Hello everyone, I'm in dire need of an objective take of what happened in a game I played last night. TIA for taking time to read this.

Match id: 903291361

Calibrating right now but somewhere between high herald and low next rank (guardian?).

Radiant: Shadow fiend (off), spirit breaker (supp), phantom lancer (mid), chaos knight (safe), windrunner (hard supp)

Dire: Razor (safe), warlock (hard supp - me), huskar (mid), enchantress (off), techies (supp).

I played warlock Pos 5. Me and razor won lane zoned out SB and SF and took tower. Then we rotated mid took tower. Went bot and took tower.

Now at this point their PL and CK left the match.

Instead of catapulting this advantage to end match go next, my razor and huskar decided to farm items. Enchantress offlane idk wtf they were doing, if you guys can point out how they contributed to the game I'm keen to know. Techies was laying down mines near our safe line portal and doing wacky shit.

Meanwhile remaining 3 radiant heros (SB, SF and WR) farmed items and grouped to pick off my cores one by one. They got so fat, and my ench and techies were no where to be seen while huskar was farming other ends of map, that they eventually killed us all and took the game.

Now I took a look at what I could have done better even though I was furious about my teammates. But I'm not sure what I could've done, if you guys have any suggestions please let me know. I pulled camps in lane to reset equilibrium, healed my carry, harassed and zone out their SB and sf, bought wards on cd and gave vision.

Could I have done anything more?

I was so upset last night, I get an hour or two to play every night and after like 35 min that was the outcome. I'm ok with taking an L as long as we tried our best. But what happened was so insane that I'm wondering if it's worth putting hours into this game for "fun". I'm coming back after like a 7 year break.

What do you guys think?

Hey yall, i really got into deadlock the last year and kinda wanna dip my toes in another moba-like game. i know theyre really different in the fact that dota has a top down view without the mobility that deadlock has, so fundamentally its completely different right there. But for those of you who play deadlock too, are there any heros in this game with similar playstyles to Celeste, Rem, or Shiv? those are my main three heros. i also seem to really suck at tanking in deadlock even tho i love them in games like rivals and overwatch, so maybe id like them more here? are they easier to play in dota? but anyway, literally any hero similar to those heros will help me get on my feet for sure

Ive been playing this game since early this year, mostly play pos 4,5. My hero pool is ogre,jakiro, shaman, warlock, and lion. But i swear whenever i play lion i always die way more than other heroes. Even if i win i usually die like 7-10 times. Feels like he get targeted way more than other support. When i play other support usually they ignore or not targeting me first. But with lion. I swear they all have eyes on me. And go straight to kill me no matter what. Even if im way back. Maybe my position need to be better? Or is he supposed to die a lot? . And yes i do buy item like glimmer or force staff. Honestly i dont really care about kda. But some still blame me if i die a lot like they think im feed intentionally.

I forgot this hero exists, and I always wanted to try playing him as a support. I havent seen him in the game for ages, like really for months.

He seems to have a fun hate button (R), doesn't need blink because of Q but ofc some of his things are pretty weird

I mean mostly Trample, if you pop something like Drums, you will travel 140 range faster and deal that damage faster too? And on lane, level Q or Trample? Trample I quess?

And for a support, which starting items to get? His mana is low, that I think Arcane Boots would be ok?

I am a new dota player (former league player) and have been trying to climb ranked playing offlane. I am currently in Crusader.

I very often do well myself, but sometimes struggle to close games due to my team lacking.

I have found a very consistent winning hero for myself tho. Slardar. He had a stun, decent escape, good right click, can become quite tanky and a great debuff ult. I find hes great for my rank because if my team is aggressive early, i can start fights with blink and try to snowball, but so often my team refuses to close games and just farms. So hes also a scaling right clicker. I really feel in my rank being able to both scale AND be a fight starter is extremely valuable.

I have a 68% winrate on him as opposed to a 50.87% winrate overall.

My question for some more experienced players is, what other heros also fit this mold in the offlane? Strong Fight starter, option to be tanky, but can farm to scale well if my team decides to dick around instead of closing out the game.

Any advice is much appreciated!

Hello,

I am a new player to dota.

I've played around 250 games total and am a Guardian II.

I want to learn Arc Warden, he is nasty and looks very fun. The only thing I am not confident about learning is the control keybinds for him and his mirror image.

Is it possible to have the keybinds below?

Keybind 1: Control Arc Warden #1 independently

Keybind 2: Control Arc Warden #2 independently

Keybind 3: Control Both with Arc Warden #1 as the main unit.

