Dota 2 Learning the Game Guide

Dota 2 Learning the Game Guide by Nomstah

First of all id like to point that this is all from personal experience and simply my own opinion. If you have any criticism please share it with honesty.

I would like to try and explain several things that I have learned playing Dota 2 and what I believe to be the 5 main objectives you need to focus on in order to be successful in a game of dota. This is not in any particular order since I believe that they are all part of eachother and you can’t accomplish one without the others.

1.Drafting:

I really enjoy the drafting process because it’s almost like a 1v1 match between drafters to see who can out draft each other. The goal of drafting is really simple, Counter picking / Team Composition is the name of the game.

There are alot of great team compositions out there but you always need to have a plan of how the game should go according to the heroes that both teams have chosen/banned.

One of the most recent examples is the faceless void/skywrath mage combo. Sand king/Mirana combo, Razor/Tidehunter, Wisp/Tiny.

All of these combinations of heroes synchronize well which is why they are picked, because they excel at accomplishing a combo efficiently. This allows you to build a team around correctly executing a play style, whether that play style be a push / farm / gank / balanced oriented composition and pushing advantage that way.

2.Vision:

There are a bunch of subtle nuances that you need to learn in order to really understand the power of vision. Vision allows for plays to be made and prevents mistakes.

In all honesty there is not much I can explain about warding that people don’t already know, vision wins you games, everyone knows that but knowing where you want vision is something you have to learn on your own, you will learn your own favorite warding spots and improve on them and make changes accordingly the more games you play.

The only example I can provide of improvement is from personal experience. I always use to think that defensive wards meant putting wards on your side of the map when you are behind. What I learned was that there is no such thing as an offensive or defensive warding.

You need to try and figure out what the most contested areas are, areas with the most traffic, if you will. This will vary from game to game but you need to ward those areas and anything that leads to those areas, especially choke points. Some games you may find that you don’t need many wards and other games you will find yourself constantly buying wards. Games will be different, so should warding.

3.Experience/Gold:

There will be certain times that you will be wanting one more than the other, this depends alot on the hero/role you are playing, this is not to say that you should give up one for the other since they are both important but it is still a good idea to have priorities depending on what you need. In other words, I think people generally under value experience gain. I can not tell you how many times I’ve been solo off lane and could not get last hits but by just soaking up all the experience I eventually got beef enough to catch back up and make a difference in team fights.

When you are ahead in the game you generally want to go for gold, you have the experience gained from being ahead to allow you to create space to get that gold and push your advantage that way.

When you are behind you generally want to go for as much experience as possible, again gold is still really important but levels is what makes you stay alive in team fights.

In general, you will either be ahead in gold and not exp, exp but not in gold, or any combination of those. The more you play the more you can tell where you have a lead or where you are behind.

4.Objectives:

Killing towers or damaging them as much as possible without having to sacrificing a death. You Don’t need kills to win the game, kills should be a bi product of doing everything else correctly. Vision allows for this to happen.

Pushing for objectives whenever possible is probably one of the most important things in the game, it gives you overall the most gold/experience. An aegis of immortal and a cheese on your team is huge for regaining or extending an advantage.

There’s not much else to say about objectives other than do them every chance you get. So long as you don’t die.

5.Items:

Knowing what items to build is also very important. Personally I understand what I need to build, in a general sense, depending on the situation but sometimes my decisions on those items are wrong, whether it’d be in the order in which I got them or I am trying for an item what I will never get to because im too far behind.

This is something that I am still learning and feel like it’s the part of dota that I understand the least of, because of this I don’t feel like I am the right person to explain something I am still learning.

P.S. I am looking for a stack of people that will make up 5 total and practice team play. I rank solo but I still very much enjoy the team aspect of the game so let me know. I also sometimes stream over at my Stream, if im on come chat.