Dota 2: A Beginner’s Guide

Dota 2 is a MOBA game with a player base of roughly 8 million. On average, more than 400.000 people play the game concurrently, which means that new players will never run out of teammates and opponents. In fact, in most MMR brackets, it’s quite rare to run into the same person twice.

Apart from being a great MOBA game, Dota 2 is also a successful esport with a professional circuit that’s played in six different regions of the world and features 3 Majors and one world championship each year. This world championship is called The International and its prize pool is always in the tens of millions of dollars.

If you’re new to Dota 2, this Dota 2 guide will give you a thorough introduction to the game.

The MOBA Side of Dota 2

MOBA simply means Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. This genre is more than 10 years old and features lots of great games, such as League of Legends and Smite.

As a genre, MOBA combines the best elements of RPG games with the best elements of RTS games. In essence, you’re playing an RTS match on a two-sided map, but with heroes that evolve and can purchase powerful items.

Like other MOBAs, Dota 2 is played in a 5v5 format. Each player gets to pick one hero from a pool of more than 120 options. And his choice will be unique throughout the game, in the sense that once a hero is picked, it is no longer available for other players to pick it.

Given the uniqueness of each individual hero and the fact that different players enjoy competing with different heroes, no two Dota 2 matches are the same. This makes the game infinitely replayable and very difficult to master, which is why most Dota 2 players do not get bored even after thousands of hours.

Dota 2 only gets better as you accumulate more experience. Below 1000 hours, you tend to struggle a lot because you don’t fully understand the game’s elements while other, more experienced players, do. But after a certain point, the sheer number of possibilities makes it extremely addictive.

In Dota 2, you can express both your creativity and tactical prowess in ways that few games can replicate. Once you’ve got the taste of victory and constant improvement, everything else will feel boring by comparison.

Dota 2’s Core Gameplay

Every Dota 2 match is played on the same map and consists of two stages: the drafting phase and the battle itself. The first stage usually lasts for around 5 minutes, although in Captains Mode, which is the mode used in professional matches, it can last for 10-15 minutes.

During the drafting phase, the 10 players pick and ban heroes. If a hero is banned, no side can pick it. Once a hero is picked, it remains picked and its player will use it for the entire duration of the match.

The second stage of the game is played on a two-sided map divided by a river. Each side consists of 3 lanes defended by towers. In between the lanes and on the edges of the map there are plenty of trees and creatures that can be killed for gold and experience. These creatures are called neutral creeps.

On the lanes spawn a different category of creeps, called lane creeps. These creatures advance on their lane and attack everything in their path. If they reach an enemy structure, they start attacking it until they get killed. This mechanic of the game is very basic and new players will adapt to it quite fast.

One thing to realize in Dota 2 is that the real battle takes place between heroes and not as much between heroes and enemy creeps. The longer the game goes, the weaker the creeps become relative to the heroes.

The objective of the game is to become stronger than the enemy side by acquiring gold and experience, and then utilize that advantage to advance toward the enemy base. The game ends when one of the teams destroys the other’s Ancient, which is the main structure located inside the base. Think of it as the equivalent of the king in chess.

Dota 2 Buildings

Buildings are a huge part of Dota 2. After the massive changes introduced by Dota 2 patch 7.33, there are now lots of types of structures that you need to be aware of. A list of them is presented below.

Ancients

These are the two most important buildings in the game. One of them belongs to the Radiant side while the other belongs to the Dire side. When one of them gets destroyed, the game ends with the victory of the team that destroyed it.

Ancients do not attack but they do have a lot of HP, armor, and HP regeneration. This means that to destroy them, teams need a substantial amount of damage.

Towers

Towers are located on each lane. There are three of them per lane for each team. Two more stand in front of the Ancient. To destroy a tier 2 tower, a team must first destroy the tier 1 tower located on the same lane. The same principle applies to all towers.

Even if you’ve destroyed the tier 3 tower on one of the lanes, when you go to a different lane, you must destroy the towers in their natural order.

The Ancient cannot be attacked until all of the towers are destroyed in at least one of the 3 lanes. In addition to this, a team must also destroy the 2 towers that guard the Ancient itself.

Tier 1 towers are the easiest to destroy. The closer a team moves to the enemy base, the stronger the towers become.

It’s also worth noting that in Dota 2 there’s a team ability called Glyph of Fortification. This ability can be activated by any member of the team to make all buildings immune for 7 seconds. Its cooldown is 300 seconds, but it will reset after a tower is destroyed.

Barracks

Barracks spawn lane creps. On each lane, a team has a pair of barracks. One for ranged creeps and the other for melee creeps.

