On The Existence of "Elo Hell"

As of mid-December 2013, DotA 2 released an official Ranked MMR Queue. As with any ranked ladder, "Elo Hell" quickly becomes a matter of discussion.

What is "Elo Hell"?

First off, Elo is a rating system for competitive sports and games. However, as I understand it DotA 2 uses something more closely related to the True Skill rating system.

That aside, Elo Hell is supposed to be a threshold on the lower end of the MMR system in which no matter how well you play, you have about a 50% chance to win. The reasoning behind this is that the players you're matched with/against are so bad that the game is basically a series of random occurrences. You could be doing phenomenally well, but your ally is feeding because they are brand new, cancelling out everything you're doing. Or your team has the opportunity to win, but abandons the push to go farm, throwing the game.

According to the myth, you could drop a Pro Player into "Elo Hell" and they would take the same amount of time to crawl out of it as any other player.

Does it Exist?

Low ranked players will generally defend the existence of Elo Hell. However, you'll most commonly hear "no" or "it's all in your head" from players that are mid-high tier. Basically, it comes down to psychology.

Personally, I view it as an issue of adaptation. But, I'll explore both here.

Psychology

There are two ways to approach this.

1. Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias refers to people having a tendency towards collecting or highlighting information that supports their belief or theory. 

So if you are struggling in games and feel it is largely due to the incompetence of your teammates, then every instance of that you see will be added to the list of support you have for your belief. Meanwhile, if you have a good teammate or a neutral one, it will be an anecdote that is disregarded, considered an outlier, or just won't stand out as much in your memory.

2. Dunning-Kruger Effect

Dunning-Kruger Effect is a phenomenon that is often given lots of attention in competitive gaming communities (to the point it's like a mantra on forums). What it essentially claims is that low-skilled individuals will often overestimate their own abilities, and not recognize the skill of others. Basically that when you don't really understand what's going on, you're not the best judge of how anyone is performing.

This also can work the other way around in that high-skilled individuals will underestimate their relative ability. What this means is that if the high-skilled individual finds a task easy, they assume all others are finding the task equally simple. So while they assess their own rank quite accurately, they may make bad assumptions about their teammtes, opponents, etc.

In relation to Elo Hell, that can mean two things:

1. The low-skill player belongs their, but is poorly estimating their own skill, as well as the skill of their teammates
2. A semi-competent player is overestimating the skill of their allies/enemies and thus not getting the kind of play they expected in the match

Poor Adaption

This is my personal theory about "Elo Hell", and is in a way similar to the issues a higher-skill player would be affected by Dunning-Kruger Effect.

What I believe is that players that believe they are stuck in Elo Hell are actually just playing the match-up incorrectly. You need to take advantage of things that your opponents are bad at. What I mean by this is that there is a reason Bloodseeker stomps the low-tier games, and Chen is a high-tier pickup in competitive matches.

Bloodseeker is a hero that punishes map awareness and a lack of understanding of game mechanics. He gets several easy kills in low-skill games, then proceeds to snowball to the point that he can practically 1v5 the other team, or at least keep the other team down long enough that his team can farm until they're 6-slotted and then end the game. Additionally, as a hero that tends to get lots of kills in low-skilled games, you have the opportunity to take up a leadership role. While low-skill players may not assess skill correctly, they do understand that the 20-0 Bloodseeker is either a good player or at least someone that they can feel safe next to. So when the Bloodseeker says "come with me guys", his/her teammates are more likely to listen.

In contrast, if you're a good player amongst low-skill players on a hero like Chen, you'll run into the issue of not being able to herd cats. Even if you take several towers, execute great ganks, and keep vision up, you will eventually need to push to win. If no one will stop farming, you're kind of screwed because a 6-slotted Chen isn't really going to end a game on his own. He also isn't the best at getting solo kills, even with a perfect Troll net into Ursa thunderclap. And when you can't get solo kills that well, you're already at a loss when you also can't count on your allies to respond to your gank.

So in my mind, you need to play in a way that exploits your bracket and make the correct assessments about your teammates. You may look at Pro games and say "Sniper sucks", but when you're in a low-skill game and no one punishes the fact that you have a Sniper, that disadvantage doesn't really matter. Same thing goes for stuff like Warding. If you're buying and placing wards that your teammates are ignoring because of their poor map awareness, you're basically throwing away money. It doesn't matter that high level supports do that, what matters is the game you're in. You always have to adapt to your surroundings.

On a similar note - this is very much in the same area as not picking your newbie friend a hero like Visage for their first Captain's Mode game. Visage is a hero that requires some micro, and a pretty decent understanding of game mechanics, as well as watching indicators like charges of Soul Assumption and Gravekeeper's Cloak. Yes, Visage is a high-priority pick-up in pro games, but you'll get a lot more milage out of a hero like Lion (who is all point and click spells with pretty simple functions) when a new player is at the controls.

What this all boils down to is to not be blinded by your expectations and/or notions of how you believe the game is/should be played at a high level.

Resources in DotA 2

One aspect that is important in Real Time Strategy (RTS) style games (DotA being considered an Action RTS, or ARTS) is resource accumulation and usage. There are some very obvious resources in DotA 2, but there are also some hidden ones, as well as actions directly linked to resources.

In short:

• Obvious Resources
• Gold
• Experience
• More Subtle Resources
• Intelligence / Vision
• Gold - Reliable
• Gold - Unreliable
• Inventory
• Linked Resources
• Time
• Structures

The Obvious Resources

There are two resources that should become apparent very quickly:

1. Gold
2. Experience

These resources are directly linked to your hero and your team, to some extent. There isn't a huge amount going on at the surface level here. You want to accumulate a lot of both of these resources and eventually use your advantage to win the game.

To most new players, it should be pretty clear that you want to be in experience range, denies help you build an early level advantage, etc. Similarly, you want to get last hits, hero kills, tower razes, etc.

Because of how important Experience is, you see heroes like the 6.79 incarnation of Lich making quite an impact on the pro scene. Now that Sacrifice gives you XP for your own creep, you can build an advantage a lot faster. If you Sacrifice far enough back, you also deny your opponent the XP and the change to get the last hit (and therefore Gold).

More Subtle Resources

Some resources are just less obvious because there is no number associated with them, while others are hidden by less apparent mechanics.

Intelligence / Vision

This is an invaluable resource that there is no number or score for. It's something that over time, players pick up on the common sense that the more they can see, the better decisions they can make. Vision is important across all RTS rooted games. For instance, StarCraft players constantly scout and collect information about their opponent.

In DotA, this is important enough that Observer Wards have a cap and restock time, or how the 6.79 tweak to Night Stalker's ult limiting vision propelled him into a top tier pick.

Vision isn't just important for seeing enemy movement, it also allows you to inspect their inventories and make better judgements on what build you should use or gauging what kind of strategy they are aiming for.

Alternative Forms of Intel

From a different angle, you can learn a lot from the Intel you don't have too. For instance, when you only see one hero farming a lane on the other team, the 4 that are missing can give you a big hint that something else is in the works, be it a gank, Roshing, or what have you. Regardless, having good Vision tells you a lot even in this case because you know all the places they are not at.

Good Vision can also lead to good Counter-Intelligence (i.e. Counter-Warding). You'll often see top tier teams like Alliance put up wards even before Rune Spawn so that they can see when the opposing Supports go to Ward and where they Ward. This allows them to knock out their Vision and take advantage of the opposing team's lack of knowledge.

One other important way to collect knowledge is from getting caught out, killed, or failing a gank due to the opponent backing. Often, this tells you that they had Vision of you, like getting ganked at the Secret Shop, or seeing an opponent back as you sneak up on their flank.

