent attack, as well as the Shockwave.

Frost Ogre — The frost armor is really good.

Mud Golem — The free ministun is nice, and once you dominate another creep he dies giving you two more ministuns.

Dark Troll Summoner — Really good creep early-mid game; gives you a disable with the net; also the skeleton summons which are good for pushing — especially with your dominator attack speed aura.

Hellbear — Nice for pushing out lanes on its own while you farm jungle with your hero because it has a nuke, aura for your creeps and decent damage for you to cs with it.

I bolded the creeps I consider the best.

— 4 sec cooldown purge; This can significantly slow someone you’re chasing, it can purge stuff like Flame Guard from an Ember you’re fighting, you can purge Hex off of yourself, all in all, a good creep — one of the best. Harpy— Chain Lightning is great early game; its huge range and very nice damage make it a great teamfight creep, being able to bully early-mid game supports. Kobold — The Movespeed aura is very good (moreso on some heroes than others), and like the Harpy this is a nice creep to get if you can’t, or don’t have time to, find some better creep. Hill Troll Priest — A good laning stage creep, this creep gives you passive mana aura in lane and a small heal. Centaur — Great stun, which gets much easier to hit once this creep has 425 MS. — Ridiculous damage aura, one of the best creeps. — Really nice nuke early game and really nice hp regen aura (6hp/s!) which paired with dominators 8hp/s aura is pretty ridiculous for pushing. Also a really good creep to push lane alone, with a decent attack, as well as the Shockwave. Frost Ogre — The frost armor is really good. Mud Golem — The free ministun is nice, and once you dominate another creep he dies giving you two more ministuns. — Really good creep early-mid game; gives you a disable with the net; also the skeleton summons which are good for pushing — especially with your dominator attack speed aura. Hellbear — Nice for pushing out lanes on its own while you farm jungle with your hero because it has a nuke, aura for your creeps and decent damage for you to cs with it. I bolded the creeps I consider the best. Another good thing to learn for farming efficiency is where lane creeps arrive at which points in time; you mostly get a feel for this, and a nice way to tell is to look at your own creeps and just imagine the opponents lane creeps in the mirrored position on the map. Here’s an, admittedly outdated, guide on the lane creep timings, by reddit user /u/dragon_atf.

A cool tip Iread a long time ago that helped me not tunnel vision while CSing is to take a glance at the minimap whenever you get a last hit. Helps improve your map awareness too!

If you dont know what to do, go hit creeps. Always hit creeps. If you ever find yourself being lost, not knowing what to do, just go farm — waste no time.

Watch pro safelane players to learn even more! Pay attention to their farm patterns, take note of their lane equilibrium and aggro techniques, considering those are some things I didn’t go too into detail about (most mid guides talk about those things a lot).

3. Itemization

Don’t get the wrong items! As a carry, you’re buying expensive items and making the wrong decision can make your game a lot harder.

Your itemization needs to accomplish multiple goals. It needs to:

a) be reactionary and counter enemy heroes and items

b) amplify your hero’s strengths

c) make up for your hero’s weaknesses

Those aren’t in any specific order. I’ll give examples for all of them in a bit. I’ll start by generalizing a lot, but every hero in Dota is unique, and all of the principles I bring up won’t apply 100% of the time.

As a carry, unless you have a reliable way to farm fast, you need to get something that boosts up your GPM most of the time. For example, let’s take a couple of standard carries — let’s say Luna, Jugg, Slark and AM. Really random, but let’s look at their farming capabilities.

Luna — Excellent farmer. Built in farming mechanic in her glaives and she needs nothing to be able to farm fast and efficiently; she even has Lunar Blessing to give her damage for the glaives.

Slark — Okay farmer. Bad stats, but Dark Pact is a good tool to farm efficiently, and especially if paired with good Tread Switching ability, you will be able to stay on the map farming with Dark Pact and Shadow Dance regen for a long time.

Jugg — Okay farmer. Good bat, nice crit, farms very safely because of PMS and Healing Ward, can clear stacks with spin. Still not as fast with just Power Treads as Luna.

AM — Mediocre farmer. Good stats, nice mobility from camp to camp, but unless he’s hitting a camp like the satyrs, he takes a really long time to kill them. His only farming utility is the Blink, but that doesn’t help him do damage to kill the camps fast.

Most of the lategame carries are similar to AM, and sometimes are even worse, in that their main reliance for farm is on lane creeps and they feel very hopeless if they are forced out of lane. AM can still catch up once he gets his Battle Fury, but a hero like Spec or CK doesn’t have something like that item.

Now, what do you do to make up for worse than average farming capability? You build items to boost your gpm, and this concept falls under both amplifying your heroes strenghts — more gold means more items means more impact by your carry — and makes up for you hero’s weaknesses, that is, the aforementioned built in bad farming capability.

