READ: DotA Tips and Tricks!

[Astros]

Post below your tips/tricks for DotA 1 and I will add them to the list if it works! This will help your fellow players become better players which can lead to higher quality gameplay. Even if you are unsure about something, post anyways! I will break down the tips/tricks into two categories: One category for general tips/tricks and another category for hero-specific tips/tricks.

********************************************************************************************************************General Tips/Tricks********************************************************************************************************************

- Denying allied creeps prevents your enemy from getting that creep gold and they will receive reduced XP.
- Prioritize defending the first tower in the middle lane. It provides the best map control and vision. (Frank)
- For easy access to your hero/courier, click your hero and press CTRL+1 and then click your courier and press CTRL+2. Instead of searching and clicking on your hero/courier manually, you can just press the 1/2 key above the QWERT keys to select your hero/courier.
- When pushing a lane and the enemy tower is attacking your hero, proceed to attack a friendly creep near you to divert the tower to hit the creep instead. (MIKEJONES)
- Always carry a teleport scroll to farm, save teammates, push lanes, and defend towers. It costs 100 gold and can make a huge difference. Ideally, you should carry two teleport scrolls at all times. One to teleport to a lane and the other can be used as an extra in case you have to teleport elsewhere. (Frank)
- Carry and use wards when appropriate. Wards (150 for observer, 200 for sentries) can make a huge difference and turn a game around as it provides more vision than heroes do and allows your team to be prepared. (Frank)
- Your middle laner should take the bounty when the game starts. The additional XP and gold boost can provide a huge early advantage for your mid-laner. The difference might seem negligible but whoever can level their spells faster usually has an advantage to pressure the lane.
- Switch your treads to agility, strength, or intelligence situationally. Ex: If you are an agility hero and need to farm faster, switch your treads to agility. If you need the additional HP bonus to stay alive, switch your treads to strength. If you need the extra mana to escape, switch your treads to intelligence. (dumpster_)
- Lane control can be the difference between being stuck in a bad lane or dominating your lane. Ideally, you would like the lane to be in a position where you cannot be ganked easily which usually means around your tower. This also gives your team a better chance at creating ganks because the closer your enemy is to your tower, the more susceptible they are to getting ganked. You can control the lane by pulling neutral creeps, denying your own creeps, and not auto-attacking enemy creeps.
- Three or more melee units attacking Roshan can cause Roshan to use his stomp spell which can reveal to the enemy team that your team is roshing. (Kunkka)
- Do not cast hex on Roshan as it will cause him to leave the area temporarily and prevent your teammates from attacking it/possibly reveal to the enemy that you are roshing. (Kunkka)
- Pull neutral creep camps at 53 seconds of every minute to stack neutral camps. (iambackk)
- Minimize the amount of time spent at the fountain or going back to the fountain as you will lose too much XP/Gold. (iambackk)
- Diffusal blade can be used to cancel an enemy hero who used euls or ghost scepter on themselves. It can also be used to destroy Warlock's Infernals and to remove Omniknight's [Repel] on an enemy hero.
- Be aware that teleporting to the same allied structure as another teammate takes 6 seconds as opposed to 3 seconds.


********************************************************************************************************************Specific Heroes Tips/Tricks********************************************************************************************************************
-Doom Bringer: You can deny Doom Bringer from getting a kill after he uses [Doom] spell on your teammate by attacking your teammate right before they are about to die
-Juggernaut: [Omnislash] can stop enemy teleports.
-Lina: [Laguna Blade] with Aghanim's Scepter does pure damage and can be used against enemy heroes who are invulnerable against spells (BKB, Repel).
-Mirana: Mirana's [Arrow] works against Roshan. If your team is roshing, use your arrow to disable Roshan and help your teammates out!
-Rubick: [Telekinesis] can be used in certain areas to cause enemy heroes to be stuck. This is especially useful right as the game starts in the river.
-Sniper: Assassinate can stop Barathrum's [Charge] spell.
-Thrall: Use [Glimpse] within four seconds of an enemy hero teleporting near you to send them back.
-Zeus: [Lightning Bolt] has a ministun that can stop teleports, channeling spells, stop barathrum's charge, etc., It can also reveal a small radius of fog + invisible units and wards temporarily. (Kunkka)

[plzbanruiners]

some "macro" tips first

These are some general rules of thumb, however there are exceptions to each of them.

t1 mid tower is the most important tower of the game

mid lane is the most dangerous lane of the game, past the laning stage.