Heroes and Intel

A number of top tier picks are valuable because of the Intel they provide. This also becomes an integral part of the balancing process because that extra utility needs to be factored in.

Some major examples:

• Batrider - gives flying vision while using Firefly. This allows you to scout out areas like the Rosh pit, or find heroes juking through the jungle
• Clockwerk - Rocket Flare allows you to scout as it moves, but it also gives you 10 seconds of vision at the impact site.
• Templar Assassin - Psi Traps are good for monitoring high traffic areas like ramps, gank paths, Runes, and Roshan
• Slark - his ultimate's passive will deactivate if they have vision of you. Often, this is a good indicator that an enemy ward is nearby.
• Luna - Lunar Blessing will passively give you better than average vision at night

Reliable Gold

This is a mechanic that many newer players overlook, but it is incredibly important. Reliable Gold is gold that is absolutely safe when you die. That means it is safe and available for Buy Back, or that you can play riskier if more of your money is Reliable.

Reliable Gold is earned basically by achieving "objectives" or playing aggressively. You can earn it from:

• Getting Kills
• Destroying Towers
• Killing Roshan
• Using Hand of Midas

When you die, Reliable Gold is used first when buying back. When you make an item purchase, Unreliable Gold is used first.

The basic idea of this type of currency is that you are rewarded for doing things that progress the game or make it exciting. And by having reliable gold, you're at a lower risk when you attempt a risky play. Because you don't lose Reliable Gold on death, it's an incredibly important resource to have and manage.

Unreliable Gold

Though Unreliable Gold is less useful than Reliable Gold, it's still important. When you make item purchases, it's much better to use up Unreliable Gold and try to leave your Reliable Gold available for buy backs or very important item purchases. This is often why you see players with Hand of Midas building up a large pile of Gold in the bank before making a purchase.

Unreliable Gold is the easiest gold to come by, for the most part. You get it from:

• Creep Kills
• Neutral Creep  & Ancient Kills

As of the 6.79 patch, there is another huge change that impacts Unreliable Gold and that's the new Buy Back mechanic. If you Buy Back, you can only gain Reliable Gold, so that means you have to make your Buy Backs count (i.e. kills, tower pushes, etc.).

This is very important and exploitable. If the other team can bait you into a Buy Back, then you not only lose the gold you spent, but you also lose some of your time while up because you can't even start farming back your loss.

Inventory

You have 6 inventory slots that are incredibly valuable. These can be manipulated by certain heroes or item pick ups. For instance, if a Shadow Blade is picked up, now the enemy supports need to be carrying around additional Sentry Wards, Dust, or purchase a Gem. Likewise, a pickup such as Butterfly may warrant making a Monkey King Bar in response.

While this resource isn't something you always want to manipulate, it's something to look out for. If a support is forced to buy extra detection and sacrifice 1+ item slots to carry it around, that could mean something beneficial to them is sitting in their stash or it could set back other item purchases.

Linked Resources

There also exists what I'd consider a "Linked Resource" in that it relates to one or more resource listed above, but also can be counted as a resource on its own.

Time

In a lot of ways, time is an obvious resource. But it's also something you see many players mismanage.

Time filters into a number of other resources:

• Experience - the longer you're out of lane and away from battle, the less experience opportunity you have
• Gold - similarly, the more time you're doing other tasks, the less time you're spending on getting gold
• Intelligence - even if you're spending time gaining Intel, you're also giving enemy the intel that you're missing from lane. On Supports, who often are missing early game to do pulls (at least in pre-6.79) may go unnoticed, but core heroes missing will give the opposing team intel that your team is making a play. This is why it's important for plays like ganks to be done quickly.

Time is also part of the reason why kills are important. Not only are you gaining a power advantage, you're setting a player back quite a bit in terms of time to gain gold and XP.

Structures

Structures relate to a huge amount of resources, whether they be your own or belonging to your opponents.

• Time - with structures like Towers down, your team cannot react or move as fast to certain situations or plays. You are denied a teleport location which slows your team down significantly.
• Gold - your team gets Reliable Gold for taking down a number of structures. This can lead to critical gaps in net worth for your team to exploit. Similarly, losing Towers will put you in a bad situation economically.
• Intelligence -  Towers not only give you vision, but they keep the wave pushed back. The vision you gain from your own creeps can tell you a lot about what's going on over the river.
• Win Condition - the most obvious thing you get out of structures is they move you towards the win condition of the game, taking the opposing Ancient (i.e. Throne/Tree of Life).

 

Final Remarks

DotA is a deep, complex, and often convoluted game. Just managing Gold and XP will help you get better, but there are a lot of other very important resources that often go overlooked.

If you take a look at any traditional RTS, you'll see players constantly poking and prodding at their opponent, just to get some hint of what their plans are. Many DotA players seem to parody this without understanding the full depth of how to gain intelligence on their opponent. Most players get that Warding is important, but may not see it as a vital resource akin to Gold or XP. Intel makes you, the player, more dangerous while Gold & XP aid your hero in game.

Likewise, Time and Structures need to be managed because they are direct feeds into other resources. Most players get that they shouldn't waste time and that you need to take towers while defending your own. However, sometimes Gold and XP can blind you, like running back to lane instead of teleporting there. or going for kills instead of pushing a tower.

The important thing here is to understand all the different resources and how to manage them, not to tunnel vision onto Gold and XP.

The Basics of Micro

NOTE: There is more to come on this post (look for updates on an upcoming weekend)

Micro is a fairly important part of the game. It's not as prominent as in other RTS-style games, and it varies from hero to hero. This guide is intended to help with just the basics of how to set up and control heroes with multiple units, and some examples.

Control Groups

This is the most basic part of micro. You need to have ways to select various combinations of units.
An easy method is:

1. Selects your Hero Alone
2. Selects both Hero + summons/illusions/etc.
3. Selects just the summons/illusions/etc.

As you progress, you might customize it to your liking, or use something more intense. For instance, if you're playing Chen, you might want a creep like Troll (ranged abilities) in a separate control group from those with abilities that are on a radius around the creep (e.g. Ursas, Centaurs).

Basic Micro

Depending on the hero, you'll find you need to do different things.

Nature's Prophet

With Nature's Prophet jungling, you want to make sure your Treants live as long as possible. When they get too low, you want to have the aggro switch to another Treant. That way you maximize its lifespan (i.e. more treants --> more damage --> more gold).

One way to do this is by moving it back temporarily. The more optimal way is by "attack clicking" an allied creep with your Treant. This games the system into thinking it is a low priority target (it just tried to attack an enemy of the AI). I just do this on an individual basis. When I see a Treant get low, I select it, then have it lose aggro. You can monitor this through having them all selected and watching the health bars in the lower left of your HUD.

Phantom Lancer

For a hero like Phantom Lancer, your Illusions don't live that long anyway and don't really cost you anything (i.e. you don't have to use mana to make them, they don't give the enemy money). You can do things like have your Illusions farm/push the lane while you safely farm the jungle.

A lot of the time, I find myself just quickly making temporary control groups to farm multiple neutral camps at once, while having the others just on an attack-move down the lane towards the enemy base.

Tabbing and More

Tabbing is a huge tool for heroes like Chen, Enchantress, Meepo, and Visage. These creeps all have spells they can cast, so you need to quickly cycle through them. If you have them all selected, you can Tab then cast easily.

Shift-Queueing is something else that is helpful. You can hold down shift to queue up commands. This can help you coordinate things like having creeps move along multiple specialized paths (e.g. so they don't take shitty direct routes) or doing things like the infamous Blink Dagger Meepo (i.e. Meepo #1 Blinks in, all others finish channeling Poof as Meepo #1 arrives --> massive nuke damage).

