Games26

Laning Phase & Early Game

The laning phase is the period when the majority of heroes on the map want to acquire farm or experience in relatively static positions.

The early game is the period where the tempo favors heroes that rely little on either XP or gold, while heroes that are heavily reliant on either resource will be weaker.

In both cases, supports and some junglers are vastly more likely to move around the map in order to disrupt, gank, or defend other lanes. Depending on the mid, they may or may not make rotations as well.

The laning phase ends when one team moves most of their team around the map and begins teamfighting, split pushing, or pushing hard with a push lineup.

The early game usually ends after about 15 mins. Heroes that need to pick up fast efficient items or greedy items will have farmed them up. Heroes that come online early will have reached at least a core item.

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

The number one rule is to pick heroes that your teammates are comfortable with - particularly with newer players, it's better to get a mediocre draft that you can play well than a perfect draft that you've never played before. Similarly, don't pick combinations that require too much coordination to pull off unless you know your team is up to it.

Introduction

I've seen a dozen posts asking how to play  Nature's Prophet, so as my personal contribution to this, I will explain, in depth, how to play Nature's Prophet.

Starting items early game

 
Clarity - Buy this if you have skills you want to spam, like Warlock's  Fatal Bonds/Shadow Word or Zeus's  Arc Lightning. Don't buy this after early game.

 
Tango - Buy this if you're expecting to be harassed by autoattacks or DoT skills early game, for example: you're a melee hero who needs to get last hits and your enemies are ranged heroes, or heroes who can harass well like Warlock. Buy Tangoes. You should usually get one stack of Tangoes anyway, but if you expect heavy harass get two stacks.

Nyx Assassin is a nuker/disabler AGI Dire hero. The Nyx Assassin excels in taking down single threats, especially INT heroes caught off position. In a teamfight, his role is to stun/initialize and help to nuke most fragile heroes. Nyx Assassin is usually played mid, where he can reach level 6 fast and start ganking opponents while benefiting from runes/Bottle around the map. Nyx Assassin is also one of few heroes in the game that can play with almost no farm at all, having as prerequisite only a pair of Arcane Boots. This allows you to try a lot of different builds on him and adapt him to your play style.

Introduction

Many people tend to plays Abaddon as a Support. And this is true, he is one of the best supports in the Dota 2, with great measure. He is one of the best in this supports role, possesing a heal that is also a nuke, Aphotic Shield that blocks incomming damage, reflects it after the cap is reached, removes debuffs, has a passive that slows and allows allies to hit harder certain enemies (by certain I mean ones that were hit by Abaddon before, and an amazing ultimate Borrowed Time that allows you to heal instead of taking damage.

The biggest suggestion I can say about playing from behind--every move you make is amplified. How do you win from behind? Make better of all the variables of the game than your opponents...every dumb item they buy--on top of each item you buy in the game already being diminishing (very few heroes ramp up per item...you get your 'best' item 1st or 2nd and each item afterward is usually less important.

Don't take abuse from your teammates

First, the advice of others has been pretty good I would say. To add, don't take abuse from your teammates. As a support your job is to be ready to support, with Wards, Smokes, Dusts, Town Portal, etc, but also keep in mind, your job isn't to help your carry who is alone, out of position, has no defensive tower to get to, and is raging at you because he got ganked in the middle of nowhere, when there's no vision available and no enemies on the map. Carries are required to play smart, just as supports are. You can't be blamed for their feed.

One of the more advanced techniques available to Techies is "mine stacking": placing mines directly one on top of the other so that the enemy can't tell how many mines there are at a location even if they have True Sight. In wc3 DotA this wasn't difficult to accomplish because you could portrait cast. This doesn't work in DotA 2, making life significantly more difficult. However, I did figure out a way around that:

So there's been a lot of people decrying the addition of  Techies to the roster saying about how he's actually a useless hero, countered by a 250g item, countered by Gem of True Sight, no one serious will ever use him, the usual (further fueled by the recent showing in the Allstar game that played him extremely weirdly) - so I decided to actually write up an inside look at the competitive history of Techies and his effect on the game and how we might see him used in the future.

Position and Role

Your role as Clockwerk will be controlling the tempo of the game

You are very adapt at getting solo kills on supports and your initiation in team fights can make or break it for your team. Because you are a strength hero you are quite durable and with Power Cogs and Hookshot you can save allies a lot of the time. Rocket Flare should be used to counter push and scout Roshan or other locations like checking ancient stacks, it can also be used to block jungle camps from spawning with some training.

Im trying to learn support, a lot of which includes buying things like Observer Ward or Dust of Appearance, but I find in noob games my allies dont use or appreciate them. My teamates behave exactly the same whether the jungles are warded or not because they dont use their mini maps. Is there a better way I can contribute more to these games, or find a better environment to improve my supporting skills?

So me and a few friends have been playing a lot of matches lately as a 5 man stack but today we decided to try something new. I went Skywrath Mage as support, and my other friend went Legion Commander. Once we hit 6 we ganked together him casting the ultimate first then me following with mine. We're on a 5 game streak doing this and nobody has managed to shut down this combo, especially not after she gets a decent start.

Are there any other similar combos of heroes or gameplay that involve similar tactics. (Note: not required but preferred one be support and the other mid heroes)