This is part two of a series I’m writing on the earliest part of DotA - the lane phase. Harassing your enemy can help you control your lane and get the upper hand in experience and gold, but sometimes the enemy in your lane isn’t fighting over control of the creep wave. For some heroes, simply getting leveled up and maybe collecting a handful of creep kills is considered a win. Simple harassment won’t keep them away from the creep wave, however, if you have enough power in your lane, zoning can.

Zoning is simply the ability to keep the enemy completely out of range of the creep wave and unable to even get experience from it. This is accomplished by running past the creep wave and fighting the enemy off, forcing him to flee to the safety of his tower. With effective zoning, you can prevent the enemy in your lane from getting most of his experience. If your lane is strong enough, it might even be possible to keep him at level 1 for the majority of the early game, crippling him for the rest of the match.

Now that the general concept has been explained, it seems best to add in a few quick notes. First, zoning generally requires at least two heroes to accomplish. This is for two reasons. First, while you’re forcing the enemy hero(s) away from the creep wave, someone will need to “freeze” the creep wave near your tower (freezing refers to last hitting both allied and enemy creeps in such a way that the creep wave does not move). If you allow the creep wave to push to the enemy tower, the effect of zoning is lost and the enemy will be able to get experience from the safety of their tower, despite your efforts (of course, there are a few hero combinations that can even zone enemies away from their own tower, but these are not common and should not be relied upon).

Aside from keeping in mind that you need to control the creep wave while you zone your enemy, it should be simple to see that zoning is most easily accomplished in your team’s “safe” lane (the lane where the creeps clash closest to your tower). It can be accomplished in other lanes, however, close proximity to enemy towers makes it much more difficult to pull off, as the addition of tower damage will very quickly turn a fight for the enemy. With that in mind, this guide will explain this process with a practice match showing the most common place for zoning - against enemy offlanes.

Many heroes will consider their solo offlane a victory if they simply get leveled up. This is especially true of a hero like Dark Seer, who is showcased in this guide. Dark Seer is a very difficult hero to handle if you are unable to actively zone him. Once he gets a few levels in Surge, he becomes nearly impossible to keep out of the lane, let alone kill, without a chain of CC that is uncommon in safe lanes where your team’s carry is often trying to farm. Since many Dark Seer players start with Ion Shell as both a creep killing tool and an offensive ability to fight you off with, it is ideal to prevent the Seer from ever getting level 2 and being able to put a point into Surge. Even if you are actively denying your creeps, level 2 takes no more than two creep waves to achieve, at which point your hope of zoning a hero like Dark Seer starts to drastically decrease. With that in mind, while your objective is to keep the Seer away from experience, you need to get to work on him the second the game starts.

By scouting out the jungle before the creeps arrived, I was able to spot Dark Seer hiding in the trees, at which point I immediately began chasing him and beating him up to scare him away from the creeps.





This works because Dark Seer is simply unable to stay near the creeps - the threat of death if he attempts to soak the damage I deal is too great and he has to retreat. The combined threat of my lane partner, Sven, running up to help me is enough to force him to flee completely. This is a good start, but of course, he will run around and attempt to get back in range any way he can. Meanwhile, I must rely on Sven for two jobs. First, he must control the creep wave to prevent it from pushing. Second, he must pay attention to the dueling between me and Dark Seer and be ready to help me out, if necessary.

No enemy will simply allow you to beat them up unchallenged, and Dark Seer knows he will do a lot more damage to me if he can stay in range for his Ion Shell to hit me. Therefore, I have to constantly kite him around; if I allow him to do too much damage to me, he will end up forcing me back to my tower and I will be unable to prevent him from getting experience (or even gold from Ion Shell). Luckily, the threat of a nearby Sven is enough to keep him running away from me and I’m able to keep chasing him away from the creep wave.

Of course, enemies sometimes overstep their boundaries, and this is exactly where help from your lane partner comes in. In this shot, Dark Seer attempts to stay too close to the creep wave while kiting me, and with help from Sven, ends up getting himself killed.

