How to play Dota 2

[Mercurial]

Let's start of with the basics of Doto. 

First of all you're on a team of 5 on either the Dire or Radiant side. Dire dark and scary/Radiant hitler in springtime. Then you have your ancients which is in the damn title "Defense of the Ancients". You can guess what you're doing the entire game. 

 

The Ancients

 

 

Moving on you have your towers which you also defend in the lanes. Then you have your lanes which consist of top mid and bottom. Starting off in bots mode and low tier pub matches you'll probably be doing the traditional 2-1-2 setup. This is where two heroes go to the top lane 1 goes to mid lane and 2 go to bot lane usually with 1 ranged and 1 melee in the side lanes of top and bottom. For the first 10-14 minutes of the game you'll probably be in this formation with the occasional variation or rotation of heroes to either go on the offensive or defensive.

 

The Map

 

 

Continuing on the map there are these objects called runes which spawn in the river cutting through the middle diagonal of the map. They spawn either closer to the top or bottom randomly at 0 minutes and every 2 minutes after that. They come in a few flavors haste-max movement speed, Double damage-self explanatory, Invisibility-what it says on the tin can, regeneration-restores you to full health and mana over time, and Illusions-which gives you 2 "fake" copies of yourself to mess with the enemy. Generally the person to get these at the start is whoever gets there first typically mid who will generally check the rune at top or if it spawns at bot whoever is checking that one will get it. Laning phase the mid hero will generally be the one to get them except in certain situations. 

 

Blue-Double Damage

Red-Haste

Yellow-Illusions

Green-Regeneration

Purple-Invisibility

 

Rune Spots

 

[Mercurial]

The Big, The Bad, THE HUGE MOTHERFUCKER! ROSHAN! 

 

He is located in the red pit right above the bot rune on the map.

 

 

Couple things about Roshan. Firstly unless you are Ursa or know what you're doing do not mess with Roshan solo. Most of the time he'll require a tank and about 2 or 3 damage dealers to take down safely. He will drop an Aegis of Immortality which lasts for six minutes and on death will revive you and be used up. You can squabble over this thing, but it generally goes to the carry who has space or sacrifice an item for it. After killing him 3 times he will drop cheese which can be sold for 500 gold or used as a potion to regen a shitload of hp and mana probably full unless you have 6 Hearts of Tarasque or something. 

The majority of the time Roshan will be brooding is his cave while you're duking it out with the enemy team. You should generally only do Roshan as team if the other team is dead or if you know you can kill him very quickly. 

 

Now the meat of the game killing your enemy, pushing, destroying the enemy ancient and defense. 

 

First lets start with 1 simple rule that all new players should follow in Dota. DO. NOT. TOWER. DIVE. 

 

Example

 

 

They may have gotten the kill on centaur, but it took 3 deaths to do it. DO NOT TOWER DIVE. This mostly applies to the early stages of the game and on later stages many heroes can tower dive and melt that other teams face off, but for now just please don't do it and your team will hate you less you dirty noob. 

 

Anyways when the timer hits 0:00 the first wave of creeps spawn and every 30 seconds after that they spawn in every lane. These guys are there to help you push and tank tower damage. They are also there to help you kill the enemy creeps so please do not tank creep damage unless you are very beefy or are something like lifestealer. If you are a carry or someone who needs gold you need to learn how to last hit creeps. This is hitting a creep for lethal damage and in the early game they have to be fairly low for you to do this. You also need to deny creeps whenever you can so your enemy gets no gold from it and less experience. You attack your own creeps by holding A and clicking on them. Practice in lobby with no bots till you can do it consistently on the hero of your choice. Keep in mind last hitting is not the same on all heroes as there is a large variance in their attack animation and their base damage. 

 

 

When it comes to laning a lot new players tend to think that just autoattacking and pushing up to enemy tower will cut it, but it doesn't. If have a great siege hero such as Leshrac then by all means push that lane and take that tower down, but otherwise unless you have an aggressive trilane(three heroes usually 2 supports and carry) then you will probably just be helping the enemy team by pushing up to their tower. Though letting them push up to your tower is equally bad because that means you tower is taking damage. No beuno. If you are a support and the other team is pushing extremely hard to your tower then you should get a ring of bassilus and maybe upgrade it to a ring of aquilla so you can give your creeps extra armor, but if the lane equilibrium is starting to push to their tower and you know you can't do significant damage to it then you should turn off your ring so it only gives armor to you and your teammates. 

