@Winternet: I think that @Terramagi and @Sweep did a pretty good job of explaining denies. Here's a bit more in-depth information (lots of this is redundant, but there is new stuff!)

When your own creeps are in last-hit range, hit 'a' and left click on them. This prevents the enemy from getting any gold and seriously reduces the amount of XP they get if they're in XP range (like half I think).

If you aggressively attack your own creeps (ie, as soon as they get below 50%), it is definitely possible to get your lane to move backwards. This can help you move into a safer area closer to your tower. Try not to go to far, because if the creeps get in range of the tower, the tower will make short work of the wave and push the lane out.

You can also deny friendly heroes IF they are ≤ 10% health and they have a dot on them.

Towers can be denied under 10% health. It's not really ever a good idea to kill the 'tier 3' defence towers, as they protect your rax and regen health slowly. Also, killing the first tier 3 tower removes invulnerability from your base's structures.

@Cronus42: Different level of play. In very high queues, people generally have enough game awareness, so typing is more than sufficient. Also, many cammed games I watch are usually the person playing carry heroes. Which is fine, but the carry is usually the least involved as far as coordinating ganks and what not... he is either farming or making a mess of things. Even then, sometimes pros can lose from lack of communication.

@Terramagi: @Sweep: @MAGZine: Oh ok, I get it. Actually that makes a lot of sense, it's a pretty clever strategy. I'll try to do the next time I play it.

You know, this game is not bad. It's kinda good actually. It's been definitely a surprise, for me. I thought it would be inaccessible and not fun to play, but it's quite the contrary.

I don't know how much more of this game I'll play (25 hours as of now), but playing Dota 2 has been quite fun and has given me much more appreciation for this genre than I had before.

I've been playing mostly Sand King and he is great. My last match made me very proud by the end. It actually could be quite fitting for it to be my last match of Dota 2. Humm . . Anyway here is the stats of the match:

It looks quite good to me (yeah, yeah, denies). What do you guys think?

@Winternet: https://dotabuff.com/players/13409091/matches

You don't really need HP pots or clarities after 20-30 minutes like in a lot of these games :P. Also you're building Sand King like an auto attack hero, when he's really more of an initiator. Get items like Blink dagger, mana boots, veil and even a late game aghs. You're doing well enough for someone new to the game though, even if it does seem like the recent influxes of players has helped out the matchmaking a ton.

Also don't listen to people saying you need to be super serious. I'm in the 'very high' matchmaking bracket (not super accurate, but pretty much in the top %. I ran across LiquidKorok, a pro player, for example the other day) and while I try to win every single game I'm still going into it with a mindset that I'm going to have fun and am going to play a hero I enjoy playing.

Since Dota 2 gives bonuses on "killing hits", a "deny" is when you "killing hit" on your ally creep, hero or structure. A "deny" results in less exp and gold than a regular kill but the real point is to take away exp from opponent players.

I still struggle with last hits let alone pulling off denies with regularity. I seem to do better timing my auto attack than trying to control by canceling. This is one of those things the videos can't teach you and I still can't do it quite right.

By the way, what is the Secret Shop and how do I use it/buy it/go there?

@EXTomar: I know what a deny is. Now, what is the business with last hits?

@Winternet: The secret shop are the two shops located near the ancients (the very strong natural creeps).

@Winternet: last hits are simply landing the killing blow on the enemy's creeps, which net you gold. If you do this a lot in a game, you're farming. farming is crucial for carry heroes to get the items they need to win. If you don't land the killing blow, you miss out on the 35-60 gold, but still get the exp. technically, denies are also last hits, but usually last hits refers to your ck/cs (creep kills/creep score, same thing) which is separate from your denies.

Secret shop is the shop located in the forest. It functions just like the store at the home base, except it carried a relatively small quantity of specialized, higher price items. When you're in range of the SS, your 'shop' button will open the SS's buy menu.

The outposts/side shops carry a small collection of items, some of which are from the main shop, and others which are from the secret shop. Example: both boots and life ring are at the side shop, but tangos or reaver are not.

@Winternet: Then just move along. I'm not trying to be condescending, but you'll get little out of this game without putting in some effort to learn. It's just so unforgiving.

Maybe look into LoL? It's a bit more noob friendly.

@MAGZine: @Mr_Skeleton: Thanks ;)

@fujimitsu: Dude, I'm ripping it. I'ma stop playin Dota 2 cuz it's too damn easy. Peace.

@Winternet:

Yeah, but you won't for long. You're playing against people who are also very new. Soon you won't be.

@Winternet said:

By the way, what is the Secret Shop and how do I use it/buy it/go there?

@EXTomar: I know what a deny is. Now, what is the business with last hits?

If it helps, think of the "Secret Shop" as the "Forest" shop.

It's not really a secret, and realizing it's just a geographically seperate location helps as opposed to something legitimately mysterious.

Maybe they should call it the Secret Forest Shop.

Haha, I am just interested in this game, don't have so much time.

It's not that complicated to learn, buy shit and don't die.. lmao

Working alright for me..

Well you say that but for beginner players, let alone myself, it is sometimes difficult to recognize when you are in danger of being ganked or realize one of the "nukers" or "carry" are powerful enough to outright snipe a player and end up feeding the other team. It is subtly like that make Dota 2 interesting but also makes it hard to teach another.

