Introduction: Why Dota 2 is Hard for Beginners

There’s a common belief in the Dota 2 community that the game is gradually dying, that new players aren’t coming in, and that starting Dota from scratch is unrealistically difficult. Looking at the game from the outside, you really understand that the entry barrier for a beginner is incredibly high.

• Not only have the developers at Valve generally failed to create adequate in-game training;
• The game’s community itself doesn’t encourage learning;
• You’re unlikely to meet a player who will guide you through all the features without showering you with insults.

Nevertheless, I often encounter comments on my channel like “I don’t understand what these words mean” or “I didn’t understand anything at all.” This leads me to a logical conclusion: new players are indeed coming to the game and don’t know how to learn to play because there’s very little quality educational content.

• Yes, there are a couple of complex videos on YouTube, but they have an academic or theoretical nature;
• They just dump a bunch of information on you and say, “Well, you sit and study this, and we’ll come back in a month to check”;
• But the person still can’t lane properly, and a pile of abstract information about hero greed and power spikes doesn’t help them last-hit creeps better.

That’s why I created my own author’s course. This guide consists of:

• Theoretical part — understanding game mechanics and concepts;
• Practical part — hands-on gameplay strategies;
• Dictionary — explanations of Dota terminology throughout the guide.

Throughout the guide, various unclear words from Dota terminology will appear, and I’ll immediately explain them on screen, trying not to use Dota slang excessively. I think it’s quite foolish, as beginners will eventually have to figure out what “farm,” “regen,” “grief,” or “Golden Card of Egor Letov Fantasy League” means.

Unfortunately, to learn how to play Dota, you need to read a lot, and it’s simply impossible to fit all the information into one guide. Therefore, detailed information about each mechanic can be found in the corresponding articles. I’ll say right away: this guide will be heavy for those who just downloaded the game, but such is the game, such is the guide. I sincerely tried to include only the necessary information in the guide and leave only the most essential information for you to read in the form of articles.

The Knowledge Pyramid: Your Learning Path

All knowledge in Dota, both basic and advanced, has been organized into a convenient pyramid for ease of understanding. At each level of our pyramid, there are different levels of knowledge and skills that players improve as they dive deeper into Dota 2. For a successful start to the game, you need the first three levels of the pyramid, which we’ll break down in order a bit later.

The problem with learning in Dota 2 is that players are often very inconsistent in studying this pyramid, and even after playing hundreds or thousands of hours, they stand still and don’t develop simply because they refuse to understand some basic things and start paying more attention to advanced things.

For example, at the very bottom level—the base of Dota 2—there are things like:

• Destroying buildings (which you were told about in the introductory video);
• Game stages — laning, midgame, late game;
• Resources — we’ll talk about them in more detail later.

At the same time, somewhere in the middle of the pyramid is knowledge about a specific hero, their builds, their strength, their abilities, and skill builds. This is what people pay too much attention to, forgetting about the previous levels.

Let’s take an average player with Recruit rank who has played 5,000 hours and isn’t gaining rating. They play their favorite Lion as support. They know that Aghanim’s gives a lot of damage to enemy heroes, and their goal for the game is to build this Aghanim’s and deal damage. At the same time, they don’t think about the fact that at every single moment in the game before buying this Aghanim’s, they will most likely be useless, as:

• The components of Aghanim’s are quite expensive for a support role;
• Individually, these components don’t give the hero anything useful;
• This leads to absolute uselessness for most of the game.

As a result, we have a player who seems to know that their hero can be strong but ignores a number of basic knowledge, which leads to their absolute uselessness for most of the game. Unfortunately, there are many such players at low rating. That’s why I recommend paying very close attention to my pyramid.

Base Level: Simple Mechanics

This level contains the foundation you get from watching the two-minute video inside Dota itself. In Dota, there are many heroes, each with unique abilities and their own primary attribute. What each attribute gives can be checked in the article.

There are three lanes along which creeps run. They spawn every 30 seconds, but their number depends on the minute—the corresponding article is also in the description. Believe me, roughly half of Dota players, maybe even 70 percent, won’t tell you the exact timing when, for example, two catapults appear on the map instead of one. So this information can be considered quite advanced.