When a team’s set of barracks is destroyed, the opposing team’s creeps are empowered on that lane. If all three sets of barracks are lost, the opposing team gets mega creeps, which are very powerful and will often end the game on their own if the base is not defended at all times by its heroes.

Fountains

The heroes of a team always spawn in that team’s fountain. This is a place where you get to access the main shop, quickly regenerate your HP and mana, and get protected from the enemy heroes. If an enemy tries to step into your fountain, the fountain will attack them with great force.

It’s always a good idea to return to your fountain when you’re very low on HP or mana and need to regenerate. You can also do it to buy items, but there’s a better solution to that problem. Each player in Dota 2 has his own personal courier, which is an animal that can be used to transport items.

Couriers can be killed, give gold to the opposite side, and need several minutes to respawn. So you need to be careful.

Twin Gates

In Dota 2, Twin Gates are used to travel faster from the top side of the map to the bottom side. They’re teleporters and players use them all the time.

Tormentors

Tormentors are mini-bosses. These buildings spawn at the 20-minute mark and then respawn 10 minutes after they get destroyed. However, they reflect almost all of the damage that is inflicted upon them. This makes them very hard to kill.

The rewards for destroying them are exceptional. Each Tormentor grants Aghanim’s Shard, an item that costs 1400 gold, to one of the poorest team members, as long as he doesn’t already have the item.

Outposts

Outposts are used as waypoints to which a team can teleport. It takes considerably longer to teleport to an Outpost than to a tower, but it’s still a much more efficient way to travel.

Outposts can only be used by the team that controls them. The two sides usually fight over their control.

Lotus Pools

Lotus Pools are places that spawn regeneration items that can be combined to produce even more powerful regeneration items.

Dota 2 Heroes

Dota 2 revolves around heroes and the battles between them. At its core level, this is a PvP game and all of its other features need to be viewed as a means to an end.

The objective is to make your hero or your teammates’ heroes as powerful as possible, so that you can win team fights more easily and then take key objectives around the map.

In Dota 2, all heroes are important. But not all heroes receive the same priority. There are roles that you must understand and respect if you want to do well. Given that there are 5 heroes per team and just 3 lanes, 3 of those heroes will usually play core roles while the other 2 will play support roles.

A core is supposed to farm as much as possible. A support is supposed to take care of the cores, enable them, and help with everything they can: sentry and observer wards for map vision, abilities during fights, consumables, etc.

Support heroes will also farm to some degree to get more gold and experience, but that is not their primary objective. In fact, if they make it their primary objective, their team will usually lose.

Here are the main hero roles and their features:

Position 1 / Carry

This is the most important role to play and the most privileged from a gold-acquisition perspective. Carry heroes are taken care of by the position 4 and 5 heroes and can farm as much as they want, wherever they want. This usually means that they get to choose where they want to be on the map and they’ll always choose the safest areas.

If a carry hero gets protected and empowered by the rest of the team, he will be able to win the game almost on his own in the long run. These types of heroes tend to be the weakest in the early part of the game and the strongest in the mid and late part of the game.

Without strong items and levels, carry heroes can’t do anything and are easily killed by the enemy side. But once they get to level 12-18 and reach around 10.000 – 15.000 networth (or gold), they become very powerful and will deal a lot of damage in team fights.

Here are some examples of famous carry heroes that you should learn to play:

• Spectre
• Morphling
• Anti-Mage
• Terrorblade
• Lifestealer
• Slark
• Bloodseeker

Position 2 / Mid

This Dota 2 role is almost as important as the carry role but it’s a lot more technical, especially in the first 10 minutes of each game. As a position 2 mid, you’re expected to do well in the 1v1 matchup that occurs on this lane.

From time to time, you’ll get company from your position 4 or 5 teammate. Or you might get ganked by the enemy team’s position 4 or 5 heroes. But for most of the time, you’ll be on your own against the enemy mid.

To be a good position 2 player you need to become an expert at last-hitting and denying creeps. In Dota 2, you only get gold for a creep’s death if you’re the one who killed it. You get experience no matter what happens, but you only get gold if you land the last hit.

Because of that, you need to practice last-hitting and get used to using the Stop command to time your attacks perfectly. Another important thing is to deny your own creeps, so that the enemy hero doesn’t get to last-hit them.

When one of your creeps falls below 50% HP, you can start to attack it. How you deny your creeps and attack the enemy creeps will determine a lot in the laning phase.

Another key aspect of being a good mid player is blocking the creep wave at the start of the game. The first creep wave determines how close to your tower the creeps (yours and the enemy’s) will meet. You want the creep wave as close as possible to your own tower because it’s easier to play from that position.

