Dota 2 Experience and Leveling Efficiency Guide

Dota 2 Experience and Leveling Efficiency Guide by GOODGOODNOTGREAT

Mechanics

• Almost everything in the game gives experience when you kill it, enemy creeps, enemy heroes, towers, buildings, neutrals and Roshan. The only things that don’t give experience are wards and certain summons (Tuskar’s Frozen Sigil, Pugna’s Nether Ward, Clock’s Cogs, Jugg’s Healing Ward, and the zombies that Undying’s Tombstone spawns) Everything else in the game gives experience when you kill it, even things like TA traps and Gyro rocket give about a denied creeps worth of experience.
• Experience acquisition range is 1300, and any hero kill you get automatically grants you experience no matter how far away you are (though at a reduced percentage).
• Experience is split evenly between all allied heroes in the 1300 range, the only exception to this is when an enemy hero dies, there are some weird experience splitting mechanics where if 2 heroes are nearby, the hero kill gives more total experience than if there was only 1, but with 3, 4, or 5 heroes the total experience split is less. (Full formula is found here if you’re interested in the numbers) Neutral creeps also give experience to both allied and enemy heroes in range, but Roshan and ancients only give experience to the team that killed them.
• Denying also gives reduced experience to the enemy, denied creeps give a set 36 experience, while denied summons and heroes give no experience at all. Interesting to note, because denied creeps always give a set 36 experience,denying super creeps (creeps that spawn in a lane with no rax) actually gives more experience than the 25 they would normally give.

Gameplay

Experience gain is something people don’t really pay attention to because it usually just happens constantly while you’re doing other things, but making sure you keep track of your own experience as well as the enemies is pretty important. Knowing how to maximize your experience gain is especially important as a support or offlaner, as these roles are usually level starved.

• As offlaner you should try to memorize the 1300 acquisition range and know how close you have to be to get experience while also remaining safe, you can also sap experience from double pulls by standing in the river near the camps.
• As a support you should always be utilizing pulls if you aren’t making space on the map and always rotate to empty lanes that no one else on your team needs to farm, this is especially important pre-level 6, there’s nothing worse than going in for a fight at 10 minutes and seeing your supports are still level 5. Sometimes it’s more important to get up to that ultimate than it is to go gank or ward.
• Something that people should be aware of is that the experience required for each level fluctuates a decent amount for each level. For example level 8 to level 9 requires a whopping 1200 experience, so whatever skill build you have at level 8 you should plan on having it for a decent amount of time. On the other hand, level 10 to 11 is only 600 experience, so if you are level 10 you should really prioritize getting that quick 600 experience so you can get your level 2 ultimate. Another low experience level is 12 to 13 which requires only 800 experience.
• One last thing people don’t do often enough is utilize the scoreboard to keep track of everyone’s level. I’m sure there have been moments in the early where you go on someone only for a support to TP in and drop an ult, and someone goes “oh I didn’t know he was 6 already.” The information is available to you whenever you want it if you check the scoreboard. You should be checking the scoreboard at least every minute in the early game to keep track of the levels of enemy supports. By looking at their levels you can tell if they’re pulling or roaming, or if they have a jungler you can keep track of how well he’s doing and how soon he will rotate to gank. It’s especially important to keep track of heroes with big level 6 ultimates like ravage, chrono and doom.
• If you are jungling or pulling, try to notice how much experience you are getting from the neutral creeps, you don’t have to memorize exactly how much experience they give you, but you should have a general idea so you can tell when the enemy is leeching experience.
• Higher leveled heroes give much more experience than low leveled ones, and as stated before hero kills with 2 heroes in experience range result in the most total experience, so usually the most rewarding and efficient ganks in the game experience wise (also gold wise) are those on a solo lane by another hero: a solo support/jungler rotating to kill the opposing mid lane.

Thanks for reading, hope it helps.