There’s also a forest on the map where neutral creeps sit—there’s also a separate article about them, and they all give gold and experience when killed.

The main task of each team is to destroy the enemy’s Ancient. The entire game can be conditionally divided into stages:

• Laning — when everyone earns basic gold and items;
• Midgame — when movement across the map, destruction, and defense occur;
• Late game — when teams try to push high ground and attempt to destroy the Ancient.

In each team, there are five players. Two stand on side lanes, and one on mid. This isn’t always the case—sometimes people come in threes to one lane, some players completely ignore lanes and go to the forest, and most often this happens from an inability to play normal Dota. So it’s better to keep in your head the situation where two players stand on side lanes.

In Dota, there are also strict timings, for example:

• Day and night cycle — which directly affects vision range in the fog of war;
• Catapult spawns — that destroy buildings more successfully than other units;
• We’ll talk more about timings and how to use them in the practice section.

There’s also Roshan in the game—what he gives, a one-time resurrection to one of the heroes of your team when using Aegis. In general, if something is already unclear, rewatch this wonderful introductory video in the Training section in Dota itself.

What they don’t tell you in this introductory video is the importance of the concept of resources in Dota 2. This is exactly the thing that thousands of low-rating players stubbornly ignore. Dota is a real-time strategy game in which throughout the entire match you will fight for resources.

Roles and Heroes Level

Dota is a team strategy game. It’s not an arcade where you need to kill enemies, not drunk racing (though sometimes it’s very similar), and not Street Fighter on a field. The task of the game is to destroy the Ancient, and the ways to achieve it are completely different.

For example, I’ve already shown with friends that you can destroy the Ancient in principle without killing the enemy, or you can do it very quickly using certain heroes and understanding their power spikes. All of this is achieved through team efforts in which each character plays their role.

In Dota, there’s a very conditional division into roles. There are cores and supports, which in turn are divided into 5 positions:

• Position 1 (Carry): A character who takes more gold from the map than their teammates. Their task in the most late part of the game is to kill enemies and most often destroy buildings. They stand on the easy lane for the team (bot lane for Dire, top lane for Radiant). Carries usually spend most of the game farming creeps rather than fighting.
• Position 2 (Mid): Often takes slightly less gold from the map, and their functionality is broader. They can be active earlier than the carry, creating space for farm on the map, or, conversely, wait for their power spike, farm the forest, and not engage in fights to join the team at a certain moment. Most often, the mid already participates in fights more than the carry but also farms quite a lot.
• Position 3 (Offlane): The one who on the lane in every way prevents the enemy carry from farming. This position essentially sets the tempo for the entire team, as it can show activity on the map earlier than anyone else due to having experience from the lane and a minimal amount of items. Regarding the ratio of farm and fights, everything is situational here, but usually the three farms less than the carry and mid.
• Positions 4 and 5 (Supports): These are support roles. They mainly buy items for their team and provide vision on the map. Position 5 stands and helps the carry (hero of the easy lane), and position 4 accordingly stands with the offlaner and helps them.

Basically, that’s all. The implementation of one role or another already depends exclusively on each hero and their abilities. For example, there can be carry heroes who kill well but destroy buildings poorly, or vice versa. There are supports who can deal damage to buildings, or some support heroes can be initiators—that is, start fights. And some offlaners can be front-liners—that is, stand in front and absorb damage.

But these are just cases within a separate game. In Dota, nothing universal exists, although many don’t understand this, as you can still hear the opinion of low MMR players that “position 3 is a tank, position 5 is a healer, position 1 is a damage dealer.” No, these universals migrated to us from various RPGs and have nothing to do with Dota. Please remember this forever.

Builds and Micro-Skill Level

This level is essentially the last thing you’ll master in the first hundred hours. At the “Wheat Unfiltered” level, there are builds on heroes, the so-called micro-skill (the ability to press abilities), and last-hitting creeps.

In the built-in training inside Dota 2, you’ve already been shown how to last-hit creeps—you need to give them the last hit, and you’ll get gold. This is a purely mechanical skill that you can now simply train in special training modes.

