Beating Rat Dota in pubs?

 

What are the counter plays against Tinker or Nature's Prophet when you're playing solo? Especially when the other team is a stack or at the very least more willing to co-operate. From what I see, even pro teams have difficulty countering it when they're infinitely more coordinated than the average pub team and have the benefit of being able to pick around those heroes.

I don't mean to sound salty but it comes across as really unbeatable and cheap and the most frustrating thing to play against, and I'm sick of it being in every single pub game. Winning with it feels hollow, losing to it makes my blood boil.

What can I do?



Rat dota tends to be stronger the later the games goes - once all of your T2s are down and a single hero is strong enough to take a barracks in 20 seconds if uncontested, it can become very difficult to leave your base.

Be aggressive and push early

Many split pushers (especially Naga Siren, Tinker, Phantom Lancer, and Anti-Mage) require significant farm before they can really come online - try to close down the game before that happens. These heroes tend to be weak in teamfights compared to another hero with similar farm (and may not be present at all), meaning you should have an advantage in early 5v5s.

If you can gank or shut down their split pusher while they farm, do it. However, recognise when you're not going to catch them and don't waste time running between lanes after a target that's probably going to escape. Long range or invis initiators (Clockwerk, Io, Mirana, Nyx Assassin) will help you get the jump on a hero who's split pushing, while hard lockdown (Faceless Void, Doom) can help make it a guaranteed kill.

Other tips in no particular order

• Always carry TPs and remind your team to do the same.
• If their split pusher uses invisibility to escape (e.g. Nature's Prophet with Shadow Blade), make sure you have Dust of Appearance.
• Try to maintain map awareness, and make the call early if you need to TP back to defend a tower. Don't get tunnel vision and keep pushing with the team while someone takes your T3.
• Before you go out on a 5 man push, make sure the other lanes are far enough from your base that someone can't immediately Boots of Travel to them and push. This is particularly important for lanes where your rax are already down - once the creeps get into the base, someone can Boots of Travel and back-door your T4s or another lane of rax.

 

Prevent - When you see a lineup with split-push potential, try to control the game early on

• Win Lanes
• Push Early
• Destroy Their Wards/Vision --> More Map Control
• You can also get heroes that are good against it like Clockwerk, Batrider, and Bounty Hunter can be decent

 

Maintain Map Control

 

• Push out all lanes, minimally over the river --> this makes it difficult for them to sneakily take your rax or something
• Knock out their obs, making it risky for a split pusher to overextend
• Keep a few heroes MIA at all times to increase threat
• Consider an item like Maelstrom/ Mjollnirto help keep lanes pushed

 

Gank Split Pushers

 

• Try to take out a split pusher and then push off of that if they are very troublesome
• Heroes like Tinker and Nature's Prophet tend to have very simple patterns in pubs, you can wait them out on one side of the map because they will tend to rotate back and forth between lanes
• For heroes like Lycanthrope, Pugna, etc. you may need Smoke of Deceit to gank them so you can sneak up on them
• Blink Dagger (and sometimes Shadow Blade) are good ways to quickly gap close split pushers to take them off guard or before they can blink away
• If you're having trouble ganking the split-pusher, don't waste too much time on it. The other team is farming while you have 3 heroes chasing around an elusive hero instead of farming. Just keep the lane pushed out instead and look for 4v5 team fights.

5-Man

• If you have superior team fight or have killed one of their heroes, plus have no lanes that are about to push into your rax, then go ahead and push as 5
• Split Pushers are often (a) easy to kill in team fights, (b) contribute little to team fights, or (c) not able to split push if they used their ability in a team fight