The Basics of Roaming

What Roaming Does

• Frees up XP
• Frees up Gold
• Keeps the other team on their toes / forced into defensive stance
• Gives good rune control
• Potentially leads to kills (when done well)

When to Roam

• Your team has a lot of heroes that need BOTH XP and GPM
• You are no longer useful in the lane
• e.g. your carry feels very secure, so you should go do something more productive
• e.g. your lane failed and as a last ditch effort, you are attempting to force another lane to win hard
• The other team has a very vulnerable lineup (e.g. weak lane comps, heavy carry comps, etc.)

Metrics

• Highly Successful Roaming = lots of kills, which keeps you leveled and gives you money
• Successful Roaming = your team has more space to farm (other team is forced to play defensively), you have good rune control, and then you are given space later on to catch up in farm (think of how Na'Vi supports work - very active early on, then given time to catch up)
• Failed Roaming = you are underleveled / died numerous times / given no time to catch up in farm

Necessities of Roaming

• Good Teamwork - if you roam and your teammates don't communicate well with you, you won't get much out of the roam
• Opportunity - you can't just roam whenever. You have to look at things like how far the lane is pushed, HP/Mana or allies and enemies, etc.
• Regen - going back to base often is a waste, so you need to be able to stay out and out longer. Having someone like Crystal Maiden can help due to her aura, getting a bottle can situationally work, otherwise you'll want some clarities and shit
• Smoke if your friend
• A lineup where you can be out of lane and it's beneficial
• Heroes that can solo / dual lane successfully
• Heroes that need the early levels and farm, whereas you do not
• The space to catch up on farm in the event you did OK or Failed (e.g. some jungle stacks to farm, a lane you can farm while others shift into gank mode, etc.)
• Heroes that can kill as a result of a gank

Examples

Traditional Roamers are heroes like Vengeful Spirit and Earthshaker. Even when they are drastically underleveled, they are incredibly good gankers. VS has one of the best level 1 stuns, ES Fissure is also amazing when used well.

Your lineup also should have 2-3 heroes that need the fast levels, gold, and can get kills from ganks.
Examples would be like: Shadow Fiend, Gyrocopter, Kunkka, Templar Assassin, etc.

• All of them have spells that benefit from fast levels
• All of them need farm
• All of them can net kills from ganks

Bad Examples would be stuff like: Anti-Mage, Spectre, etc.

• Both these heroes offer nothing in ganks except some decent auto attacks, but nothing that can quickly kill or help lock a hero down
• While both benefit from levels, neither has as much to gain from them as someone like Shadow Fiend
• Both would be better off if you helped them secure farm instead

You should also look at your other support. If you leave a Venomancer to babysit Anti-Mage, while you roam to gank for your mid Shadow Fiend and offlane Weaver, you might jeopardize your hard carry's livelihood. A support like Venomancer doesn't offer that much in terms of counter-initiation (if you leave them against, say, Centaur and Rubick), especially when paired with a hero like AM that has relatively minimal early game presence.

Modern Roaming

From what I see in tournament games lately, instead of sacrificing a hero to roam, you more often see two scenarios:

1. You have a jungler that can roam between safe lane and mid lane to set up kills, or at least harass them (e.g. Chen picking up a harpy to harass with Chain Lightning, or a Wildkin to Tornado a lane)
2. Your supports pick up smoke early on and roam to mid, or sometimes even offlane when there is an opportunity or the safe lane carry feels secure enough to solo (even if just for a bit)

Both these methods guarantee a bit more farm. Jungling can especially have a similar effect as roaming because you've freed up more XP.

The Basics of Playing Lane Support

Lane support is a very difficult role for many players because you have to do a lot with a little bit of farm. You main job as lane support is to ensure the carry gets farm and to screw over your lane opponents as hard as you can.

In this post, I'm going to go over a lot of the problems I hear from people that are trying to learn how to be a good support player.

Keep in mind, these are some of the basic things. Warding locations and other stuff will be covered at another point in time.

1. Harassment is a lot harder than I thought. Creeps constantly aggro on me.

Normal Attacking:

• Keep in mind that you get aggro when you're attack moving on an enemy hero
• If you regular move you will not get aggro
• Get close before **attack moving** to **minimize** the time when you draw aggro
• Attack Move on an allied creep (even if they are full health) to lose aggro

Alternatives:

• Consider attacking from a different direction
• Come from behind your opponent (this can also help set up kills)
• Use fog of war and tree cover to your advantage

2. How often should I soak experience with a carry in the lane?

This is really dependent on the situation.

• 3v1 - your job as lane support is to zone. Your 2nd support will be stacking & pulling. This will result in the opponent being underleveled no matter what because they cannot contest the pull.
• 2v1 - sometimes you can stack & pull, other times you cannot. It's always a bit risky. Zoning your opponent out is usually going to be a good option because sometimes you'll be in XP range, sometimes you won't, but your opponent will be underleveled in any case.
• 2v2 - stacking & pulling is usually going to be a bad option unless your teammate is a good solo hero like Lone Druid. It will probably be better to stay in lane to harass and deny because in 2v2, your opponents can contest the pull.
• 2v3 - not much you can do in this lane. Best bet is to roam or change lanes. If they know how to trilane and you don't have a hero like KotL, Lone Druid, etc. you'll get beat badly.
• 3v3 - you want to pull the first wave, but then go to the lane after that. Harass and Deny (on defensive side), or deny and try to get kills (on offensive side).

3. When stacking/pulling, what is the goal?

• The goal is always lane control
• Stack & Pull - use this to move the lane closer to the tower and deny a wave of XP from your opponent
• Single Pull - use this to make a super wave that will help push the tower (or to move the initial wave closer to the tower in 3v3)
• Siege Creeps come every 3 minutes (good to know for the single pull)
• Don't pull if 
• (a) creeps are close to the tower
• (b) your opponent will take the pull
• When you stack you want to kill your entire wave
• Get your gold as a support from killing pull camp creeps (some supports are also good at stacking other camps and wiping those - e.g. KotL)

4. If I'm the safe lane support, how often should I roam to get kills?

• Roam when your carry is established (general rule of thumb - I'm sure there are exceptions)
• Goal of a Defensive Trilane is to get your carry farmed, prioritize that
• You might consider roaming if there is opportunity and a high chance of success
• Also consider roaming to smoke gank the courier bringing bottle to mid (i.e. <2 min or so)
• Smoke is your best friend

Miscellaneous Tips

• Grab a TP by at most 5 minutes
• Some teams divide support items like: (#4) gets Sentries + Smoke, (#5) gets Observers + Courier
• Upgrade the courier quickly to reduce chances of it getting sniped by opposing supports
• Make sure you get some farm (supports like KotL, Shadow Demon, etc. are good at stacking camps and killing them to catch up on gold + XP)
• Establish a strategy. In 4-protecting-1, you'll leave your carry to move with the rest of the team for pushing. In dual roaming, you'll have 3 good solos while the two supports roam to get kills.
• Defensive Trilanes want to get secure farm for the carry
• Offensive Trilanes want to get kills and deny the opposing carry farm
• NEVER do something for the sake of doing it. If there is no opportunity to roam, DO NOT ROAM. If there is no reason to pull or low chance of success, DO NOT PULL.
• Pick the appropriate support. If you want to be aggressive early, get someone like Crystal Maiden. KotL is good at zoning and destroying Trilanes. Nyx is good at Roaming. Shadow Demon scales well.