The success of last-hitting creeps depends on your habit on each hero, as:

• The animation and attack speed are different for everyone;
• You need to get used to each one separately;
• Denying your creeps is the second most important activity, especially at the laning stage.

By denying your creeps, you first deprive enemies of gold rewards for the creep, and also deprive them of part of the experience. When playing on cores, last-hitting creeps is essentially the first task you must learn to perform.

Let’s say you’ve farmed, last-hit creeps, earned money, understood from the first level of the pyramid that you don’t need to buy only consumables, and it’s worth investing in items. How do you generally understand what to build out of hundreds of items in Dota 2?

Here, the Dotabuff or Dota2ProTracker website will help you—this is statistics on games over the last month on the main hero inside games above 7000 MMR. Among ordinary people, it’s believed that approximately from these numbers begins the so-called “high pubs” where strong players sit, but the concept is very stretchable. Some professional players say that even at 9000 MMR, a large part of players are “infusoria.” In general, you understand, all of this is very subjective.

Why look at how they play at high rating? I’m explaining: don’t try to repeat after Dota players who have played very many hours but sit at low rating. Most likely, they’re sitting there for a reason—there’s a chance their builds will be partly incorrect.

Dota itself also has player builds in the Guides tab, but I wouldn’t focus on them either, as often you can find some build that the community rated very highly, and tens of thousands of games were played on it, while it may turn out that the author of this build themselves played 100 thousand matches and has, for some reason, a very low MMR.

Regarding builds, remember a simple truth: the most popular doesn’t mean good and working. Therefore, it’s better to immediately look at how people with high rating play and try to understand their builds rather than sit on a ready-made poorly assembled bicycle that, God willing, will barely get you to victory with a 30 percent probability.

The same applies to skill builds—the sequence of leveling abilities. It’s also better to look at ProTracker. Just type in the hero, look at the most common build and leveling, and use it. On ProTracker, you’ll have access to frequently collected items in statistics—you should rely on them, but you should also look at games of specific players, as heroes are sometimes taken on different roles, and consequently, their builds will differ.

Unfortunately, you can only understand what this or that ability or item does in practice and by reading a lot of text. Here, unfortunately, without the ability to read, you won’t get anywhere. For the first 100 hours of the game, or even more, you’ll simply be figuring out:

• Abilities, their damage type, duration, where it goes;
• The interaction of different abilities with each other;
• The interaction of abilities and items.

All of this is learned through hours of play, and I’ll tell you honestly: not even every professional player fully knows the specifics of how all abilities work in Dota, considering constant changes in patches.

Macro Game Level

Level 4 of the pyramid is the “Craft Beer” level. Here is stored the so-called macro—everything related to movement across the map, ward placement, and so on. Essentially, this knowledge is endless and is constantly replenished, mainly through players with high rating and professionals playing in tournaments.

Which ward gives more advantage on the map, which is better to give in exchange for an enemy ward, at what moment you need to go for Roshan—all of this is gleaned from watching high pubs.

I’ll say from my experience: up to 3-4 thousand MMR, macro is absent in principle. That’s why the game is more like a fight in the forest rather than some meaningful game. A bit higher, with each thousand rating, a hint of some rational movements already begins to be felt. There also arises such a concept as “objectives” and playing around them.

Most often, macro can be felt when you’re playing in a party with friends, when you have established communication and at least some hint of team play. But as a beginner, you shouldn’t load your head with this, as to understand macro, you first need to study a number of other basic things that I’ve already told you about today.

Signature Hero Level

There’s also the final level of the pyramid. Here we have elite, hard-to-reach for the average pub, beer varieties like Kölsch, Quadrupel, and Doppelbock. At this level of our pyramid is individual skill on a hero—what you achieve over hundreds of hours of play on a specific character, the so-called level of your “signature.”

Among low MMR players, there’s a misconception that a signature is a hero you’ve simply played very many games on. No, that’s not the case. The measure of a signature, in my subjective opinion, is win rate over a large distance. Say you played 500 games on your beloved Invoker at Recruit rank and have a 45 percent win rate—that’s not a signature, no matter how much you like this hero, no matter how cool you pressed buttons on it.