Examples of excellent position 2 heroes include:

• Puck
• Templar Assassin
• Queen of Pain
• Death Prophet
• Dragon Knight
• Invoker
• Storm Spirit

Position 3 / Offlaner

Offlaners are usually excellent tanks. Their role is to initiate fights, tank as much enemy damage as possible, assist their team with utility items like Pipe of Insight and Crimson Guard, and be hard to deal with during the laning phase.

A good offlaner will hinder the enemy team’s carry during the first 10 minutes of the game. The less that hero farms, the better for you and your team. Ideally, you want the enemy carry to suffer huge losses during the first 10 minutes and fall behind by more than 500-1000 gold. If you can do that, you have a big advantage during the mid game.

Some of the most famous Dota 2 heroes for the position 3 role are these:

• Beastmaster
• Tidehunter
• Dark Seer
• Mars
• Axe
• Bristleback
• Underlord

Position 4 / Roamer

In Dota 2, roamers are essentially supports but with greater flexibility. A position 5 support will need to babysit the carry at all times. A roamer will move around, creating kill threats around the map and protecting his position 2 or position 3 teammates.

Roamers usually need a bit of gold to be effective, but not as much as a core. Players tend to pick for this role heroes that have excellent mobility and the ability to surprise the enemy team.

Examples of good roamers include:

• Mirana
• Earth Spirit
• Earthshaker
• Spirit Breaker
• Pudge
• Bounty Hunter
• Tusk

Position 5 / Support

This is the lowest-priority role in Dota 2, but only in relation to gold and experience. If you know what to do as a support hero, you can easily decide the fate of the game with your plays by creating a big advantage for your team in the first 10 minutes of the match.

Support heroes tend to have excellent crowd-control abilities, which is why it’s essential that they don’t die early in team fights and get to use all of their spells at least once. They also tend to be poor and squishy, which is why their positioning is essential.

When you play this role, you’re expected to do a lot with very little gold, which constitutes a major challenge. But if you play well, you’ll give your team a huge boost.

Examples of excellent support heroes include:

• Disruptor
• Enchantress
• Jakiro
• Lich
• Winter Wyvern
• Dazzle
• Witch Doctor

Dota 2 Items

In Dota 2, you gain gold by killing creeps and enemy heroes. You also gain passive gold each second and you gain additional gold by killing Roshan (the dragon that rests in the pit) or by destroying enemy buildings. But all of this gold must be put to good use. Otherwise, your networth advantage is nullified.

There are a few hundred items that you can buy, and dozens of other items, called neutral items, that you can find. Many of the items can be bought from the Main Shop. More sophisticated items and item components can be purchased from the Secret Shop.

Items cost gold. The more powerful they are, the more gold they cost. Each hero has one or more viable item builds. Ultimately, you can buy whatever you want. But some items tend to be better than others for each individual hero.

In Dota 2, items can give you stats like strength, agility, intelligence, HP, mana, magic resistance, armor, attack speed, movement speed, damage, and so on. What you decide to enhance about your hero is up to you.

Carry heroes, played by professional players like Artour “Arteezy” Babaev, usually need damage, attack speed, and mobility. But they also require magic immunity, especially in the high MMR brackets. This immunity can be obtained by purchasing a Black King Bar.

Examples of good and frequently purchased items include:

• Power Treads
• Blink Dagger
• Force Staff
• Monkey King Bar
• Assault Cuirass
• Vanguard
• Bloodthorn
• Sange and Yasha
• Boots of Travel
• Echo Sabre
• Maelstrom
• Aghanim’s Scepter
• Diffusal Blade

There are many more that you can experiment with. Each item is unique and uniquely designed with a key objective in mind. The more you play the game, the better your item purchase decisions will get.

How to Become Better at Dota 2

Dota 2 is a game in which your rank is determined by your MMR, which in turn is determined by your win rate. If you win a ranked match, you gain MMR. If you lose it, you lose MMR. How much MMR you gain or lose depends on the specifics of each match. But it’s usually between 20 and 30.

When you first create your account, you need to play a few hundred matches to gain the right to start playing ranked games. This is good because you need to learn a lot of concepts before you can compete in a smart way.

Here are all the Dota 2 ranks that exist:

• Herald
• Guardian
• Crusader
• Archon
• Legend
• Ancient
• Divine
• Immortal

Except for the Immortal rank, every other rank has 5 divisions and you need to go through each division to reach the next rank. By the time you reach the Ancient I level, you’re already better than 90% of the game’s player base.

To become a better Dota 2 player you need to practice as often as possible and specialize in a role. Don’t try to master the entire game because it’s impossible. Choose a role and 10 heroes, and then play them over and over again.

Header: Valve Corporation