Tip: Play Aggressive Early Game

One of the biggest problems I see in newer players is not knowing how and when to play aggressive. Actually, it seems that most players don't know how to respond to aggression. It's a fundamental part of the game and improving.

The thing is that it's scary for most new players. There are a lot of things to take into account, like:

• You do not have a large mana pool. What if you need those spells later?
• What if you feed?

You're not going to just blindly throw spells down. You want to use them intelligently. Aggression applied at the right time leads to lane control. If you can get an opponent to use all their regen and get them to low HP again after that, they are pretty much helpless (this is also basically how you deal with Bloodseeker mid).

I'm going to walk through a few common places where people should exercise more aggression early on.

The Opposing Mid Got a Bottle First (With No Other Items)

Getting a bottle first is like begging to be abused. There are many issues with getting bottle first:

• Minor Stats: they don't matter a whole lot, but anything that helps you get last hits is good. You'll be able to take about one more auto attack and maybe cast an additional spell.
• Bottle regen can be cancelled, Tango regen cannot
• If you fail to get the first rune, you're sitting there with a 600g item that does nothing for you
• If you need to regen HP, you ideally should need to regen Mana

Contextual Example: Tiny (You) vs. Pudge

To put this in context, let's say you're Tiny and you're against a Pudge that bought Bottle first.

Pudge will generally have Rot at level 1. He gets bottle because Meat Hook takes a huge amount of mana (he can only cast it once before needing to regen).

If you get a few auto attacks in on him, then he's going to need to use a bottle charge (because at level 2, your combo could potentially kill him). The problem with this for him is that he gets 50% efficiency from the bottle. It heals him, but his mana is already full.

At level 2, let's say he's at full mana, but has low HP. Now he has to decide: do I want full efficiency from Bottle, or do I just want the heal? If he chooses to throw a hook and actually hits you with it, then you're next to him while he's at low HP. You combo him, and he dies. If he just sips the bottle, then he misses out on casting a spell.

Contextual Example: Queen of Pain (You) vs. Viper

Here's another example where Bottle is terrible first and you should be aggressive. If you're both sitting at level 2. You play aggressively against Viper and he gets very low. He retreats up the ramp so he can regen, but before that, you manage to hit him with Shadow Strike.

Now he has to wait ~15 seconds to use Bottle because of the DoT. That's plenty of time for you to finish him off, pop a Salve, use your own Bottle, etc.

You Bought Clarities (and Regen)

If you bought something at the start, you should use it. Especially clarities. They allow you to use more spells than you normally would be able to.

Try to attempt level 1 kills. If it fails, who cares? You have mana regen.

A lot of players don't realize how potent your spells are at level 1. They don't need to do a lot of damage at level 1 because your opponent doesn't have much HP, they won't have boots, and they won't have stats from items or levels (you get some minor stats each level).

The basic message here is that if you bought something, make sure you use it.

Your Team Has More Heroes in a Lane

If you're running a 2v1 or a 3v1, then there is no reason not to be aggressive.

Passive play here leads to:

• The solo outleveling you (you're splitting XP with others in lane, they are not)
• The solo getting gold
• The solo getting kills and being useful later on

Here are a few examples:

Contextual Example: Crystal Maiden (You) + Anti-Mage vs. Windrunner

In this example, Windrunner is solo in the hard lane. You're babysitting Anti-Mage.

Get on the other side of the creeps and chase Windrunner out of XP range. If she's smart, then her first spell was Windrun. Meanwhile, you might have Frostbite or Nova, which both do damage. You can exchange blows with her, use spells for harass, or whatever.

If you get hurt or need mana, use a Tango or use a Clarity. Meanwhile, your Anti-Mage is getting free farm and Windrunner is not getting any levels. Pretty soon you and Anti-Mage will be higher level than Windrunner and can get easy kills on her. Just be careful to not draw creep aggro at first (chase Windrunner a bit before attacking her, or use the trees to your advantage)

Some players will tell you to go pull. But you're a 2v1 lane. If you go to pull, the result is:

• Anti-Mage is solo versus a ranged hero that can harass him out of lane
• Windrunner can easily contest the creep pull
• Windrunner is in XP range, so she'll level faster than you and Anti-Mage (or at least at the same pace)

Contextual Example: Venomancer (You) + Sven vs. Drow

Let's say you're in the hard lane while Drow is solo in her safe lane.

Drow is a hero that will stomp if she outlevels you significantly. Once she gets a few levels of aura + her ult, she's doing a ton of damage.

So many players are passive against her and just try to farm and deny. Why not just kill her? What is she going to do at level 1? Frost arrow you? She cannot do anything. She's very slow and has low HP.

Just have Sven stun her, then Venomancer can easily land a Gale. A few auto attacks and she's dead. Now the both of you are level 2, she has no money and has to walk back to lane. After that it's smooth sailing.

Why would you wait? It's like a time bomb.

Worst case scenario is that she hugs the tower. However, at level 1, you should be able to kill her pretty quickly the second she oversteps. You can also do something like push the lane into the tower, then go and block your creep wave. At a certain point you can also dive her.

Your Opponent Skilled a Passive Ability

I see a lot of newer players who lose to Necrolytes that skill their aura at level 1, Silencers that get Curse of the Silent at level 1, and so on.

Skilling your abilities this way is like putting a target on your head.

If you are against them, you have two options:

1. Do nothing - you'll take a lot of damage over time and find them controlling the lane
2. Kill them - they have nothing else to offer. Necrolyte doesn't have his heal/damage at level 1 if he got aura. Likewise, Silencer doesn't have his silence/disarm

There is virtually nothing they can do to stop you. If Silencer casts Curse, then stun him and have your ally go on him at the same time. Boom. He's dead. He has low HP, low movement speed, and low armor. He might have an ally that can stun or something, but now Silencer has to use all his regen to get back into lane or risk getting killed.

Likewise, Necrolyte can't do shit. If you kill him, you've removed the annoyance of his aura for a while as he walks back to lane (unless he has money to TP). You get bonus gold and XP (plus a morale boost).

The Exception

Not every passive merits going for a quick kill. Say a Luna skills her passive first. If her lane partner is also ranged, now they are able to output a significant amount of damage through auto attacks (and besides, Luna's other options are shit like a weak nuke/mini-stun, and glaives which aren't useful in lane).

Your Opponent is Weak Early Game

Some heroes are naturally dead weight early game. Take Anti-Mage for instance. He will either grab Blink or Mana Burn early on. neither of which is very useful compared to a Stun, Slow, or Nuke.

When you see a dual lane with a combo like Lich + Anti-Mage, just kill the Lich early on (lvl 1-3). Anti-Mage can't do anything to stop you. Kill the support and the carry is helpless. And if you control the lane the carry is in, then it's less likely he'll become scary early on (e.g. 30-40 minutes, where Anti-Mage usually peaks in usefulness).

Your Spells Scale Poorly

No matter what point you're at in the game, you can contribute something. But, not every hero has damage that scales the same.

Two examples I can quickly think of are Crystal Maiden and Timbersaw.

Crystal Maiden

• She has powerful slows and semi-stuns that are great all game
• Her spell damage quickly tapers off and is not very effective
• Instead of getting lots of levels of her passive spell (mana aura), get 0-1 level of it and go for your damage spells
• Get lots of kills early while you have the great combination of:
• Good Damage
• Powerful Slow
• Powerful Stun
• (Hint: Not many heroes offer all that early game)
• Also, look at Crystal Maiden: she's slow, has low HP, and can't really auto attack well
• YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE DEFENDING AS HER
• She is an aggressive hero. If she is forced to run or take damage, SHE WILL DIE

Timbersaw

• His spells don't scale that well past mid game (yes, his ult is PURE damage, but it's still going to fall off in DPS)
• He thrives in the lane when heroes have low mobility and HP (easier to land has spells and kill with them)
• Also, there are a lot of trees in the lane that he can latch onto
• You NEED to get early kills so that you get the money to get items that give you the regen that lets you do marginally better late game via spamming

How to Win Solo Queue

Solo queue is intimidating at first because you do not know what to expect from your teammates. But there is also a lot to exploit because of the amount of disorganization.