Let’s consider AM, one of the best, fastest farming heroes in the game — even despite what I said above. The reason for that is because he gets an item that allows him to be just that almost every single game — as I said, Battle Fury is one of the best AM items, and it makes up for his weakness in clearing waves and camps fast, while also amplifying his strengths — AM and Battlefury are an example of amazing hero-item synergy in Dota. Battlefury gives him a way to farm faster, giving him more gpm (covers weakness+amplifies strength), gives him HP regen in the build up to help lane (covers weakness), gives him mana regen to blink more (amplifies strength), synergizes with his his mobility because of the fast camp clearing (amplifies strength), gives him more mobility with cutting trees (amplifies strength). You have to think about those things for every item you buy.

Those two elements, the strength and weakness elements, are what influence the core/standard itemization for heroes. Most carries have a standard core of items that work really well with the hero in multiple ways. Let’s take a couple heroes again and think about them specifically. I’ll shorten “Amplifies Strength” to AMP and “Covers Weakness” to COV.

AM . Let’s take his first couple of core items and see why they are core.

* Treads give him more attack speed which synergizes with his mana burn (AMP), and also give him more effective mana usage with tread switching when he blinks from camp to camp (COV).

*I explained Battlefury above.

*Manta gives him stats (AMP+COV), illusions which hit with his manaburn (AMP), a soft dispel for silences (COV), amongst some other less important elements.

See how all of those items have multiple levels of synergy with the heroes skillset? Let’s take another hero…

. Let’s take his first couple of core items and see why they are core. * Treads give him more attack speed which synergizes with his mana burn (AMP), and also give him more effective mana usage with tread switching when he blinks from camp to camp (COV). *I explained Battlefury above. *Manta gives him stats (AMP+COV), illusions which hit with his manaburn (AMP), a soft dispel for silences (COV), amongst some other less important elements. See how all of those items have multiple levels of synergy with the heroes skillset? Let’s take another hero… Jugg

* Phase — movespeed for spin and chasing (AMP+COV), damage for crit (AMP).

* Aquilla — stats that scale with his good bat (AMP), armor and mana regen that he won’t get through other standard items for a while (COV).

* Yasha into Manta — movespeed for spin and chasing (AMP+COV), soft dispel (COV), attack speed that is super good with his BAT (AMP).

Yet again, everything works on multiple levels.

* Phase — movespeed for spin and chasing (AMP+COV), damage for crit (AMP). * Aquilla — stats that scale with his good bat (AMP), armor and mana regen that he won’t get through other standard items for a while (COV). * Yasha into Manta — movespeed for spin and chasing (AMP+COV), soft dispel (COV), attack speed that is super good with his BAT (AMP). Yet again, everything works on multiple levels. Slark

* Treads — Treadswapping solves mana issues when farming with Dark Pact a bit (COV), gives him attack speed which synergizes with Essence Shift (AMP).

* Shadow Blade — really good gank potential paired with his skills (AMP) and a nice escape that pops his passive regen (COV).

* Echo Sabre — gives him more burst potential when jumping on someone (AMP), helps him get up essence stacks (AMP), gives him mana regen (COV).

* Treads — Treadswapping solves mana issues when farming with Dark Pact a bit (COV), gives him attack speed which synergizes with Essence Shift (AMP). * Shadow Blade — really good gank potential paired with his skills (AMP) and a nice escape that pops his passive regen (COV). * Echo Sabre — gives him more burst potential when jumping on someone (AMP), helps him get up essence stacks (AMP), gives him mana regen (COV). Sven

* Treads — needs attack speed (COV) and the extra strength makes his ult that much more powerful (AMP).

* HotD — gives him stack capabilities which works well with his cleave (AMP) and gives him good stats (AMP).

* Echo Sabre — gives him the double hit which is useful because hes a low attack speed hero (COV), gives him mana regen (COV).

* Blink — gives him mobility to initiate because he doesn’t want to get kited (COV+AMP).

I hope you’re noticing the trend here. Another trend you should hopefully be noticing is how the playstyle of the hero affects their itemization. Jugg for example isn’t the best farmer, and even though sometimes he gets Maelstrom or Battlefury, he still prefers a build like Dom/Manta/Diffusal/Mael becuase he’s really good in early-midgame fights, while heroes like Sven or Slark want to get a couple of items before joining fights or starting to look for solo pickoffs in Slark’s case— still, their power spikes are that mid game point, while a hero like AM wants even more items before he starts fighting, so usually that transitional phase between mid and late game.