"cleaning up" lanes before pushing is ideal and delivers the best results before pushing.
what this means is if the enemy creepwave is on your side of the map someone has to go and clear the current wave + the next one, before joining his team for a group push.
This prevents your team from getting splitpushed and having bad trades. Generally if you dont clean up the waves before a push the enemy creeps will force one of your teammates to leave early to defend and make you fight unfavorable fights.

If all enemies are missing and you are alone but need farm you should farm your way towards your team mates. This gives the best chance to your team to help you if you get ganked. Good wards help alot in this scenario.

Generally in dota if the game is even you want to control 2 out of the 3 lanes, 1 sidelane and preferably the mid lane. If you try to control all 3 lanes it either means you are already very far ahead or you are spreading too thin on the map. Showing heroes in all 3 lanes you're likely not respecting the enemy enough and will get ganked on one of the lanes.

When you are behind, pushing the midlane out past your river without dying is the single most impactful thing you can do. It gives you information of whats happening, start thinking of creepwaves as moving observer wards. If no hero is defending the midlane you just pushed, you are likely getting ganked.
what this looks like is a hero that does this has some sort of nuke that can clear out the creeps fast such as lina and immediately backs out and waits for a reaction or lack of from the enemy team.

TP scrolls can win or lose you the game. All heroes need farm and exp, but sometimes its worth walking back to your lane after healing or dying, and sacrificing a bit of exp and gold to save that TP for a counter gank. Outnumbering your enemy is always very strong, regardless of heroes.

Play around your wards. If one of ur teamates warded a certain aread of the map, its not effective to play on other dark side of the map.

Having a ward always ready for teamfights can be gamewining. Sometimes a gank can lead to a push and that push can lead to a won teamfight because of a single ward. Even placing the ward down in the middle of lane as a teamfight breaks out can be game winning. Wards generally give out way more vision that heroes do, and that can be just enough vision to give you and your teammates the edge u need to win.

Not all deaths are terrible. If you're splitpushing and forcing 2-3 or even more enemys to deal with you while you let the other 4 players of your team gain map control and gold it can even be considered a good death. If however a solo hero is defending and killing you, it is a bad death and it is likely not your job or you arent strong enough to be splitpushing.

Roshan before pushing highground. Self-explanatory. Unless you've already picked a few heroes off with ganks prior.

When pushing highground if you are an initiatior such as axe etc.. your job now is to counter-initiate. This is how alot of people throw won games. They initate into the enemy base and force their whole team to dive with them. Let your tower hitters hit the tower and wait to counter the enemys response.

Before you push highground you generally want to have taken all outerlane towers first.

If you're struggling to push into highround and end the game, patience is key. First you want to force the enemy to turtle inside their base. Then you want to pressure bot and top at the same time while poking and prodding. The goal is to make them chase one of your teammates and bait them out, then punish them.

[MIKEJONES]

When pushing lane and enemy tower is hitting you, proceed to attack a friendly creep near you to divert the tower to hit the creep instead.

[kunkka]

Zeus lightning bolt:

1. It has a ministun, if used properly you can stop bara charging, witch doctor ult channelling, etc.
2. When used on the ground, it automatically searches for nearest hero within a certain range, so effectively extending the cast range.

[RichardCoffee]

1) In Omni's ult, I'm pretty sure ALL magic spells go through to damage heros. It seems to only block physical damage.
There is a number of people who don't know this because they don't ever play omni or read exactly what his ult does, and think it makes them totally invincible. I've seen Zeuses and Necs refuse to ulti during omni ult for kills. I myself did not know for a while until I played omni.