We'll walk through the following:

1. Picking Phase
2. Game Sense, Awareness, and Communication
3. Item Guide
4. Warding
5. Pushing and Defending

Picking Phase

This is arguably one of the most important parts of the game. You can recover from a bad lane composition. But, I've found it much harder to win with a bad team composition. There are a lot of things to consider in a team composition:

• Farm Priority / Requirement
• High Farm Carries
• Low Farm Supports
• Hero Roles / Strengths
• Crowd Control
• Initiation
• DPS
• Number of Invisible Heroes
• Early / Mid / Late
• Lane Composition
• Who is going to mid?
• Are you going to Trilane?
• Jungle Trilane?
• Aggressive/Defensive Trilane?
• Is anyone on your team capable of running Suicide lane (i.e. soloing the hard lane)?

Also, let's lay some general rules:

• Do not "counter-pick" if it will hurt your team composition
• Example: You have 2 hard carries. They pick Riki. DO NOT PICK SLARDAR AND TRY TO CARRY WITH HIM. You have 2 heroes that need a lot of farm, another hero needing farm will hurt you badly.
• Avoid picking multiple invisible heroes
• This is an invitation for the other team to get a Gem --> "Killing 2 birds with 1 stone"

Farm Priority

I wrote about this a bit in The "Chinese Number System". All it really does is specify who yields to the other player when multiple heroes want to farm a lane. Obviously there are exceptions, but it's still a good rule or thumb or a tie breaker.

Picking heroes around this system is a very good place to start. If your team has an Anti-Mage and Faceless Void (both considered #1 high priority farmers), your team will not benefit from you picking even more carries or high farm heroes. You might want to wait and see what others pick. If you get, for instance a Rubick and a Chen, then you'll want to stick with probably a #5/Hard Support. In this scenario, you'll want to encourage the Rubick to take Mid (#2), the Chen to take #4/Jungle Support, then Trilane with either Anti-Mage or Faceless Void. Both carries have an escape mechanism, so they could theoretically run solo suicide lane.

However, you have to be prepared for your team defaulting to a 2-1-2. In either case, you'll probably want a babysitter type hero with some good stuns and low necessity for farm/items. Otherwise, too many of you will be fighting for farm and none of you will have the items to carry.

Hero Roles / Strengths

You want to have a good spread of heroes. For pub games, doing "all-in" strategies (e.g. fast push) are usually bad ideas because people are uncoordinated.

A pub team needs three-four things (generally) to be "balanced":

1. DPS - magic DPS can work, but Physical is usually the safer option because BKB can totally screw over a magic DPS-er
2. Initiation - pubs are afraid to start fights. You need someone who can go in and stun the entire team or just get everyone else to feel safe going in
3. Crowd Control - you need some way to manage the fight. Crowd Control usually comes from a support, but it can easily come from Faceless Void (Chronosphere) or something similar.
4. Mid Hero - not as necessary, but mid lane is generally going to be 1v1. You want to grab a hero that can handle it effectively, otherwise that's one lane that will be a guaranteed loss and there's no reason to sacrifice that (in a pub)

Sometimes, it's not very clear though. Here's an example match I played in: https://dotabuff.com/matches/59520931

Our Lineup	What My Team Saw	What I Saw
Crystal Maiden	#4 Support	#5, Support, Team Fight, Minor Crowd Control, Roaming Potential
Tidehunter	#2 Tank + Initiator	#3/4, Initiator, Crowd Control Ult, Roaming Potential
Razor	#1 Carry, Farmer	#2, Semi-Carr (DPS dependent upon proximity to ult and Static Link), Ganker
Zeus	#2 Magic DPS	#2, Utility, Magic Damage, Minor True Sight, Global
Their Lineup
Weaver	#1 Carry	#1, Hard to Gank, Needs lots of farm, annoyance
Axe	#2 Jungle Carry	#4, Jungle Ganker, needs lots of farm, probably going to AFK in the jungle because it’s a pub
Sniper	#1 Carry	#1, DPS, easy to kill early, will win if this goes late game
Shadow Shaman	#5 Support Pusher	#5, Crowd Control, Support, Push, Team Fight, Roaming
Centar Warrunner	#2 Imba Ult	Somewhere between #3-#1 farm, Tanky, Global Presence, Crowd Control, Initiation

I picked Riki. My team flamed me, but I felt good about my pick because he was what we were missing. He might not have been the best pick, but you only have so much time to pick. My logic was:

• We didn't have any reliable DPS. Yes, Razor can DPS, but it's too easy to break Static Link
• We needed some more Crowd Control (Riki has smoke)
• Heroes like Weaver, Sniper, and Shadow Shaman can be picked off quite easily by a Riki
• Using Riki to scout, we can line up good Tidehunter initiations
• Riki is perfect for killing AFK jungler Axe's or split-pushing Weavers
• Sniper can outcarry late game, but if Riki can approach Sniper undetected, he's not as big of a threat (i.e. Riki "counters" Sniper's need for positioning)
• Plus, Riki is a pub stomp hero because no one buys dust

We did get crushed in the lane, but I reassured my team that once I hit level 6 and could gank, everything would turn around. It did. Part of the fail in lane was due to my pick and not effectively communicating who would be in each lane. However, part of it was also terrible lane composition (Tide and CM laned together which made no sense because both have lower farm priority than Riki and Razor).

Important Note: Role Switching

Sometimes you'll have to switch what role your hero is taking up. Some heroes are better at this than others, but it's something that happens a lot in pubs. If you're playing Rubick and someone picks Tinker, you might need to yield and let Tinker mid because Rubick can be played effectively as a support whereas Tinker is pretty much rubbish at it.

Same goes with other heroes. Mirana, in a pinch, can be played as a roaming support, utilizing her arrow and ult to set up kills while buying wards and such.

If you pick Vengeful Spirit to support, but have no carry, she is a very viable semi-carry or even hard carry.

Peak in Game

Heroes peak at different times. A hero like Phantom Lancer is really late game. Crystal Maiden does a lot of damage early on.

In theory, you could say every hero is a carry at a different point in the game.

If you stack too much of one thing it will make the match more difficult. Everyone has felt that. Early in your DotA career everyone has a game with 5 late game carries and it makes it impossibly hard.

However, you also have to take advantage of your lineup when it peaks. If you have 2 early game heroes and 3 mid game, then go wild mid game. Gank, push, etc. You need to exploit that window of opportunity.

Lane Composition

Figuring out who is going to what lane is another big ordeal and very important. You want to spread out farm priority as well as make sure your lanes have synergy.

To do this you need to communicate. If someone picks Leshrac, find out if they're planning to run him as a Mid (#2) or as a Roaming Ganker (#4). That will affect what you pick. For instance, if he says Roaming Ganker, you might want to pick a hard support or carry to combo with him (e.g. Naga Siren's net makes Leshrac's stun a guaranteed hit).

When people don't reply, I assume I'll be in suicide lane (i.e. solo hard lane) because no one want to be there, so I pick a hero that fits there and whatever role we need. For instance, Wind Runner can play in suicide lane without much risk, plus she can fill in as utility, support, and sometimes semi-carry.