* Treads — needs attack speed (COV) and the extra strength makes his ult that much more powerful (AMP). * HotD — gives him stack capabilities which works well with his cleave (AMP) and gives him good stats (AMP). * Echo Sabre — gives him the double hit which is useful because hes a low attack speed hero (COV), gives him mana regen (COV). * Blink — gives him mobility to initiate because he doesn’t want to get kited (COV+AMP). I hope you’re noticing the trend here. Another trend you should hopefully be noticing is how the playstyle of the hero affects their itemization. Jugg for example isn’t the best farmer, and even though sometimes he gets Maelstrom or Battlefury, he still prefers a build like Dom/Manta/Diffusal/Mael becuase he’s really good in early-midgame fights, while heroes like Sven or Slark want to get a couple of items before joining fights or starting to look for solo pickoffs in Slark’s case— still, their power spikes are that mid game point, while a hero like AM wants even more items before he starts fighting, so usually that transitional phase between mid and late game. So, again, it’s important to be able to recognize your hero’s weaknesses and strengths and best playstyle. Power spikes are important to know

and itemization is a big part of that. For a lot of other heroes in other roles, power spikes are more level dependent, while for carries the power spike is often item dependent. This is of course super generalized, and there are exceptions, like Ember, who can be played safelane and has a level dependent power spike, or Slark, who has a defensive power spike (getting Shadow Dance, specifically the passive), and an offensive power spike (getting the Shadow Blade most games).

and itemization is a big part of that. For a lot of other heroes in other roles, power spikes are more level dependent, while for carries the power spike is often item dependent. This is of course super generalized, and there are exceptions, like Ember, who can be played safelane and has a level dependent power spike, or Slark, who has a defensive power spike (getting Shadow Dance, specifically the passive), and an offensive power spike (getting the Shadow Blade most games). Now, I covered 2/3 of the aspects to itemization that I picked out (covering weaknesses and amplifying strengths). Now I’ll go over the final aspect, one that separates the good carry players from the great ones in itemization. Once you get past your core itemization, the flow of the game will be heavily decided by how you react to your enemies heroes and their items.

Generally, reactionary itemization is defensive, although there are many cases where it can be offensive, or even both. Let’s look at some examples:

Defensive itemization would be something like:

* you, an AM, get a Linkens to block the enemy LC’s Duel

* you, a Luna, get a BKB to not get stunned by the enemy Nyx

* you, an AM, get a Linkens to block the enemy LC’s Duel * you, a Luna, get a BKB to not get stunned by the enemy Nyx A scenario where your reactionary item is both defensive and offensive would be something like:

* you, a Weaver, get a Manta to deal with a Silence (defensive) but you also use Manta to push faster (offensive)

* you, an LC, get a Blade Mail to prevent a Deso Clinkz from targeting you in fights (defensive) but you also use it in duels against the Clinkz to get easier wins (offensive)

* you, a Weaver, get a Manta to deal with a Silence (defensive) but you also use Manta to push faster (offensive) * you, an LC, get a Blade Mail to prevent a Deso Clinkz from targeting you in fights (defensive) but you also use it in duels against the Clinkz to get easier wins (offensive) The offensive would be something like:

* you, a Sven, get an mkb to deal with the opponent PA’s evasion

* you, a Lifestealer, get a Diffusal to purge the opponent WR’s Windrun in a fight

* you, a Sven, get an mkb to deal with the opponent PA’s evasion * you, a Lifestealer, get a Diffusal to purge the opponent WR’s Windrun in a fight Reactionary items are a very interesting topic, because you have to weigh the gold you pay for that item to what you get. In a sense, you compare how viable (or, really, unviable) that item is on your hero VS the payoff that it’ll give you; like buying an Orchid on a Slark to deal with a Storm Spirit, or the above example of buying a Diffusal on Lifestealer. They’re weird items, only barely viable on the hero, and have very little to no natural synergy with the hero itself, but they can be extremely gamewinning sometimes. Let’s look at an example.

A friend of mine was picked Necrophos safelane in a CM game, and he told me, amongst others, he’s playing against a Riki and a Zeus. I saw these as threats, so I told him to buy a couple of items in reaction to knowing these picks. I told him to buy Wand, because a Zeus will provide you with lots of charges, and it’s a really good item on Necro because he can double the amount he heals with his new Ghost Shroud. I told him to buy a Hood of Defiance, to help him deal with the Zeus’ magic damage, and I told him to later upgrade it to a Pipe. I also mentioned getting a Force Staff along the way, to be able to get out of Riki’s Smokescreen. You see, each one of those items was a reaction to a hero on the enemy team and there was a reason to get each of them.

A friend of mine was picked Necrophos safelane in a CM game, and he told me, amongst others, he’s playing against a Riki and a Zeus. I saw these as threats, so I told him to buy a couple of items in reaction to knowing these picks. I told him to buy Wand, because a Zeus will provide you with lots of charges, and it’s a really good item on Necro because he can double the amount he heals with his new Ghost Shroud. I told him to buy a Hood of Defiance, to help him deal with the Zeus’ magic damage, and I told him to later upgrade it to a Pipe. I also mentioned getting a Force Staff along the way, to be able to get out of Riki’s Smokescreen. You see, each one of those items was a reaction to a hero on the enemy team and there was a reason to get each of them. In general, you just need to think about what on the enemy team threatens you, and then you think about what helps you counter that. That’s the basis reactionary itemization, and it takes a long time to get hang of, especially weighing the viability of the item versus the payoff it provides. Risk versus reward.

I think that’s just about it as far as the things I wanted to talk about here. I might continue talking about the safelane in the future depending on how many people show interest in reading more about it. As always, feel free to leave any feedback — you can reach me through all the ways I mentioned in the intro. Thanks for reading!