A signature is a hero with a large number of hours and at least some positive win rate. Beginners may have a fairly logical question: must there be a signature? You’re free to play on as many heroes as satisfy you, but as practice shows, most players who consistently progress in rating very rarely play on everything.

A good player always has their pool of heroes. It can be 3-4 characters, or 10-15. All of this depends on the roles you play and the number of hours you’ve spent on the game. After all, to really play well on one hero and know all their tricks and mechanics, you need to play not one dozen, not one hundred games.

Therefore, to master several heroes to perfection, you need to spend accordingly very many dozens and hundreds of hours. In my case, it might even be thousands of hours. That’s all for theory.

Understanding Resources in Dota 2

Dota is a strategic real-time game in which throughout the entire match you will fight for resources. Resources can be considered several different things, not just the mana and HP of each hero, as many players think. Resources in Dota are:

• Mana and HP: From their amount depends success in fights, the ability to trade with the enemy, and so on. If you have little life, the fight will be dangerous. If you have little mana, you most likely won’t be able to use abilities, and consequently, you’ll be less useful.
• Gold and Experience: Which you get for killing heroes, creeps, Roshan, and destroying buildings.
• Spells and Cooldowns: On them and on items, as from them in general depends your capabilities on the map at a separate moment in the game. For example, on the map, a situation may arise when you have an important ability on cooldown—this means it’s better not to engage in a fight with the enemy and wait until it comes back.
• Team Resources: To general team resources, you can also add the presence of towers, as they allow you to quickly get to the necessary part of the map using a teleportation scroll, as well as captured outposts.

In general, this knowledge about resources is a certain measure of understanding Dota 2. What distinguishes a player with low and high rating is precisely the understanding of the importance of the ability to distribute and timely replenish these resources. That’s why playing at low rating rather resembles a fight on a field without scene and reason, while playing at higher rating is more of a resource strategy.

How to use this information for complete beginners who haven’t yet smelled this dense brawl on the field? Keep in mind four very simple things:

1. You must have mana and HP to be useful. If you’re standing somewhere on the map with zero mana, it means you’re useless. To maintain a healthy diet, use consumables. Don’t get too carried away with only consumables—many beginning players buy too many clarities and salves, which restore HP and mana respectively, spending all their belongings on them. As a result, they can’t buy some important item in time.
2. Items you want to buy should be proportionate to the time of the game. Don’t immediately try to save money for a very expensive item and become super strong, as in this case, your hero may not possess certain resources at each separate moment in the game. Remember that example with Lion and buying Aghanim’s as the first item.
3. Valve gave you spells—use them. Very often, beginners in Dota stand with a full bar of mana, especially in the early game, afraid to press a button one more time. This is wrong. Buttons need to be pressed, preferably combining them with the spells of your teammates to knock resources out of enemies. Whoever wins the resource exchange in Dota wins the game.

Actually, even this knowledge already makes you higher than people with low rating. It remains only to choose yourself a role, a hero, and start playing the game. This is exactly what we’ll do at the next level.

Practical Guide: Playing Offlane

As I already said, we’ll build the practical part on playing position 3—our offlaner. In fact, you’re free to choose absolutely any role and characters based on any criteria: the gender of the hero, the presence of weapons in hands, the number of limbs, sexuality, and so on. Nevertheless, I recommend starting with the offlane, and I’ll explain why.

Most often, people who start playing Dota on the advice of their friends who have already mastered this esports discipline at the level of “aper” and “termidate” receive advice to play support. As a result, in the first hours in Dota, you run around and help the team, carry them consumables, and the outcome of the match doesn’t depend on you as much as on your conditional friend playing on a core.

On one hand, it’s cool—you’re not ruining for anyone. On the other hand, you’re much slower getting into what’s happening. You’re a kind of medic on the front—they just send you colleagues, you heal them, but what’s happening on the front line doesn’t particularly concern you.

To avoid this and quickly immerse you in the game process, I suggest you play position 3. On this role, you’ll realistically master absolutely all aspects of the game that will be required to face real players:

• How to stand on a lane — proper positioning and farming;
• How to farm — efficient gold and experience gathering;
• How to destroy buildings — understanding map control;
• How to set the tempo for the team — and consequently, directly influence the outcome of the game.