2) Every courier that dies feeds the enemy team at least 150 gold EACH. That's arguably worse than a hero dying gold-wise. Even if your courier dies to neutral creeps, such as when delivering items top or bot, i believe this will still give the enemy gold.

3) Blademail works on sniper's shrapnel. Even if he's not there, you can activate blademail and walk on his shrapnel to damage him. While it won't do large damage, it's fun to know. Once killed a sniper that got away in this way.

[MR_Nimbuss]

if void timewalks during drows silence it will send him to somewhere else.

when you left click a ww hero during that it'll show the direction where they are going.

armor is not more important than hp but it does minus the physical dmg but not magic

[Astros]

if someone can verify how long, the tp scroll can take longer if allied heroes teleport to that same tower but i don't know the exact time.

[dumpster_]

If you have str/agi treads and are a bit short of mana for a crucial spell, change treads to int.

Zeus lightning bolt:
1. It has a ministun, if used properly you can stop bara charging...

Survive mid lane as a low hp int hero with this one simple trick. Barash pickres hate him!

[Snells]

if someone can verify how long, the tp scroll can take longer if allied heroes teleport to that same tower but i don't know the exact time.

I believe it's 3 seconds for each additional tp. 3 seconds for first, 6 for second, 9 for third, etc. I'm pretty sure BoT has a 3 second tp that is not affected. As to how long the tower "TP debuff" lasts, no idea, i'd assume 60 seconds?

[plzbanruiners]

when healing with bottle/salve/clarity/fountain/mana boots/allied spells it can be worth it to drop your mana/hp giving items for more value or switch to agi in the case of treads

soul ring and treads interaction - cast the active on strength treads to lose the lowest possible hp, go to int treads to cast the spell to lose the lowest possible mana, back to agility or strength if u are you an agi or str hero

when possible tp out of enemy vision - good players will punish you or your teammates if they know your tp is on CD.

[Jazzy3113]

Jugg's omnislash (first strike for sure) will also stop tp's in progress or channeling spells.

[kunkka]

Roshan: only uses stomps if 3 or more units within melee attack range - gives away to enemy team. if sheeped, it will go out of the zone and you won't be able to attack until it comes back

[lex-]

Sorry me no English.

[iambackk]

-Pull creeps at 52 (max 54) second to make another creeps appear, you can do it 3 times (so you have 4 spots of creeps) but its hard to get 4 usually we stop at 3.
-try to not take the farm from your carry especially early game if u have a support hero
-harass ennemies early game (with spells/attacks) to let your carry farm easier
-You can check ennemies creeps status (like necro aura aquila aura or on your creeps things like SF aura etc, to prevent a gang).
-try to not go back base early game, hide yourself if u dont have heal and take xp and bring heal to your hero.
-doing a bottle on most heroes is decent, you have free heal free mana (it cost 700g you sell it for 350g) so 3 healing salve are the same price once used.
-always focus the carry early game especially so less he farm, less he will helps his team and can be useless early game (dont let him free farm on lanes).
-dont make many lothars in game especially if u have a nerubian/riki/gondar and talk to your teammates who's making lothar etc so they may not get dust every fights/gem/sentries.
-talk to your teammates, if u have a necro a spec a doom etc, make sure your not all going for radiance or same items, make a strategy early game.
-give tips / helps teammates with less experience to play better and do better items who can be usefull in the actual games ur playing.

[Astros]

if someone can verify how long, the tp scroll can take longer if allied heroes teleport to that same tower but i don't know the exact time.

I believe it's 3 seconds for each additional tp. 3 seconds for first, 6 for second, 9 for third, etc. I'm pretty sure BoT has a 3 second tp that is not affected. As to how long the tower "TP debuff" lasts, no idea, i'd assume 60 seconds?

can someone verify if this is true?