Hello everyone and welcome for another installment of the davedota blog. Today we shall be thinking about a few important concepts in dota: team composition and laning. So let's begin.

So what makes for a successful team composition?

This is a difficult question to give a direct answer to, the simple fact is any composition can be successful if executed well but some compositions will always have an edge over others thus increasing the likelihood you will win. It is important to remember all of what i am about to say is tailored towards lower skilled players, though the general ideas are applicable to all levels of play.

In general, a team needs a mix of the following factors

• · Crowd control (cc) - ability to lock down multiple heros. Good example : Tidehunter, magnus, jakiro
• · DPS (deeps) - self explanatory, ability to damage. Usually carries in lategame, semi carries mid. For example antimage, phantom lancer (late) life stealer, Chaos Knight (mid)
• · Burst - ability to damage fast Usually solomids. Queen of pain, Zeus etc
• · push - ability to push creeps and towers down fast. Natures Prophet, Tinker, Keeper of the light
• · anti push - ability to defend against the above, some pushers also function for anti push. Jakiro, Kotl, Tinker all function well.

Most pro teams will have a mix of heros who can contribute at minimum a little to each of those factors. You could have all the push in the world, but if you can't win a team fight when the moment comes, you won't break the base and thus haven't gained anything from your team make up.

Going all in one any one of these is usually a bad idea. A team of 5 carries will lose before they come relevant, a team of 5 nukers will dominate early game but struggle to break the base as the enemy heroes gradually catch up. Let's consider a good balance and how these separate traits synergize with each other.

Synergy is how heros function when they act together. A great example of a hero who can set up a for a bunch of other abilities is magnus. Magnus' ultimate ability, reverse polarity (RP) bunch enemy heros together within a circle of influence, stuns them, and deals some damage. If you have any sort of area of effect damage or stun to follow through with (Sven's storm bolt, nyx stun, lion stun, lion stun and nukes will all hit multiple targets with no effort at all) you can destroy a team fight with ease. This will buy your carry time to get farm, you will have the chance to get objectives (Roshan, towers) which will give the entire team gold. Picking heros that work well together is clearly advantageous and must always be considered. But the game doesn't begin in the mid game where these team fights start happening, you have to get there first. You have to survive the laning stage.

Effective laning for Dummies

The laning phase is quite often where games are lost and won. A successful lane will gain gold and experience which will propel them into the midgame. For the purpose of this discussion I’m going to assume the standard pub 2/1/2 set up, and ignore middle lane (as that is a case that needs to be treated on it’s own).

The cliffs of how to setup a good lane are as follow

• · Has at least one ranged hero, with which to harass the enemy with right clicks
• · Has one hero who can benefit from the gold available there and most importantly can safely take it
• · Has stuns. Stuns are good.
• · You begin with a decent amount of regen. 6 x tangos and 1 x pot is usually sufficient.

On this lane one hero would try to farm the creeps while the other would protect them. Below are some helpful tips on how to behave on the lane

Farming players

• · DO only take the last hit on a creep, This means your blow is the killing one. Spamming auto attacks only pushes the lane.
• · DO play safely, and don’t try to make any big plays. Just sit and farm. Playmaker attempts often fail and at best waste time, at worst feed kills
• · DO NOT treat your supporter like he is your own personal slave. This will just lead to a breakdown in morale
• · DO use the side shop, when you can access it without passing creeps. Most of the items you want can be found and built there! Take a moment to familiarise yourself with the inventory. http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Side_Lane_Shop
• · If you have a ring of Basilius, turn it off! It will still grant it’s benefits to heros, but won’t to creeps. A turned on ring will push a lane and make it difficult to farm safely.
• · DO use time effectively. Always be farming when appropriate. Time is money, and you want lots of it.