 

Once the laning phase is over now begins the midgame and where the real slaughter begins. This is when carries should start racking up kills or farming depending on the hero and when you should start rotating around and pushing in towers for real. The 2 most important towers for the dire is the tier 1 mid tower and the tier bot tower because these give you control of your jungle and being able to take down roshan safely. For the radiant it is the tier 1 top and mid tower. 

[Mercurial]

Items going here lazy right now so I am going to move on to the hero list. 

[Mercurial]

And the first part of dota 2 choosing your heroes. I am gonna do this alphabetical order since that's easier. 

For future reference numbers with slashes between them are there because depending on the level of skill it will do different damage, a different amount of mana, ect. 

First on the Menu

 

Alchemist. Durable/Carry/Disabler

 

Tiny little gnome alchemist on top of a huge ogre. These two are money making wrecking crew. 

 

Ablities

 

Acid Spray 

Sprays a large area with acid that does armor reduction of 3/4/5/6, does 14/20/26/32 damage per second, lasts for 16 seconds, a cooldown of 22 seconds and costs 130/140/150/160 mana to cast. 

 

Unstable Concoction

This is your disable as alchemist. It channels for 7 seconds and you can throw it any time. If you wait longer than 7 seconds it does damage to you and stuns you. 

The longer you hold it the longer the stun lasts and the more damage it does this caps out at 1.75/2.5/3.25/4 seconds for the stun and 150/220/290/360 for damage. 

Has cooldown of 16 seconds and has a flat mana cost of 120. 

 

Greevil's Greed 

This is a passive stacking ability of alchemist and what makes him a great farmer. This is a must for early levels as even at level 1 this gives you a lot more gold than without it. 

After you kill a creep it lasts for 25 seconds and every creep after that it adds a stack to it. The bonus gold caps at 30.

The stacks go 1/2/3/4 and the base bonus gold without stacks is  4/6/8/10

 

And his ultimate

Chemical Rage

 

This is where the wrecking comes into play. Turns your already crazy ogre into a terrifying monstrosity. 

 

Duration: 25

Bonus Attack Speed (Base Attack Time): 1.4/1.2/1.0 BAT

Bonus HP: 300/600/900

Bonus Health Regeneration: 15/30/60

Bonus Mana Regeneration: 3/7.5/12

Bonus Move Speed: 30/40/60

Cooldown: 45

Mana Cost: 50/100/150

 

 

Playing as Alchemist. 

 

You're gonna be farming a lot of the game so you can get items like Black King Bar and Assault Cuirass. 

 

When coming for a gank as Alchemist firstly start off your Unstable Concoction ahead of time outside of enemy sight range. The enemy cannot see the timer on it, but they can definitely hear the initial sound of their brutal murder beginning. 

Secondly throw Unstable Concoction at after 5 seconds because that is when the damage and stun maxes. Only do this is if they don't notice and don't run, but if they begin run throw it as soon as they make it to the tree line because they will do their best to juke you and make you eat your own disgusting brew. Then throw down your acid spray the -6 armor at level 4 helps A LOT. Then rage and eat their face. 

 

Acid Spray is also very useful for farming since it does damage to creeps as well just make you get the last hit. 

 

Playing against Alchemist 

 

If you think Alchemist has an Unstable Concoction then you should probably run and try to juke him in trees one he stuns himself and you're confident go ahead and try to gank him.

 

DO NOT STAND IN ACID SPRAY IF YOU CAN HELP IT. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Ancient Apparition. Support/Disabler

This dude. He buys the wards and enjoys making people shatter and freeze in place. 

 

Abilities

 

Cold Feet

Aside from the silly name this is a really nice skill and low pubs you'll probably pull it off a lot.

If after 4 seconds your target was stupid enough to stand still for 4 seconds and move out of the AoE then they're frozen in place. 

 

Range: 700

Duration: 4

Damage Over Time: 37.5/50/62.5/75

Stun Duration: 1.25/2/2.75/3.5

Break Distance: 740

 

Icy Vortex

[Chewblaha]

How to play Warcraft III.*

 

I fixed your title.

[Mercurial]

Eh?

[toxicitizen]

Because Dota was originally a Warcraft III custom map.

[Mercurial]

I know, but it wasn't really that funny...

[Chewblaha]

It was more me trying to be an asshole.