Dota 2 Things To Do First 5 Minutes of Every Game

by DotaAlchemy

1. Rush to the lanes

Getting to the lane early and placing a ward from an undetectable location allows you to get a massive head start on winning the vision game. Not only does an early ward give you early information about who is laning where but it also lets you see how much regen each hero in the lane has. This is one of the most important things to note because it will help you identify which hero to prioritize harassing first. Finally, if you are able to catch the other team warding it gives you a free deward and means they likely will not have another ward in that lane for several minutes. This allows you to surprise your opponents with harass from fog OR you can go side pull the lane without being spotted OR you can even rotate to another lane undetected if your current lane doesn’t need help.

2. Play the game out in your head

Planning how you think the game is going to go is one of the absolute best ways to be efficient. Of course, you can’t reliably predict every single move that the opposing team will make but you can think of things like power spikes, important item choices and which heroes cause your team the most problems at various stages of the game. Recognizing that this is a game where the enemy Storm can easily rush an Orchid because his lane match up is easy or your team doesn’t have any reliable catch will allow you to prioritize that Manta or Euls as a first item over something more aggressive or farm oriented. This might seem small but it is actually the difference between that Storm Spirit controlling the entire map, snowballing out of control and using his great start to buy a very cost inefficient mana regeneration item. Recognize which heroes are countered by the draft and which heroes will need to be countered with items.

3. Check the inventories of all of your teammates and all of your opponents.

You can predict with a high amount of accuracy which lanes will win and which lanes will lose in the first 5 seconds of the laning phase. Knowing the general hero matchups and how much regen each hero has entering the lane should be the number one indication of how the lanes will go. Knowing which lanes will have the most problems will allow you to make smart rotations to help them and avoid allowing the other team to freely snowball that advantage. Some lanes are meant to lose but came back in the mid game, however if you let that difficult lane go completely uncontested, then it will spill over to effect the rest of the game. Making a timely gank with the first or second power rune could entirely change the regen advantage of the lane or significantly stunt the snowball of a lane dominating hero matchup. There will of course, be a small amount of variance for when someone outplays the matchup.

4. Try to get as much experience as possible.

We made a video a while back called “Roaming is Dead” and it got a TON of hate from the viewers. Most of this was due to terminology but the core truth of that video remains true today. If you spend the majority of your time out of experience range from creeps dying because you are walking from one lane to another or getting completely zoned out, you are going to have a miserable game. Level 6 is an incredibly important milestone for most heroes in the game and something every core and every support should be trying to reach ASAP. This one especially goes out to support players who can often find themselves 4-5 levels below the mid laner by 10-12 minutes if they are spending too much time in between lanes. This is also one of the main reasons why jungling has fallen out of style. Even one extra level on your nuke or disable spells can be the difference when trying to secure an important kill as you start trying to push towers. Oh and the mantra of your laning stage should be. Deny, deny, deny, pull, pull, pull.

The main caveat to this rule is when the lane is either too hard to harass/control or too easy where the core is free farming. In these cases the supports should opt to let the core of the lane get solo experience while trying to either disrupt pulls, stacking camps in the jungle or rotating to another lane to make a play.

5. Set up early for the first Bounty Rune spawn.

The change to the 5 minute Bounty Runes has created a huge dynamic of early fighting in most games. Though the runes give a relatively small amount of gold to each hero, the overall impact of getting 3 or 4 of them is a sizeable gold swing for the whole team. Additionally, it can be a pretty serious hit to team morale if you are in a tough laning stage and see the other team snag all four runes with an Alchemist on the team. Players are getting better and better at making the runes priority number one at 5:00 and this often leads to skirmishes or even full on team fights. Making sure that you have a good amount of resources (HP, Mana, Vision & Detection(if necessary)) in the seconds leading up to the Bounty Rune spawn can massively impact the rest of the laning phase with the extra gold or an early team fight win.

TL:DR/W1. Rush to the lanes

2. Play the game out in your head

3. Check the inventories of all of your teammates and all of your opponents

4. Try to get as much experience as possible.

5. Set up early for the first Bounty Rune spawn.