For a comfortable start, I suggest you three different categories of heroes:

1. Simple Heroes: These are fairly simple heroes who don’t very much depend on the team. They stand on the lane well, it’s simple to last-hit creeps on them, and they’re more survivable than the rest, so you’ll die on them less often.
2. Heroes with Strong Ultimates: Heroes with strong ultimates that are very useful in fights. On them, you need to be able to play “from your button”—that is, fight when you have the ability and try to force fights when it’s available. Here you’ll learn to understand when the outcome of a fight depends on your actions and feel the usefulness of your own actions.
3. Complex Heroes: Complex heroes to execute. On them, you’ll get pleasure from the game process, as their abilities are non-targeted, and hitting with them requires some practice from you, but the game process on them, if you master them minimally, will bring a lot of pleasure.

Examples: Centaur Warrunner, Axe, Bristleback, Tidehunter, Underlord, Mars, Dragon Knight, Pudge, Phoenix.

I recommend not getting stuck on one hero but trying at least 3-4 characters from these 9 that I suggested. Further, you start playing against bots. I recommend only simple and medium bots. Hard bots already press buttons well, hit creeps, sometimes even indistinguishable from real players. So for now, let’s stop at the first two.

Hero Selection for Beginners

You’ve started a game. For starters, you need a starting purchase. Until you’ve mastered Dotabuff or ProTracker, I recommend you such a purchase for almost every hero. The very beginning of the game may vary slightly for different heroes, but all these items are necessary for you to simplify your entry into the game:

• Magic Stick: I recommend taking it always, as it allows you to constantly replenish resources and can save your life in a difficult situation.
• Quelling Blade: I also recommend taking it in absolutely all situations if you’re going to hit creeps, as at the initial stages, it will be very difficult for you to last-hit them. The axe will give additional damage to them.
• Mango and Tango: Restore HP and mana respectively. Branches can be eaten with tango to regen a bit more, or later turn them into Magic Wand.
• Observer Ward: I’ll talk about it a bit later when we talk about vision on the map.

Starting Items

What to do next? Further, the most important thing begins for you—laning. This is conditionally the first 10-12 minutes of the game that you’ll learn to play. For you, laning is now the most important part of the game. Why? Because laning is the most stable and predictable part, because 10-15 minutes, and when midgame begins, complete total chaos can begin on the map, in which even many players with 1000 hours poorly orient themselves.

So first, let’s concentrate on the first 10 minutes. Your primary tasks for a beginning offlaner are:

• Don’t die — survival is paramount;
• Farm creeps — gather gold and experience;
• Buy the right items — to be useful in the first 10 minutes.

Laning Phase: First 10 Minutes

You’ve come to the lane. You’re standing with an allied hero against two enemies. At the first level, you level up an ability that deals damage—almost every hero has one. The first waves on the lane are the most important—they give you starting money and experience. Most often, those two heroes who get ahead in experience, and accordingly level up faster, win on the lane. That’s why you need to concentrate on last-hitting creeps.

There are several points for proper farming so that creeps are last-hit, and you don’t lose a lot of HP and don’t die:

1. Don’t Auto-Attack Creeps: Try to give them last hits. If you just hit creeps non-stop, you’ll very quickly push the lane toward the enemy. When the enemy stands under their tower, it’s more comfortable for them, as they can aggress you, but you can’t aggress them. Therefore, try not to deal extra damage to creeps.
2. Prioritize Important Creeps: Creeps like Ranged Creep and Flagbearer are the most important. The first gives increased experience, and the second gives increased gold. On such creeps, you can not be stingy and press to take them. Spells can and should be pressed on creeps, especially at early levels. This is actually a very big mistake of most beginners who hold spells only to press them on heroes.
3. Don’t Run Into Creep Waves: Try not to run into a pack of creeps, as when creeps don’t have another target to attack, they will attack you. Consequently, you’ll lose precious hit points.
4. Control Your HP: You can simply be too focused on creeps and not notice how a couple of enemy spells have already hit you, and it’s become very painful.