Game Sense, Awareness, and Communication

This is incredibly necessary all throughout the game, not just the laning phase. You need to watch everything like a hawk. The more information you have, the better your decisions are.

General Rules of Thumb:

• Blame everything on yourself
• There's always something you could have done better
• You can make up for another player's poor map awareness by communicating 
• Constantly check the minimap
• Don't expect MIA calls
• Call MIAs from other lanes
• Check for number of enemies on the screen
• Figure out trajectories 
• Constantly check other hero's items (allied and enemy)
• Prevent your allies from building poor items choices for the given match
• See what your enemies are building or what they have (e.g. Gem is a big one, BKB can be a game changer, same with Blink Dagger)
• Communicate everything
• It's very hard to over communicate in DotA
• Most people don't know what they should be doing, communication helps them make those choices
• Keep everyone positive
• Being rude sets your team up for failure (you already have 5 enemies, why create more?)
• Complement your teammates
• Forgive people that mess up, everyone makes mistakes (plus, you play worse when you're upset/angry/feeling bad)
• Generate an environment of fun, that keeps everyone relaxed. You play better relaxed.

Map Awareness

This is something you have to be on top of for both yourself and teammates. Call out ALL MIAs. MIA calls are a crutch. Rise above that and be aware of every lane. This will benefit you going forward if you play heroes like Nature's Prophet and Ancient Apparition. You need to see everything to make your global presence known.

Watch the other lanes. People miss a lot of easy gank opportunities because they don't pick up early TPs and don't watch the map. Sometimes, you can TP to another lane and turn a enemy tower dive into a double kill for your team.

You need to watch movement too, not just whether a hero is missing. Sometimes you can spot a hero clumsily running through a warded area and tell your team to back up before a gank occurs (which can also result in an easy kill because now your team is against 1 hero that was sneaking around).

Watch your towers all the time too. Losing towers for no reason is stupid. A lot of people tunnel vision on a push/gank/whatever and miss that Leshrac is taking out a tower where a Fortification or TP could have stopped him.

Game Sense

Game sense, in short, is knowing what to expect, what action would have the biggest impact, etc.

This is also where Hero Awareness comes into play. Watch allies and enemies to see what they're building.  A Sand King with Blink is a lot scarier when you're pushing than one without it. Knowing that information will change how you play, where you ward, and how you approach a scenario.

Same goes for allies. Don't expect your Pudge to have a Pipe. Maybe he thought Force Staff would be more effective, despite the mass amounts of magic damage the other team does. If you check this stuff, you'll know whether it's safe to engage a team fight, or if you should hold off.

Use this sort of information to make educated decisions about what your team should be doing right now. Some examples:

• You're ahead and the other team is turtling - Rosh might be a good option because they're playing so defensively. The Aegis will make a push safer because your Carry has two lives.
• You're jungling alone, no wards are up and the enemy team has a Bounty Hunter who has not been seen in a while. You might want to back up, buy yourself some wards/dust, and farm cautiously.
• Ursa is level 7. You hear his roar/ult, but have not seen him go to the Rosh pit. You might want to check Rosh because there's a good chance Ursa used Smoke to sneak past your wards.
• Your team is pushing a base tower, the other team is pushing your Tier 1 (furthest from base) tower. It's not worth it to port back and defend it. You're trading them for something worth a lot more. You have the opportunity to take a Barracks, they don't.
• Your team is ahead, but the other team has more hard carries and some of them are doing decently well. Then get your team to end the game early. You can't just mindlessly charge a Barracks though, get a strategy in place, make sure people aren't dicking around and farming when the item is unnecessary.
• You're Anti-Mage. Your team is pushing a T1 tower and 3 enemies are there contesting it, you can see that one is still at mid. You have Battlefury and basically a lane to free farm. Best choice is probably going to be split push. You get a lot of free farm as the carry, they'll have a tough time defending two towers. You know their mid isn't at top, so it will at least be a 4v4. If anyone comes for you, Anti-Mage can easily blink to safety.

And remember, if your team ever argues with you (e.g. in last example: "AM, get the fuck to top and help push"), just calmly explain your logic. If it's sound logic, most people will back off and say "oh, ok".

Important Note: Address Failures

Don't let failures repeat. If someone is doing bad at mid, GO GANK MID. Anyone can gank any lane. It's not mid's sole purpose to be the only ganker. Hell, half the time when you gank mid, then gain a lead and then gank other lanes. Domino effect.

Likewise, if you're dual laning hard lane and it's not working out, you might want to try:

• Ganking other lanes
• Stacking
• Jungling
• Asking to switch lanes
• Asking for a gank

If your team is giving up towers for free, tell people to carry TPs. Carry one yourself as well.

If you are getting caught out, then start traveling with people, carry dust, put up more wards, etc. Fix problems.

Communication (& Leadership)

Obviously, communication is important. But a lot of people leave it at just "MIA".

When you have any team of 4+ people, someone has to be leader. You need to make the calls on what to do. Most of the time, people just meander around and farm without any sort of direction. Ping heroes you want to gank and explain what you're going to do. Ping towers and tell people to defend or attack. You have to give your team direction or the game will stagnate.

Letting others what you intend to do is another big piece of this game. I see a lot of people TP to defend a tower alone, then flame their team "WTF no TPs guys". Well no shit, you didn't ask. I'm sure people would have come to help if they had known someone else was going to go. This goes back to the concept of blame yourself for everything. Yes, perfect world, your teammates would have been watching the minimap and you all would have ESP and TP at the same time. But this is a pub MM game. You have to talk to people. You aren't going to all be on the same wavelength, the same skill level, etc. But talking makes up for this. You can spread your awesome game sense and map awareness through a mic or a keyboard.

There are a lot of ways to help get people on board with what you're doing in addition to talking. Sometimes they won't feel safe pushing. Buy some wards and place them in spots so that you can see ganks coming. After that, all it takes is a simple "Hey, I'm putting up some pushing wards, let's go take mid".

Item Guide

Picking items that suit the match can be pretty difficult to do, but it's also important.

General Rules of Thumb:

• Be able to explain WHY you picked an item (and it better not "it's good on so-and-so")
• This should be a simple question, if you can't answer it, then odds are the item isn't good for the match
• Give up on big items if you're not doing well
• Knowing when to give up is very hard
• Sometimes you need to do this or you'll keep dying 
• ANYONE can buy "support/team" items
• They benefit everyone, even you, so sometimes it's best to pick them up yourself
• Sometimes other players are having trouble even farming enough to get those items, so give them a hand. It's a team game. Not a dictatorship. 
• Try to get items that benefit you/your team in every way (stats they give, actives they provide, etc)
• Ideally, you want items that complement you in every way
• Don't let active/passive abilities go to waste (looking at you Shadow Blade users) 
• Fill in the "blanks" on your team
• Items are there to adapt, get things you're missing
• Use items to address failures (e.g. Mek is great for team fights against big AoE nukers)

Farming Items

I wrote about this a bit in the past: Item Guide: Farming Items 

The big four are:

• Battlefury
• Radiance
• Hand of Midas
• Mjollnir/Maelstrom

These are great items if you can get them early enough. However, it's not as useful to get them after loose "benchmark" times. If you get your Battlefury at 40 minutes, how much time do you think you'll get to farm with it? Not very much. At that point, you're mostly teamfighting and pushing.

That's not to say they don't have uses late game (well, maybe not Midas), but you miss out on one of the huge benefits by not getting them early.

