Dota 2 Developing Good Farming Patterns Guide

Dota 2 Developing Good Farming Patterns Guide by artiqDotA

Developing good farming patterns

When you are playing a farming intensive hero you need to think about how you should farm and what you want to accomplish while farming. I think this needs to be stated because very few people who play Dota in pubs seem to have healthy farming patterns and habits and it hurts the team and it stops them from winning.

The mistakes I see made are that most players get caught out or don’t apply any pressure when farming, be it by pushing out lanes and pressuring towers or by killing the opponent. They default to what is also knows as “AFK farming”. Heroes that this is prevalent on are Naga Siren, Terrorblade, Anti-Mage, Storm Spirit and Clinkz.

Farm distribution

Distributing farm in the team is one detail I do not see players put enough emphasize on. Many do it to some extent subconsciously but rarely do they make an effort to try to improve this aspect of their play. EG and C9 are two teams that I think have very good farming distribution and can use the map’s resources very well. You often hear casters say that you don’t want to go to a farming war with EG or C9 because they will outfarm you. How do they do this? It’s by good farming distribution.

You need to think about the resources available on the map. The entire map, not just your side. With this you want to maximize your own team’s farm while minimizing the enemy’s. The last part is important and it will help you “outfarm” your opponent. If you look at the map and think about what resources are available to your team you also need to consider the difficulty of accessing said resources. Example: If you’re Radiant then in most situations the Dire woods will be a very difficult resource for you to access. Conversely, the Radiant wood is most likely safe for you.

Bad players don’t make use of this at all to maximize their team’s farm while at the same time taking away the enemy’s farm. A common example that happens extremely often is a player playiing Terrorblade or Naga. They start off on the safe lane and acquire good farm and they make use of their own jungle. They will keep doing this forever if no one comes to pressure them.

What they won’t do though, which a good player might consider is going to the offlane, pressuring the enemy’s safe lane tower and taking over their woods. What does this accomplish? It opens up the map for your team (weak supports) to farm safely in your woods and on the safe lane. It is difficult for a weak support to walk into the enemy woods and farm there. It’s easier for a Terrorblade or Naga. This also effectively makes your team farm both jungles while the enemy team has limited resources left. The same goes for the ancients camps. If you’re a hero that can farm the ancient camp efficiently then you should consider focusing on farming that more and let the other resources on the map for your teammates that can’t farm ancients.

Avoiding ganks and applying pressure by being off the map

“Off the map Dota” is a term some pros use and you see it constantly in pro games. It’s playing in a way that you are off the map for the enemy and by doing this you indirectly apply pressure on them. Pudge is a perfect example of this. You don’t necessarily need to get kills on Pudge. By just being off the map and not standing on lanes farming you make the enemy scared. You force them to go together, thus reducing their farm rate. Storm can also do this but he can also apply what I mentioned earlier about farming distribution. He can farm the enemy woods and be off the map at the same time.