If the first three points are working out for you already well, then there are two mechanics that are also worth mastering: aggro and pulls. Let’s start with creep aggro. Enemy creeps will attack you in two cases:

• First, if besides you there’s no other target to attack nearby;
• Or when you pressed an attack on an enemy hero.

In this case, enemy creeps will defend their allied hero and go to attack you. This can be used in two ways:

• First, if you run behind creeps and at the same time don’t attack the enemy, creeps will be calm and won’t attack you;
• Second, if you intentionally press an attack on the enemy, then enemy creeps will automatically run after you.

Thus, you can pull the right enemy creeps to yourself to make it easier to last-hit them, especially when playing on heroes with melee attack type. This is one of those mechanics that beginners most often don’t use in principle, so if you master it, you’ll get a very big advantage on the lane.

The second very important mechanic is pulls. Most often, pulls are done by positions 4 and 5, that is, supports, but you need to know this mechanic on all roles for comfortable laning. The meaning is as follows: if for a number of reasons your creeps stand very close to the enemy tower, then it’s simply inconvenient for you to farm there, as it’s unsafe.

To pull the lane to yourself, you can use the nearest neutral creep camps in the forest. If you attack them at a certain moment (usually when your wave runs past your tower) and then lead the forest creeps after you to the lane, then neutral creeps and your allied creeps will start attacking each other. Thus, the enemy wave of creeps will come to you immediately, bypassing the allied wave.

Yes, in words it’s very complicated, but in practice, it’s simpler than simple. Having done this a couple of times, you’ll already be able to aggro forest creeps in time and do pulls automatically.

Let’s say you’ve learned to hit creeps, sometimes aggro them, and do pulls. But besides creeps on the lane, there are also enemy heroes and one allied one. What to do here? Unfortunately, the situation is much higher, as if creeps are always predictable and act according to a script, then enemy heroes, even if they’re controlled by bots, are by no means so.

In general, it’s desirable to try to get kills on enemies if possible. But if you’ll just safely farm and not die, that’s already an achievement. In such cases, you can try to kill enemies when they strongly overextend, for example:

• If they run after you under the tower;
• Or receive a lot of damage from your creeps;
• Or when you’re ahead of them in level due to last-hit creeps.

Also, getting kills when playing with bots works very well with pings. If you hold the Alt button and press on any object with the left mouse button, this will be a signal for action to allied bots:

• If you just press on the ground, they’ll run to this point;
• If you ping on Roshan, they’ll go take Roshan;
• If you ping on a tower, they’ll go attack it;
• And if you press on an enemy hero, they’ll attack exactly him.

Now you need to press abilities and ping on the enemy. If you combine all of this correctly, the enemy hero will be in the tower. Here again, I’ll repeat: there’s no universal instruction, as each time heroes against you will be different, they’ll have different abilities, and in some matches, you’ll be able to kill the enemy, and in some, you won’t.

At the same time, it’s worth remembering: creeps in the early game give more than a kill, so you should concentrate primarily on farm, not on fights on the lane.

Let’s say farming is going well for you. What do you need to buy? As I already said, builds are best on ProTracker, but there are some universal things that are better to use for the first time while you’re learning and studying items:

• Stick, preferably upgraded — as 20 charges restoring HP and mana is very much;
• Boots — without boots, you’re forbidden to play—remember this;
• Some item on mana — so that you don’t have to constantly run to base and restore it.

And already subsequent items depend on your specific hero. Someone needs to upgrade brown boots into some specific ones, someone needs a quick Dagger to dive into enemies and start a fight, someone needs an item for survivability, and so on. Here, ProTracker and builds of players with high rating will already help you.

As for consumables:

• Tango — you always take in the starting purchase, but sometimes you buy yourself another pack on the lane;
• Salve — you can bring yourself to the lane if you got your face very broken, or, for example, you killed enemy heroes and at the same time remained yourself on low HP. But remember: if during the laning stage you bring yourself more than three salves and at the same time don’t buy any items, then most likely you’re doing something wrong;
• Mango — is a good item at the start, as basically it restores health for you, and when activated, it gives mana at the right moment. This mana may be enough to press an ability and kill the enemy;
• Clarity — I most often don’t recommend bringing to the lane, as it will definitely be canceled by an attack from enemy heroes. It’s better to bring them to yourself when you’re, say, farming the forest or lane and feel that mana will soon run out, and at the same time, you don’t want to waste time to go to base.