And now some advice for the supporting player

• · DO NOT spam your spells on creeps. You achieve nothing except pushing the lane
• · DO try to play as a ranged hero. This allows you to harass the enemy with right clicks. Just don’t do it when you are close to the creep wave as this will draw aggro (cause them to attack you)
• · DO Be helpful in ganks. If you see mid moving up to try and get a kill, set yourself up so you can easily land that stun of yours.
• · DO Buy wards and make sure the team has a courier. Wards save lives and every team needs a courier.
• · DO be watchful of your mana supply. Spamming spells is a waste, make sure you have enough mana for when you really are going to need it
• · DO take inventory of your position. If your lane is safe, don’t just sit around

More on lane combinations

Back to how heroes synergise. This isn’t just for teamfights, a good lane will have some degree of synergy to it. For example some common lanes at the moment:

1. Phantom Lancer (farmer) and keeper of the light (supporter). Phantom lancer harasses with spirit lance, KoTL harasses with illuminate (try only to hit the heroes). With chakra magic this is sustainable infinitely and will likely force the enemy off the lane leaving phantom lancer to farm in peace.

2. Juggernaut (farmer) and either Chrystal maiden/venomancer (supporter). Gimmick lane. CM locks an enemy in place, or veno gets a slow using gail forcing a hero to take a full spin to the face. Usually results in kills.

3. Chaos Knight (farmer) and basically anyone with a stun. Lina,Lion, Shadow Shaman all work well. It is unlikely anyone can survive a full chaos bolt + support stun + reality rift if needed combination.

4. Luna (farmer) + basically any support. A lane me and my team like to run on occasion is luna with a support nyx assassin. Luna being ranged allows her to farm safely, and nyx can leach experience. If the enemy tries to gank you they will fail. You have 3 stuns available to you at level two and a lot of burst + amped right clicks from lunas passive.

All these lanes have the ability to score kills, yet at higher levels they very rarely do. This is because what you want is the threat of violence to hover over your opponent, forcing them to consider their moves carefully.

These picks also fit into the larger synergy of the team. They all have lock down and damage, crucial for winning team fights. When picking your hero always be considering what your team has and what your team needs. To advance as a dota player you always have to be mindful of how the separate heroes function together. Heroes with the ability to lockdown more than one hero at once are particularly good for team fighting, these heroes range from standard supports (jakiro, well aimed lina stuns) to the “big” teamfight ultimates: Enigmas blackhole, tidehunters ravage and magnus’s reverse polarity.

This leads nicely onto my next topic for another blog. Teamfighting, farming and ganking. Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone. This is the first in what I hope will be a semi regular series of blog posts on how to get good at Dota 2, aswell as how to have the most fun with it. These posts are intended for noobs to the series but more advanced players may get something out of this too!

Firstly, this will not be a mechanical guide, for one of those look no further than Welcome to dota, you suck by purge

These posts will cover more meta concepts in detail such as: roles, drafting, team composition etc etc.

I myself am a player in the Very high bracket, currently smurfing around with GB people on the account #DaveDota, i may have played with a few of you!

So let's begin!

How to start playing Dota 2

So you've seen Brad doing his daily dota thing and want to get into the game, but where do you start? Dota is a complex game, you will not be good on your first go. You will fail. You will feed. You will mess up. Don't let this discourage you! You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so get stuck in!

Some people advocate playing bot games before joining regular people matchmaking, I discourage this for a variety of reasons:

• Bots will crush you
• Bots are too easy
• Bots don't make mistakes
• Bots don't reflect an average game of dota
• You will probably come out of the experience with little improvement.

So what do you do? Your first step is join the Giantbomb chat channel. Its a small community (typically 200 ish people online, compared to reddit channel that regularly fills) but this has its advantages! Small communities allow you to establish regular playing partners and this is great for improvement! Check out the channel and find someone offering mm (match making) (there may be a number attatched eg mm+4 in the channel, this means the person needs 4 more for a full party) and have them invite you. Explain you are noob. To my experience there are no particularly experienced players in the GB chat channel (and those that are will help anyway) so don't be nervous. Now you're in a party. Dota is a team game, so consider your team composition! I recommend checking a build for a hero before you play them. This is done by clicking the book at the top left of the screen.

Some good starter heros (filtered by role they played) are as follow:

1. Carry (farm farm farm)

• Luna
• Life Stealer (aka Naix)
• Juggernaut

These heros are advantageous for newer players for the simple reason they can fight on limited farm but still scale well with money. As newer players won't be last hitting machines, this means you can contribute.

