How do get better?

Creep Pulling in the Jungle

The main point of pulling your own creeps into the jungle to fight neutral creeps is that the neutral creeps will kill your creeps, and the enemy team will not be able to get gold or exp from them. In order to creep pull properly you need to attack the neutral camp that is right beside the lane, and run down into your lane, timing it so that the neutrals arrive in the lane right as your own creeps are passing by. Your creeps will aggro onto the neutrals and follow them back into the camp. The timing for pulling used to be 45 seconds on the minute, so 1:45, 2:45 etc. The timing is changed for the Dire side now and it is slightly earlier, but you can eyeball it by watching the minimap which is probably better than relying on the timer. The other thing to consider is that most neutral camps will not be strong enough to kill your entire creep wave by themselves. As a remedy for this problem, you can first stack the camp. The creep camp is stacked by pulling the neutral creeps away from their spawn camp so that the camp is empty when the game respawns neutrals (this happens every minute on the minute: 1:00, 2:00 etc, and also once at 30 seconds into the start of the match). The timing for this pull is at 54 seconds on the minute (1:54, 2:54, etc). In order to ensure the creeps follow you you should run close enough to them that they aggro onto you and then run away from the camp. The best direction to run is directly up on the dire side or directly down on the radiant side.

• Stack at X:54
• Pull at X:45 (slightly earlier on Dire side)
• Your goal is to have the neutral creeps kill your creep wave

Creep Blocking

Creep blocking is standing in front of your creep wave as they walk down the lane. A successful creep block will make it so that the creep wave repeatedly stops moving or is not able to move in a straight line. The main goal of creep blocking is to move the point that the two opposing creep waves meet closer to your own tower. This is because when you are closer to your tower you are generally safer from ganks. In order to get the most out of a creep block you will need to keep moving your hero slightly ahead of the creep wave and allow the creeps to brush up behind your hero as they walk. The main thing to remember is that if they get past your hero, the creep block is over, so try to always be ahead of the creeps. Making a tight zig zag in front of the creeps works best for me.

Harassing

Harassing is when you attack the enemy heroes in the laning phase with the goal of reducing their health, making them play more carefully, use up regen, or have to go back to base. The best heroes to harass with are ranged heroes, especially ones with unique attack modifiers/orbs (ex: Venomancer, Viper, Clinkz etc). Your main goal when harassing is to hit the enemy hero without taking any damage yourself. In order to do this you must be aware of any ranged heroes the enemy has in the lane, and also of the position of the enemy creeps. Ranged enemy heroes will attack you in response to you attacking them, so only trade hits if you are able to deal more damage or if you are in a more threatening position due to your creeps or your lane partners. The enemy creeps will automatically aggro onto you when you target an enemy hero with attacks, so be aware of how close they are to you when you harass. If you are unable to trade harass profitably with the enemy heroes, then focus on last hitting and denying, or pulling the lane.

Farming

Farming is focusing on killing enemy and neutral creeps in order to accumulate gold and experience, with the goal of making your hero more powerful

Different heroes will spend different amounts of their time farming. This is because some heroes are very strong even if they do not have any items (support), and some heroes are not strong at all unless they are able to buy a couple key items first (carry). You must first know what your role in the game is before you can figure out how much you need to farm. Hard support heroes will farm basically never, unless they are able to grab a couple creep kills during downtime. Hard carries will farm almost all the time until they have gotten to a point where they are able to decisively win fights, or a point where further farming would be disadvantageous

As a rule of thumb, you should farm until you are able to contribute meaningfully in engagements, at which point you should fight every time your team engages in a worthwhile fight (defending a tower, pushing towers, ganking a rosh attempt, etc)

In low level games, you are probably going to see a lot of hard carries, and most people are going to farm much more than they need to. The main problem with this kind of gameplay is that there is never enough farm for everyone, and if the enemy team pushes your towers or ganks you can easily fall behind. The best thing to do is to select 1-2 heroes on your team to be primary farmers, 2 heroes to be primary supports, and 1-2 heroes to be primary fighters. That way, the supports can focus on purchasing team items like wards, and also on defending their farmers and towers from the enemy heroes.