Okay, you’re standing, farming on the lane with heroes, sometimes fighting. What to do next? Well, Dota is a game about destroying buildings, so your primary task as an offlaner is to destroy the enemy T1 tower on the lane you’re standing on to open this part of the map for farm and free movement.

If the enemy doesn’t have a tower, they can’t quickly teleport with teleportation scrolls to this point on the map. Consequently, you get an advantage in space. For a successful destruction of the T1 Tower, you need to know about the timing of catapult spawns—this happens every fifth minute.

Ideally, on the lane when catapults spawn, you have two tasks:

• Destroy the enemy catapult as quickly as possible so your tower doesn’t fall;
• Keep yours as long as possible so it deals maximum damage to the enemy building.

Most often, with competent play on the offlaner, with the second catapult, that is, after the tenth minute, you successfully destroy the enemy T1 tower. Sometimes this happens faster, sometimes later, but we’ll take exactly this time as a basis—the tenth minute, the fall of the enemy tower, and consequently, the end of the laning stage and transition to midgame.

Midgame: After 10 Minutes

So, let’s say the period from 10 to 15 minutes has passed, and the enemy’s first tower has finally fallen. What to do next? Well, here you already fall into the abyss of macro game and absolute chaos, as here you already need to play with the team and independently make decisions and implement them.

The two main things you’ll be doing are:

• First, destroy enemy buildings;
• Second, not let enemies destroy allied ones — that is, defend.

But here again, there’s no universal plan for the game, as much depends on your hero, your allies, and the situation on the map. Say, sometimes it’s useful not to defend a tower but to trade it for an enemy one, or, conversely, give a tower without defense because you have an important ability on cooldown, or after you’ve taken T1, immediately go for the next objective, and so on.

Due to the variability of all these scenarios, you’ll often have the question: what should I do on the map right now? To not get lost too much, it’s worth remembering again about fairly strict timings in the game:

• Every fifth minute — the spawn of catapults at 15, 20, 25, and so on. It’s desirable to maximally push at least one enemy lane with the arrival of a catapult so that your arrived catapult deals as much damage as possible to the enemy tower;
• Every third minute — you can come to the place of spawn of runes—your or enemy forest. These runes give gold to all members of your team;
• Neutral items — drop from forest creeps at 7, 17, 27, 37, and 60 minutes. You’ll be getting all stronger and stronger items from forest creeps, which are important to farm in time. Therefore, try to control that by a certain minute, all five available items are farmed. If they’re not, it’s important to do this by farming several forest camps.

But you’ll have a logical question: what, for example, to do in all other time intervals? For example, on the map, it’s 22 minutes, there are no catapults alive, and Bounty runes are also all farmed, neutral items are all farmed. Then you look at the minimap. Here is all the necessary information about where and what is best to do.

If you see how a large wave of creeps is going to your tower, but enemy heroes don’t threaten you, teleport there to farm it. If, on the contrary, you see many enemy heroes in one place and understand that fighting against them won’t work for you, as the team is half dead, or you, for example, have an ability on cooldown, then you move to the opposite part of the map and farm creeps there, at the same time very strongly pushing the lane to pull enemy heroes to defend.

Over time, you’ll begin to understand where and why it’s best to move at a certain moment on the map. Well, again, here everything comes down to situation, so I can’t give you a universal plan for each game. For example, you’ll be playing Dragon Knight. In dragon form, which is activated by the hero’s ultimate, the hero is much more dangerous for enemies and their buildings. Therefore, it will be more profitable to force fights exactly in this form. And while the ability is on cooldown, you can farm in a safe zone.

For example, playing as some Bristleback, who doesn’t have one strong button with a big cooldown, you can generally constantly pressure enemies on their part of the map. The main thing is to timely restore mana and HP for yourself to successfully fight. I’ll repeat, probably for the tenth time: here everything is very situational, and understanding the game on each hero in each separately taken situation will come to you over time.