Invisibility Detection

This is another topic I've talked about before: Item Guide: Invisibility Detection 

The cliff notes version is:

• Sentry Wards
• Good for counter-warding
• Good for location-based activity
• Pushing: gives you vision of invisible heroes trying to start the fight at the tower
• Defending: gives you additional vision to prevent initiations
• Dust
• Good for ganking heroes with invisibility
• Good for team fights / baiting / counter-ganking
• THIS WILL NOT PREVENT A GANKING INVIS HERO FROM KILLING YOU
• Gem 
• Good for preventing a ganking invis hero from killing you
• Good for counter-warding
• Good for ganking
• Be careful because
• It drops on death
• It's a money investment
• There is a cooldown on buying another one

Utility and Crowd Control

• Orchid
• See this - Item Guide; Orchid Malevolence 
• Good for ganking blinkers
• Good for ganking crowd control heroes 1v1
• Good for heroes that need DPS and Mana Regen
• Good against heroes that rely on casting spells to be useful
• Pretty easy to build (small components)
• Note: it deals bonus damage at the end of the silence
• Sheep Stick
• Great late game pick up, pretty self explanatory item
• Eul's
• Great for mobility and mana regen
• Works as a "get out of jail free card" to heroes that get initiated on
• Good for stalling a hero while your allies catch up
• Helps supports survive battles
• Gives you a bit longer for abilities (e.g. blink) to come off cooldown
• Drum of Endurance
• Good item for general scenarios
• Excellent for catching up (Bracer = survival, plus some int)
• Active is great in team fights
• You should generally have one per team
• Urn of Shadows
• Good for gankers (heal between ganks, secure kills)
• Good for stats (cheap item with STR and mana regen)
• Medallion of Courage
• Good for ganking
• Good for Supports that have low armor
• Good for early Roshing using minons (armor debuff works on Rosh)
• Good for jungling (take out jungle creeps super fast)
• Necronomicon
• Good for team fights (people accidentally kill the creep that deals Pure Damage to killer on death)
• Good for chasing
• Decent against Invis heroes
• Great for pushing
• Works well with:
• Nature's Prophet - works with Sprout, aids in his split pushing, utility in fights
• Lycan - more push power, invis detection, the minions gain his buffs
• Bane - more utility, pushing, creeps can attack the hero he is ulting
• Rod of Atos
• Still considered a very niche pick up
• Good for heroes that need HP and INT
• Can be disassembled (don't know what you'd do with 2 +10 INT items though, Vit Booster is useful in other places)
• Natural Synergies:
• Ancient Apparition - works better than Eul's for guaranteeing a stun (Cold Feet + Rod of Atos = stun, plus they continue taking damage whereas Eul's makes them immune)
• Keeper of the Light - he needs HP, the slow helps him hit his nuke
• Silencer - good stats for him, gives him more utility
• Outworld Destroyer - good stats, better able to auto attack due to the slow
• Force Staff
• Get this if the other team has a hero like Nature's Prophet (Sprout), Clockwerk (Cogs), etc.
• Sometimes it's worth it to get one if your teammate is one of those heroes and has bad Sprouts/Cogs
• Can be used to help someone escape (use it to get up on cliffs)
• Can be used to clear trees when pushing (more vision = harder to gank)
• Can be used to push an enemy out in the open during a stalemate (e.g. enemy is sitting in base to defend)
• Good for positioning
• Stats work well on supports (Int and Regen)

Magic Protection

• Black King Bar
• Good for fighting the KNOWN (e.g. you're planning to initiate)
• Good for escaping
• Good for team fights
• Good for carries (especially ones that need the STR/HP and Damage)
• Linken's
• Good for the UNKNOWN (e.g. a fed Tiny now cannot blink and insta-own you with a combo)
• Good for initiation (able to initiate with less risk of being caught by a fast disable)
• Good for Regen/Stats
• Good against single-target spells that you're usually the target of (e.g. Doom, Laguna Blade)
• Bad if they have Lion (Mana Drain is the best Linken's popper in the game)
• Pipe
• This is a Team Item (usually seen on anyone other than the Carry)
• Good against high Magic Damage teams w/ lots of AoE
• Good for initiating (use Pipe before going into a team fight)

Lifesteal

NOTE: Lifesteal DOES NOT work on Illusions. The animation plays (otherwise it would be obvious which was real), but if you look at the HP, the lifesteal does not work.

• Vladamir's Offering
• Good for early Roshing (e.g. Ursa, Lycan)
• Late game, supports can carry this item (it's an aura)
• Can be picked up on carries, but usually it's better to have a support get it
• Generally not good early on because the damage and lifesteal work better after you have more stats (damage is a bonus based on primary stat/base damage, lifesteal is a percent based on your attack damage)
• Mask of Madness
• Good if you have appropriate timing and positioning
• It's a double-edged sword, so usually not something you want to rush (you take bonus damage)
• Helm of the Dominator
• Good if you're going to use the creep you can control (e.g. stacking)
• Good if you're ranged and need the lifesteal
• Builds into Satanic lategame

 Other

• Monkey King Bar
• Get this to counter high evasion heroes (examples below)
• Phantom Assassin (passive evasion skill)
• Riki (smoke causes miss)
• Night Stalker (fear causes miss)
• Brewmaster (multiple abilities to cause miss chance)
• Get this to counter Butterfly or Heaven's Halberd
• This does NOT work against Faceless Void's Backtrack
• Good for the mini-stun too
• Mostly gives you damage, but some DPS
• Daedalus
• Giant increase in expected damage output ("expected" due to crits)
• Basically get it for raw damage
• Works with the bonus damage from Shadow Blade
• Some heroes have natural synergies with this
• Kunkka - Tidebringer
• Earthshaker - Enchant Totem
• Sange & Yasha
• Most would say to avoid this as it is a "Jack of All Trades, Master of None" item
• Can be good if you're behind on farm / need easy build up items
• Main problem is that Sange is not a guaranteed slow
• You can split this apart to make Manta Style and Heaven's Halberd late game
• Heaven's Halberd
• Good against Right-Click carries (e.g. Phantom Assassin, Faceless Void, Anti-Mage)
• Good for support, STR carries
• Butterfly
• Good for DPS on AGI heroes
• Good for increasing EHP (effective HP, chance to evade attack means you take less damage which is like having more HP to some extent)
• Bad against Monkey King Bar
• Bloodstone
• First off: no hero NEEDs this item, but it can be beneficial
• Item Guide: Bloodstone 
• Pretty good on carries/semi-carries that rely on spamming
• Good if you're ahead and getting charges via ganking
• Eye of Skadi
• Good hero fighting item
• Good against auto-attack carries (slows attack speed)
• Good on heroes that can be easily kited
• Good on Sniper (he outranges heroes, so it makes him hard to even get to)
• Great for stats
• Pretty rare pick up because usually other Unique Attack Modifiers work better and are easier to farm
• Manta Style
• Good for survivability
• Good for Pushing
• Gets rid of debuffs (e.g. DUST - think about picking this up invis heroes)
• Good for roaming
• I believe there are some benefits that work on Illusions here (apparently Manta Style has a hidden buff or something)
• Good for heroes that can auto attack from a range during team fights (e.g. Sniper)
• Assault Curiass
• Good for pushing
• Good for team fights
• Good for increasing EHP (Effective HP - due to Armor increase)
• Good for heroes that need the attack speed
• Diffusal Blade
• Good for Illusion heroes (Illusions will get the mana burn effect)
• Good for ganking heroes (Purge slows and removes buffs)
• Can be used on allies/self to remove debuffs (e.g. DUST - again, look into this Invis heroes)
• Good stats for AGI heroes
• Natural synergy with Riki (Purge + Smoke = mega slow, more auto attacks in the smoke cloud while they're silenced)
• Desolator
• Good for pushing (works on towers)
• Good for DPS
• Good against low armor heroes (EHP scales linearly, reduction does not - it's confusing shit)
• Can confuse an enemy because they won't know if you're going BKB, Maelstrom, or Deso
• Note: This is a Unique Attack Modifier, you can only have 1
• Heart
• Good for Tanking damage and staying out in the field longer (heal a % while out of combat)
• Good for STR heroes
• Good for Illusion heroes (they inherit stats - makes them tankier and more annoying)
• Shadow Blade
• Good for Initiating (deals bonus damage on first attack out)
• Can be used defensively (but DO NOT get it for that sole purpose, you're putting half the item to waste)
• Good for ganking (can sneak past wards)
• Good for putting your team further ahead (now the other team has to buy invis detection)
• Not so good if you already have invis heroes on your team
• Natural Synergies:
• Kunkka - Damage on first attack out of invis works with Tidebringer
• Shadow Fiend -  Channeling his ult won't break invis until there is too little time for the other team to react
• Some people like this on channeling heroes because if you use it after channel has started, it won't break channel or invis (e.g. Witch Doctor ult, Crystal Maiden ult)
• Skull Basher / Abyssal Blade
• Decent on melee heroes
• Abyssal Blade is a pretty good late game item due to the stun
• Mostly a cheap-ish DPS item
• Shiva's Guard
• Good on initiators (initiate -> active for more damage & slow)
• Good on tanky heroes (the aura slows attack speed, so you need someone that can hold it)
• Armlet of Mordiggian
• Item Guide: Armlet of Mordiggian 
• Good early-mid game
• Great for baiting (low HP -> switch on -> lots of HP)
• Good on STR carries/semi-carries
• Natural Synergies
• Chaos Knight - if you activate before ulting, then your Illusions get the bonus HP, but won't lose HP over time
• Lifestealer - the HP loss is negligible due to his regeneration from attacking
• Nightstalker - great for ganking because you'll get massive DPS boosts and it doesn't need to be active long
• Skeleton King - has natural lifesteal, so the HP drain is negligible
• Vanguard
• Generally good on junglers (able to tank creeps longer)
• Good on melee heroes that need the HP, Damage Block, and regen - especially if they can split push (e.g. Anti-Mage w/ Battlefury)
• Generally avoid on ranged heroes (Damage Block isn't  as good)
• Some people opt to skip this and just get Vit Booster for a Heart later
• Ring of Aquila
• Usually unnecessary (Ring of Basilius is the key thing you want)
• Can be OK on Suicide Laners
• Poor Man's Shield
• Good if you're taking a lot of harassment in lane
• Usually only want to get this on Melee heroes (again, damage block isn't as good for Ranged)