Sorry to bump this thread after more than a week without any post, but I'm facing the exact same problem. A friend and I are trying to learn how to play Dota 2, mainly for fun. We don't like playing against "pros" online and we're just looking for a fun co-op game to waste some time.

So far, Dota 2 has proven to be the polar opposite of what we want. I understand the lack of a proper tutorial in a beta stage. We could go to YouTube to learn the basics, but you have to play the game sooner or later to actually learn how to play the game. But, man, the bots. They obliterate us, even on Easy. And I know for certain that it's not a problem by our lack of skill, because many players have complained about it too. The jump from Passive (where they don't do anything) to Easy is massive.

We then tried playing Awesomenauts, but we can't play a private match and set the level of the bots' AI to Easy or Normal. It defaults to High (or Higher, I don't know) and it makes playing the game completely impossible. We get destroyed in less than 10 minutes. Maybe we should stay clear of the MOBA scene, but it's clearly not meant for players like us...

@JoeyRavn said:

But, man, the bots. They obliterate us, even on Easy. And I know for certain that it's not a problem by our lack of skill, because many players have complained about it too. The jump from Passive (where they don't do anything) to Easy is massive.

It is a problem with your lack of skill. The bots know when they can kill you and when they can't. Someone who only can kind of play Dota will obliterate bots. Game is hard, it is okay if you start off bad. All of us were dumpster-tier when we started playing.

@JoeyRavn: Yeah, I hate to be the bearer of bad news...but it isn't really a game you just kinda "wing it." Just take an hour and read up on the game. I made a separate post that has a link to the best guide, suggested heros...then people discussing other various tips. If you don't want to utilize that stuff, that is fine, but expect a bumpy road.

Best advice I can give if you're going to play pub matches: open the web browser in the Steam overlay, go to dota2alttab.com and click on your hero.

Good item/skill builds and tactics all in about 3 paragraphs

And please learn how to use magic sticks/wands and wards :)

So here's the thing. A proper tutorial for Dota 2 would be at least 2 hours long if it were to have interactivity from the player.

The sad stark truth is that the learning curve on this game is extremely high by comparison to other games that could be called pick up and play. Let's get this out of the way, too! Many older players are not interested in teaching a mob of complete strangers how to play the game even though there are supposed to be systems in place to rate players up and down for their efforts to improve the overall education of the playerbase.

dota2alttab.com is a godsend use it

Play with friends or make some friends. This is the only guarantee that you'll have a cooperative team.

If you are only playing public games by yourself, you may as well be playing a 40 minute long dice rolling game. You're gambling. You're being dealt cards that may consist of people expecting to learn how to play, passive aggressive people etc.

It's going to take at least a week, 1 game a day, before some of the game's systems start to sink in. There's no surefire way to learn how to play except to play the game and keep in mind that it's just a game and you'll lose even when you think you know everything you never needed to know about Dota.

Maybe Dota isn't for you. That's ok. I enjoyed my time with the game thoroughly but I don't play it any more because of the time investment required just to play. It has a lot of depth and a lot of strategies and presents a lot of opportunities for both fun and competition.

edit: Finally, I would not call Dota 2 a pick-up-and-play game. At all. Like. Ever. .... nnnope.

@JoeyRavn: I would try to play a few games against real people. I went in cold and played no bot matches and picked up most of the basics after a week or so. I could definitely see how playing the bots for the first few games could be beneficial, but even on low difficulties the bots stick together and generally don't give you a lot of opportunities to gank them and what not. They play very safe. With real people, players are making mistakes all the time, especially if you are playing people at your starting skill level, which you should be. Playing bots can be very discouraging, I would just jump in to some real games before you guys decide to give it up.

@Hungry said:

@JoeyRavn said:

But, man, the bots. They obliterate us, even on Easy. And I know for certain that it's not a problem by our lack of skill, because many players have complained about it too. The jump from Passive (where they don't do anything) to Easy is massive.

It is a problem with your lack of skill. The bots know when they can kill you and when they can't. Someone who only can kind of play Dota will obliterate bots. Game is hard, it is okay if you start off bad. All of us were dumpster-tier when we started playing.

@IndieFinch said:

@JoeyRavn: Yeah, I hate to be the bearer of bad news...but it isn't really a game you just kinda "wing it." Just take an hour and read up on the game. I made a separate post that has a link to the best guide, suggested heros...then people discussing other various tips. If you don't want to utilize that stuff, that is fine, but expect a bumpy road.

Oh, yeah, I know perfectly well that I suck. Of course I do: it's was the first time that I've played the game. The thing is, neither my friend nor I want to invest days upon days to get good enough to play in public matches without getting booed (or worse). If bots were a bit more like, say, the bots in Counter-Strike or Quake, where they are mostly dumb but can be challenging from time to time, we would be able to develop our skills and learn the game at our own pace, without bogging down any human player.

Dota 2 is probably not the game for us, though. It's a competition-drive game, and we're not looking for that.

Just play a normal game and at the beginning of the game mention that you are new and would really appreciate some tips or criticism. Works well for me.

I can't wait for there to be some sort of mentor system. I will mentor the SHIT out of people

I will be mentored the SHIT out of

@Mr_Skeleton: yeah, I agree with you, I want to quite as it is not so popular, many of my friends gave up last year.

It Clearly says your runinng a Spectator Version of DOTA 2 So get some invites or put some coins in the bank and buy the original playing version.