It’s also important to understand that any your action should be accompanied by vision placement.

Vision and Warding

Remember, when talking about the starting purchase, I talked about the yellow eye? Don’t forget about them, as yellow eyes—they are Observer Wards—are needed for you to get information about where the enemy is.

For example, at the start of the game, you can place yourself a ward near the enemy tower, but not in the radius of its attack, or it will be destroyed, to, for example, see:

• The amount of mana, HP of enemies;
• What items they’re bringing themselves with couriers;
• Based on this, you can plan whether you’ll be able to force aggression or not.

Also, if you, for example, plan to take some objective, it’s better to have a ward nearby to see how many enemy heroes will move to defend it and in advance make decisions whether to retreat or not. Or, for example, you want to farm in unsafe territory on the enemy’s part of the map, so you should also place a ward to see the enemy and protect yourself from ganks.

Basically, all the most obvious places for wards are marked with white icons on high grounds. When playing against real people, these places are the most obvious, and there enemies will most often find and destroy your vision. So for the future, it’s worth understanding that non-standard places for wards will often work better than basic ones.

Okay, let’s say when playing against bots, you’ve stably learned to stand on the lane, and you destroy the tower at the 10th minute, more or less understand items, leveling, and what to strive for. What to strive for further? You need to strive for understanding the game, as banal as it sounds.

Constantly ask yourself the question: what do I want to do in the next two, three, five minutes on the map?

• Do I need to farm, or do I need to go attack a building?
• Maybe all enemy towers except towers on high ground have already fallen, and it’s worth, for example, taking Roshan before attempting to go to the enemy Ancient?

The rationality of these questions and answers to them will come to you over time. The main thing is to minimally turn on your head and constantly think about the tasks of your hero on the map. This needs to be done so that you don’t turn into a classic Dota player with 10,000 hours who stands in place and thinks they know this game inside and out.

Only with constant reflection on your actions, tasks, goals on the map, and gradual study of abilities, items, and everything else will you become an adequate Dota 2 player who can progress in rating.

When and How to Play with Real People

If you’ll stably beat medium difficulty bots, won’t die in a game more than 3-4 times (depending on the hero, of course), and your games will end stably in 25-30 minutes, no more, then consider that you’re ready, and your base will be enough to play with real people.

You can try playing with harder bots, try playing on other roles or other heroes. In general, everything is in your hands.

But what to do when you decide to play with live people? For this, you’ll need a non-ranked Pick mode, and I recommend going there in a party. You can also absolutely with such beginners as you. In the description, I’ll leave a link to my Discord channel. I’ve already asked the admin in advance to create a separate room and section there for beginners who have just started playing.

There you’ll be able to:

• Ask for advice from experienced players;
• Look for a party from such as you to play together;
• Share experience with each other, as this is the most correct way to learn to play Dota together with other players.

I recommend you to play in a party because this guarantees you at least some communication, as in a game with randoms, you may not meet it, because you may get:

• Players without sound and microphone;
• Those who just arrange a disco by pressing the G button;
• Those who came to play in a bad mood and nothing but insults will come out on you.

So don’t forget about my Discord channel—there you can find yourself a teammate. And on this, let’s say, positive note, let’s try to summarize. That’s actually all. Such a huge, titanic, complex guide turned out. Yes, I understand that there are many complex words, unclear things, but unfortunately, such is the game, such is the guide.

You will in any case go through the main part of learning yourself. Here I tried to give you, let’s say, the base. On my channel, you’ll also find a number of videos where I plus-minus took low ratings so that you somehow learn there, but otherwise, that’s how it is.

And if something else is unclear to you, write in the comments—maybe I, maybe someone from my subscribers will answer you. But in principle, the community, although toxic, in general, people like to share knowledge with each other.

That’s actually all. If you liked all this, write in the comments, put a like. If you didn’t like it, put a dislike. In general, leave any feedback, any criticism, as usual, I’m waiting in the comments. Well, with you was Seryoga. Love mom, respect dad, don’t sit long in front of the screen, and try to learn to play Dota 2 if you really have such a desire. Good luck to everyone, bye everyone!