2. The solo middle (Your role is to set the pace of the game)

• Queen of Pain (Qop)
• Zeus
• Magnus

These heros are heavy nukers and high impact, which means they can do damage with little player experience but become deadly in experienced hands (eg, plenty of room to improve!). Nukes tear through pubs, so have at them!

An authors note on mid, sniper and drow both suck there. They have no nukes (save for snipers ult), 0 lane presence, pitiful harass, are easy to kill and can't gank easily. So be warned, go there as either of these heros and i'll kill a puppy...or something.

3. Supports. In a typical pub 2-1-2 pub lane composition there will be one farmer and one support per lane. As you get to higher levels this will change but for now that will set up will suffice

• Lina
• Lion
• Tide
• Lich
• Nyx

The message is clear, stuns, burst, slows and big ultimates. These things win games, particular at a low level where no one buys a bkb.

4. Junglers

• Furion (natures prophet)
• Naix (I disapprove of this but it's possible)

If worst comes to worst and you feel you need to enter the jungle at game beginning to farm, these two are your best bet. I do not recommend these until you have some game sense under your belt however.

5. Gankers. Gankers kill other heros efficiently. Common at low levels include

• Nyx
• Pudge
• Bloodseeker
• Night stalker

As a new player, I recommend you don't touch any of them (except for Nyx when you play him as a support)

I will go into more detail on roles in the coming weeks, but for now stick to these, You typically will want 1 solo middle hero, 2 support, 1 carry (2 MAX) and a ganker, pick the ones from my list. If your team has 4 carry heros, don't pick another. If you role with 5 duders you can easily coordinate a decent team composition - you just have to win it after that!

Now you're playing dota, people are saying words in chat that may as well be in swahili. Luckily, DaveDota is here to translate for you!

ss, miss, mia: One(or more) of the heros from the lane the person is calling from has disappeared. This could be innocent and they're going back to fountain, or they could be coming to kill you! You don't know so it's wise to play a bit more cautious.

Bot: Bot lane, bottom right of screen

Roshan: big monster near dire (top team) middle and bot towers, killing him confers 200 gold per person on the team, plus an extra bounty for the hero who struck the last blow, plus the aegis of the immortal which will resurrect you.

For a full list see here http://www.playdota.com/learn/commonterms

Any words of abuse directed at you: open score screen and mute them. It's not worth it. Don't argue back just mute.

To round this introductory installment off: some common mistakes

Boots first build. Don't do this. It gives you no regen so you can be forced off of the lane easily, very little in terms of a tangible advantage as very few chases happen early game, no stats so you won't last hit for toffee and finally it is just the biggest lightning rod for flame their is.

A good all purpose starting item build is

2 x Tangos

3 x branches (GG branches, they will give you the good game)

1 x salve

This will cost you 180 + 159 + 100 = 439 gold. Enough left for a courier! Every team needs a courier. And a flying courier by 4 minutes.

Bloodseeker being allowed to snowball

Everyone knows bloodseeker. He has an annoying ult. However it is only as deadly as you let it be. In a dual lane its only a semi strong nuke and after that he only has right clicks. the ult inflicts damage based on movement so stay still. Press h (hold position) and ride it out. He won't be able to kill two of you, especially seeing as he has no stuns. If he gets aggressive you and your laning partner should be able to ride out the duration.

Carry a tp scroll. After laning phase is done make sure at all times you have a tp scroll (a good general point and should be done anyway to be honest). He ults you? Double click your tp scroll and off to base you go, safe from harm. He has nothing to stop you

Spamming auto attacks on lane

A simple point, just don't do it. Only attack to take the kill (if you're a farmer) or deny (by a clicking a low hp friendly creep) if you're the support. Don't spam attacks as this pushes the lane and makes it easier for you to be ganked (killed)

Huskar being allowed to snowball

Huskar is really not that hard a hero to counter, with the supports i've suggested you'll have more than enough stuns and burst to make him regret going rambo on you. If you cut off his first few kills he is a really, really ineffective hero.

Sniper and Drow going middle lane

Just don't, they suck.

Finally, have fun! Dota is probably the most fun game I've played in a long while! That's the end of the introductory segment, any feedback welcome. The next blog (probably will write over weekend) will be on a successful dual lane: the dynamics and the hero choices.

Thanks for reading!