Bolivar and Co. Teach Me to DOTA2
So I get that the idea is the same as LoL in that you want to take towers down and destroy the enemy base and that gold comes from kills and last hitting.
But beyond that... what's the deal with the courier? How does it work? What does that vendor in the middle of the jungle do? Who are good champions to start off as? What's the meta for the laning phase - is there a jungler in DOTA2 for example? Any good sites for recommended item builds?
So much to write and only one little stylus (on phone work)
The courier is so you can use abilities and have regen brought to you without having to leave lane, which I hear blows some LoLers Minds. In general he brings you items from your Stash ( items that you buy while away from base.) Just hit the brown satchel/ parcel looking button on the bottom right of the screen and he automatically comes and transfers items (make sure you got room) then heads back. You can also Control him to go to other shops but always be Careful, he has a respawn time if he dies, items will respawn with him though
Edit: every team should buy a courier at start, almost always its on one of the intelligence heroes, who are less item-dependent and usually play the support role - spending money for the team while the other, more item-dependent heroes save and spend all their money on items. Coordinate if you can - one support should buy courier, the other buys observer wards.
Last edited by Bolivar; 05-28-2013 at 05:49 PM.
The vendors in the middle of the jungle are you secret shops. They provide the more expensive and pre-req core items for late-game carries. Using the courier to go to the secret shop is a good idea for early game so you can stay in your lane more.
There also exists a side-shop at the top and bottom lane. This shop provides items from the spawn's shop and a couple of items from the secret shop. It's a good idea to buy items like boots of speed here during your early game laning process.
In DotA 1 or 2, we like to call the champions..heroes. It's a little pet peeve of mine to be sure that they are called heroes and I know of some other friends of mine that would agree.
A couple of good heroes to start off as would be Viper, Drow Ranger, or Sniper. All three of these heroes share the same item builds, except one would rush one item over the other. I recommend them for beginners because they are mainly right click heroes(which are also carries).
You should understand the roles of each hero first. A carry will always want to get the last hits because s/he is the carry of the team that will punish the other team in the late-game. You have your supports which are the backbone of your team because they'll usually be the disabler/healer/warders. Then your durables a.k.a. tanks which can also be your initiators.
There are junglers, but my personal experience as a jungler isn't very good so I'd like someone that's better to explain them.
Oh yeah, I'd like to introduce the mechanic of deny. You can deny your own creeps and towers when they are at or under a certain threshold. Denying a creep will prevent the enemy in that lane from getting the full experience and denying a tower will only give 100 gold instead of 200 to each player on the team that destroys the tower.
Here's a decent website that I like to use to keep track of stats and other info.
DOTABUFF - Dota 2 Statistics
Last edited by KH-Cloudy; 05-29-2013 at 02:56 AM.
^ Word! (yay, keyboard).
Before I overwhelm you, I'll put you onto the number 1 guide for noobies: Welcome to Dota, You Suck | Purge Gamers
Nothing I say here will come close to what that guide will teach you.
Favorite Build Site - dota2alttab.com. It's just meant to be a quick site you... (SPOILER)alt+tab to. Their builds can be a little weird sometimes, with the reasoning not apparent at first, but for getting a quick handle on a hero you just randomed, it's pretty indispensable. They should probably change the name to dota2shifttab.com since we're all using the Steam overlay :P
Laning Phase Metagame - the metagame right now for 80% of the pub games you'll find is "2-1-2", 2 on each of the outside lanes and one in the middle. In higher skill games like Captain's Mode and sometimes Single/Random Draft, you'll see either a trilane on the safe/long/gank lane (top for Dire, bottom for Radiant) or a jungler, with 1 hero soaking up undivided XP in the hard/off/suicide lane (bottom for Dire, top for Radiant). In Dota 2, the long/safe/gank lane is where its easiest for that team to get kills, since a hero can move through their jungle unseen to gank, and get behind the enemies without them seeing. It's very unlikely that the other team will do it in that lane, which is why it's their hard/off/suicide lane.
Jungling - There are a lot of junglers, I think the most natural ones are probably Enchantress, Chen (very hard hero), Enigma, Nature's Prophet, Doom, and Lifestealer. Bloodseeker and Ursa are two AGI carries who can jungle, but you should probably look up first how to do it, I really don't know myself. I jungle with the first few, they can be pretty fun.
Starting heroes - KH Cloud named some good starting heroes, but I would avoid them because they're all AGI, agility heroes, carries. I'm sure it's the same in LoL, but a balanced team wins 95% of the time, but because Carries are the badass heroes who rack up the insane multikills and win the game, everybody wants to play them. In pubs you can get 3-4, 5 carries on a team and that can be an instant-lose.
Generally, INT heroes are typically played as supports, and are very powerful in the early game, STR heroes more or less qualify as gankers, and they excel in the mid-game, and AGI heroes can be very weak in the beginning, they're dependent on items to get strong, but they dominate the late-game. That's just a rough outline, as there are INT carries like Outworld Destroyer and some AGI heroes are best played as supports/gankers, like Vengeful Spirit. And quite a few STR heroes are the best late carries in the game.
Good starting heroes: Death Prophet, Crystal Maiden, and Ogre Magi for INT. They're very straight forward, you just gotta watch your cooldowns, and the first two are ranged, which is a big advantage during the laning phase. Buy your team's courier, pick up observer wards an ward the jungle/river every few minutes, and help your carry get last hits. Suports win games.
Earthshaker, Skeleton King, and Tidehunter are great STR gankers for newbies. Earthshaker is stuns, stuns, stuns; Skeleton King's ult is a passive that resurrects him as long as he's not on cooldown; Tidehunter is the best initiator in the game, his ult is a long stun in a huge radius. They're also very straightforward, use their abilities to gang up on weak enemy heroes, creating unfair 3v2 or 2v1 fights and your teammates will love you.
KH Cloud covered the carries. Sniper would be my favorite out of the three, as the other two are best when you animation cancel/orb-walk/whatever it is you call it when you attack more times than you're really supposed to. Sniper just needs to get a heavy damage item like Desolator and that's it.
There's a lot to go over, but I'm sure a lot will carry over from LoL... we should get some games in sometime
DoTA2 is pretty in depth. probably easiest to read a guide site or watch youtube videos on specific characters.
That is what I started with. Read it carefully, watch all the videos linked on it, and then go to his youtube channel and watch more videos (the coaching ones are particularly great, especially one or two where he's coaching players that are very new to the game).Originally Posted by Bolivar
I also recommend playing bot games to practice stuff you learn. They're Still really fun and Chances are you will find a player willing to help you learn. Try to at least Know the basics of buying, laning, ganking and team fighting before hitting the pubs hard. I'm sure alot of that Knowledge will carry over from LoL
^Yup!
Bot games generally have the nicer crowd of people compared to pubs. There's no real difference in DotA2 with bot games and pubs with the sole exception of playing bots or humans. You still get all the battle points to help you level up and still have the chances of getting cosmetic items.
Yeah forgot all about bot games before getting to the real people
okay I haven't played DotA since the original WC3 version but how does LoL not have this? I thought this was like, a core feature of this genre xD
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