Unfortunately, at this point, Dark Seer has just acquired level 2 and now has Surge, making him remarkably more difficult to zone. Some people might consider this a failure, as the essence of zoning is preventing your opponent from collecting experience at all, however, let’s keep in mind that Dark Seer had to die to gain this level. This is a good example to keep in mind as you lane against people. If you aren’t careful with lane control, your enemy can intentionally soak your harassment or even intentionally die in order to get you to unnecessarily push the lane toward their tower.

In many games I see players get so rabid over attacking the enemy that they ignore their creeps or even get the attention of the enemy creeps in the process, pulling them away from their creeps and pushing the wave toward the enemy tower. Furthermore, AoE spells, such as Storm Bolt, can be intentionally baited to hit the creep wave (again, pushing the creeps toward the enemy tower). While you might feel like a winner for getting a kill, the creep wave stacking in the meantime and pushing to the enemy tower puts the enemy in a safe position to gain a couple of levels and catch back up. A hero such as Bounty Hunter can easily make this exchange, as his ability to collect gold from Track during ganks will easily offset the gain you made from one kill on him.

Of course, that is not the only problem associated with chasing the enemy at all costs. In this example, I expend my entire mana pool killing Dark Seer and he teleports back to the lane mere seconds later, back at full health and mana, which quickly leads to this situation:

Not only can an enemy die on purpose to get you to fumble your lane control, sometimes, they can die on purpose to gain complete control of the lane entirely. Without any mana I am unable to effectively fight off Dark Seer and have to retreat all the way to the safety of my allied creeps and Sven. At this point, Sven must actively leave the creep wave to help chase Dark Seer away, which risks him missing last hits and the associated gold. While we are not able to completely deny him experience, we greatly reduce his ability to stay in our lane, and by the end of this practice we are nearly level 5 and Dark Seer is still barely level 3. I’m well on my way to Arcane Boots and Seer is still stuck with the same items he bought with his starting gold.

In many lanes, your hero alone might be powerful enough to keep the enemy completely away, and simply standing past the creep wave to keep the enemy from leaving his tower is enough:

Even with low health and mana, I’ve managed to beat down Dark Seer enough that he is unable to leave his tower and face me. In this manner, I no longer even have to fight him to zone him, simply standing here is enough to keep him completely away. Unfortunately, zoning is still a full time job and the enemy does catch a break when the new creep wave arrives.

Not only will I simply die if I try to stay and fight off the creeps and Dark Seer both, attracting the attention of the creep wave will cause a disruption in the balance of the lane. Even if I only tank the enemy creeps for a second I am delaying their arrival to the creep wave and pushing the lane ever so slightly. Every little mistake will add up and undo the damage I have caused to Dark Seer, so I must run from the creep wave and allow them to naturally meet up with my creeps. While this does give Dark Seer a small amount of space to try to hide in the trees and gain some experience, a diligent hunter like Skywrath Mage can still quickly force him to run back to his tower. In this game, I was even able to chase him down for a second kill:

Not all games are the same, of course. In some matches, it will be easier to zone your enemy. In others, it will be impossible, and you will have to settle for harassing. In extremely unfortunate situations, you might actually be the one getting pushed out of your own safe lane. However, as solo offlanes become increasingly popular in the Dota2 community, zoning is a strategy everyone should learn.

The objective of a solo offlane hero is rarely to conceptually “win” his lane. It will be difficult for most heroes to stop the enemy from farming in their own safe lane while solo. Therefore, the typical main goal of these heroes is simply to get levels. With levels they can get max ranks of their skills and still remain relevant after the early game is over. Typically, solo offlane heroes are heroes that do not require much gold to be effective in mid-game skirmishes, or have excellent farming capability and can catch back up after people start pushing and roaming, leaving lanes empty. Just as often, these heroes are weak early on and very easy to zone. Allowing them to hide in the trees and gain levels is a huge mistake on the part of your team when effective understanding of zoning can cripple them for a large part of the game. Keeping an enemy hero low level for a long period of time can help create a situation where the match is virtually 4v5, a huge advantage for your team.

Of course, zoning can be done in any lane with any matchup. Whenever there is a situation in which your lane is vastly stronger than the enemies’, don’t be afraid to exert your power over the enemy and force them out of range of experience. In some cases, people have managed to zone out several heroes at once. If you have the upper hand in a lane, you should always aim to push the enemy as hard as possible away from the action.