The main fighters (most likely includes your mid) will farm and buy items to make themselves more powerful, but they will be present at every single meaningful engagement

The main farmers will spend most of their time farming and only fight when the fight is very important to win, or when they have built up a significant power lead. There is a system for denoting these different positions by assigning each hero on your team a number between 1 and 5. The lower numbered heroes will farm more, and the higher numbers will not farm as much. Here is an example of a team that uses this system:

• 1st position (hard carry/primary farmer): Anti-Mage
• 2nd position (semi carry/secondary farmer): Razor
• 3rd position (main fighter/ganker): Dark Seer
• 4th position (soft support): Jakiro
• 5th position (hard support): Crystal Maiden

This team would be played with a trilane in the safe lane, so that the supports can make sure Anti-Mage gets a strong farm by fending off the enemy heroes and pulling the lane. Razor would play mid and farm until he gets a big item, then he would fight. Dark Seer would only want to get his ultimate at level 6, then he would fight and continue to build items as he gets gold from kills. Jakiro would build a mekansm and aid Crystal Maiden with warding. Crystal Maiden would spend all her money on wards and detection. Whenever there is farm available (ex a lane close to your base, or the neutrals in the jungle), each player would allow any hero in a lower position them them to farm it (ex: Razor backs off from the jungle because antimage needs to farm it).

While most people tend to do alright with early game farming, it's important to remember that farming doesn't just stop once the laning phase is over

Particularly when a team is on the back foot it's not unusual to see people just hanging around in a lane (or even worse, in base) waiting to defend against the next push, while the other team pushes lanes and farms freely. The result is that other other team gradually accelerates away in terms of levels and gold, and you end up losing the game.

Try to make sure you're always doing something productive between fights, and pick up farm wherever you can

Push a lane if it's safe to do so, farm the jungle, or try to set up ganks - don't just hang around and wait for something to happen. Wards will help a lot with this, letting you know where enemy heroes are and giving you early warning of incoming ganks. There's a balance to strike of course - don't let the rest of your team get wiped because you're busy farming the jungle on the other side of the map. Similarly, don't go 4v5 into a fight when your carry is off farming elsewhere!

Ganking

When deciding whether or not to go for a gank early in the game, try to consider the likelihood of getting a successful kill vs the cost of leaving your lane

A lot of things are going to factor into that decision, but in particular I'd think about are how pushed the lane is that I want to gank, whether my target(s) are already on low HP, and who I have in that lane to back me up (most importantly, do my allies in that lane have a stun). If you're mid and you get a haste, double damage, or invisibility rune that's going to increase the chances of a successful gank. Also consider where ganks are needed - if one of your allies is winning their lane easily, ganking there probably isn't going to make much difference. If they're struggling in their lane on the other hand, a well timed gank can turn the lane around and give your team an advantage.

Failed ganks can still be worth it if you force an enemy hero to head back to the fountain and miss out on farm, but remember that unless you're getting kills you're not getting any farm either

In fact, your lane opponent is probably free-farming in your absence, meaning you could easily find yourself going back to your lane at a disadvantage.

While mid is usually the best placed hero to gank (thanks to their central location, rune access, and typically a level advantage), it isn't only mid who can do it

Many supports are also excellent gankers during the early game, particularly if you use smoke and/or send two supports to gank together. The fact that supports are often in the jungle pulling anyway also means they're less likely to be reported missing.

When to gank

Ganking is best left to heroes that have some combination of stun, slow, chasing, or high burst damage abilities. Let's look at Tusk, because he is an excellent ganker and he has every single one of these. Tusk ganks usually by doing the following:

• Rolling into the enemy hero with his Snowball and stunning them.
• Summoning his frost ward, which slows the enemy hero and makes them attack more slowly.
• Using his frost path ( Ice Shards skill) to create a barrier behind the enemy hero and make it so that they have a harder time running away.
• Damaging them with auto attacks until they are below half health.
• Using his Walrus Punch to deal a heavily damaging crit attack.

In order for Tusk to be able to accomplish this gank, he needs his ultimate, so he can only start making a full gank at level 6. However, he can still do everything here except ult at level 3 if he skills 1-1-1. The best time to gank is when the enemy heroes are out of position (far away from their tower and behind your treeline). Later in the game you can continue to gank in their jungle and lanes while they try to farm, however you must be aware of where they have placed observer wards. There are ways you can get around enemy vision like using smoke of deceit or shadow blade to go invisible, however the cheapest way is to simply walk around the areas they have warded and use trees to hide in fog. Different heroes will be able to gank at different levels. Vengeful Spirit is a great level 1 ganker, because her stun is ranged, targetable, and has a decent duration. Other heroes will have to wait until level 6.