Blink Dagger vs. Force Staff

Blink Dagger vs. Force Staff

Blink is generally more of an initiation item, Force Staff is more support-ish.

Boots

Item Guide: Boots

Orchid vs. Scyth (Sheep Stick)

Both serve similar purposes, but are also picked up for different reasons.

Orchid:

• DPS and Mana Regen
• Longer Silence (however, they can still attack)
• 30% Damage Amplification (dealt at end of 5 seconds, I believe)
• Easier to Build/Smaller Components
• Lower Cooldown
• You can dispell with Purge, activating Manta, etc.

Sheep:

• More Support-ish (mostly get stats and regen)
• Sheeping will stop hero from evading, dodging, gaining XP
• Slows target

Warding

Having wards up is a problem in pub games. Having good wards up is even rarer to come by.

The thing is that just having wards up is not enough. You have to put them in the appropriate places.

The main things to consider:

1. Offensive / Defensive
2. Pushing / Turtling

If you're playing offensively, it means your team has an advantage in gold/levels/kills/etc. You put wards up in their jungle so that the other team cannot farm. In DotA, you want to take a slight advantage and exploit it as much as possible.

Defensive wards would be placed in your own jungle. These should show entraces that the enemy might use to gank your carry while they farm the jungle, trying to make up lost xp/gold. Be careful though, wards aren't always enough. Sometimes, you'll need sentries to watch for smoke ganks.

If you're Pushing, you want to cover your flanks. So Radiant pushing top lane might put a ward on the huge mountain near Dire's Tier 2 tower. Dire might place a ward near Radiant's Secret Shop if they're pushing top Tier 2 tower.

Similarly, you might place wards in those areas if you're turtling. This will give you vision so you can get outside your base a bit, watch for incoming ganks, etc.

Rosh Wards

For heroes like Ursa, you want to get a Ward and a Sentry Ward up on Rosh around the time he hits level 7. A good Ursa will smoke into Rosh so your wards will miss him.

If you're going to Rosh at any point, you want wards up that will allow you see the enemy coming in advance. These could be around the Dire Secret Shop, the Radiant Jungle entrance, etc.

Counter Warding

If you see a hero put up a ward, then get a Sentry Ward and get rid of it. Information is very important in a strategy game. Plus, Observer Wards have a cooldown between purchases. Getting rid of 1-2 wards severely hurts your enemy.

Sometimes you can tell they have a ward by the actions of the other team. Like if Nature's Prophet's ult hits you with seemingly nothing around to give vision, it's probably a ward (or an invis hero).

If you get counter warded, change up your ward spots. There are lots of ways to place wards so they give similar vision, but are in a different spot.

Anyone Can Buy Wards

People forget this. Everyone wants the supports to do it, but that's not always going to be the case. A lot of the time, if your support is kind of noobish, it's better to ward as the mid, 2nd support, etc. You at least will know how to recover from spending 150g, a newer player might be at a huge loss.

Frequently, I've found it is best to buy wards for myself. At least then I'll get the usage I need out of them (e.g. runes at mid, seeing ganks coming while pushing)

Pushing and Defending

This can be a tricky subject for players. Both highly tie into Communication and Leadership. I've found no one really pushes unless someone steps up and calls out where to push.

Pushing

Basically, you want to be pushing when it generates some sort of advantage or you already have an advantage.

Pushing is incredibly useful because after a tower is gone, the enemy has less vision and less mobility (can't TP to a destroyed tower). You also get a pretty big gold bonus.

The problem can be that pushing too much can make it easy for the carry to static farm close to the base. However, you can counter that with Smoke Ganks and/or Aggressive Wards.

Some generally good rules:

• Make sure you have good vision before doing so
• Make sure you have a TP before you do so
• If everyone is collected somewhere, it might be a good time to push
• If you recently picked off a few enemies, it's a good time to push
• If people are wandering aimlessly it might be a good time to push
• If your carry is fighting for jungle farm with allies, it might be a good time to push (and the carry can split push sometimes if they have a good escape)
• A lot of the time, it's good to just destroy towers in "shells" (i.e. get all the T1 towers, then the T2, etc.)
• If a tower is close to 130 HP (the point where it can be denied), it's usually a good idea to gather people for quickly taking the tower down before it can be denied.

Split Pushing

Split pushing is very useful too. It can be done with heroes that have good escape mechanisms, pushing abilities, pushing items, etc.

•  Good in a 4 protecting 1 strategy
• have the carry (e.g. Anti-Mage, Morphling) farming/pushing one lane 
• Have the other 4 pushing a different lane
• Enemy has to choose between scaring off the carry, letting the carry farm, and which tower to defend
• Good in some turtle scenarios (e.g. enemy is sitting in base but you can't rax)
• Have a split pusher (e.g. Nature's Prophet, Broodmother) push one lane
• The rest push the other
• Hard to defend 2 base towers at once

Early Game Pushing

This is a iffy subject. The gold early on can be huge, but you can also give the enemy carry a lot of space to farm and/or put you out in a dangerous area.