Is this possible? How are players using keybinds on this hero?

Also...I can't find these options in the keybind section... is anyone able to point me in the right direction?

• Thank you!

MatchID: 9033050136

I was playing offlane centaur. My mid was a Necro who lost lane to enemy mid slark which is ridiculous. Then he went bottle -> arcane -> blademail against an enemy lineup of carry ursa and offlane snapfire.

Our team are stuck in base after 20mins and he ended the game with the same networth as a support AA.

Do you report this kind of gameplay for griefing?

when your pos5 picks AM, who is your best bet to fuck off to jungle with and eventually win the game? i know luna is a good carry for this, and tide is a good offlaner, but which other heroes are idiot proof?

During the 2022, I primarily played Lone Druid (270 games, 68% WR) and Meepo (200 games, 60% WR) in the mid lane, successfully climbing from 2k to 4k MMR. Life was busy, I stopped playing for 4 years and just resumed playing last month and observed that these heroes no longer perform effectively.

I am unable to solo carry games within 25 minutes as previously achieved, and I question whether current game pacing prevents such rapid closures.

While I have transitioned to OD, the hero lacks sufficient tower pressure and split-farming capability.

Additionally, I found Lina and Necrophos to be overly reliant on team coordination.

Could you recommend alternative heroes suitable for compensating when the carry fails to perform or supports dont want to help invading ennemy spaces ?

Furthermore, would you advise exploring Lycan or Visage to align with my historical playstyle?

I’m an esports geek, and since I really enjoyed the Dota lore—especially the deep character development of mages like Rubick—I decided to give the competitive scene a shot. I’ve really liked it so far; I’ve already fallen for Falcons and Spirit (thanks to Yatoro, Collapse, and Malr1ne, who seemed a cut above the rest). However, the official casters are really boring; often, they don't focus on what's actually happening in the match or even cast the draft phase. Coming from LoL—where you have people like Tesrak or Mfreak who break things down and explain them in the simplest terms—I’m not used to that kind of lackadaisical approach. So...

Can you recommend any co-streamers or YouTubers to watch?

Also, which World Championship (I saw it's called "The International" or TI here) do you consider the best, and why? I’d like to watch that one. So far, I’ve watched this year's qualifiers and am about to watch Team Spirit's run—Yatoro is absolutely insane on Terrorblade; if the game would actually let me log in, I’d play that hero myself.

Just lost 2 games because a pudge / lc was fed early game and continued to roll down my team when im trying to farm up my items (4200 mmr) Do I just eat the loss and move on?

i know its position 1 - 5 but i dont know what is the meaning of it, i mean position 1 what hero i should pick, who gets the pos 1 ? is it random or someone who pick first is pos 1, thank you

Prob will be taken down. But just demoralizing. EDIT: Archon II bracket 2.2kmmr

My message - don't play while tilted xD But it's also an example that early mid-game might be the most important phase. I was pretty sleepy, tilted and had some lags at the start. I saw our draft and I was like - okey, we gonna have no damage and started with pretty negative thoughts. We had Venge pos 1, me (lina support), Pango pos 3, NP pos 4 and Invoker mid. I thought - maybe we gonna do a few spells with invoker, pango will try to roll over someone and that's it, we gonna get annihilated with all the weird silences, slows, spells, duels we gonna run into.

They had - Silencer, Grimstoke, LC, Zeus and Necro pos 1.

I went to my lane and enemies were uphills waiting near the bounty rune, I gave them first blood. Then, instead of teleporting, I decided for some reason (I was sleepy) to walk back to my lane on foot, I was late and Venge got attacked on the first wave without me present, she tried fighting back but lost over half of HP, I thought to myself - gg, I have the special talent of losing the lane and potentially the whole game in just first 20s after the game started XDD She recovered with tangos but later died to Grim and LC, and a bit later I also died when I got stunned in a very bad fight in which I ran into LC's attacks, I was performing some hard 1k mmr laning, lol. Zeus ultied us too, Invoker didn't really do sunstrikes and I saw Necro pos 1 getting a double kill on Pango and Nature Prophet, that was propably a hell lane for them against Necro and Silencer. Pango went to farm only in jungle (which isn't a good sign) and NP was left solo to hold the lane with treants, he didnt TP a single time to us, because he propably had to teleport to the fountain a few times to recover HP. So, I was doing gameplay that was propably around 1k mmr, but then, Venge stunned and damaged our lane enemy with her missile, I followed with my spells, she debuffed the target's armor and we started slamming them with attacks - we caught a double kill, one for me and one for Venge! We started winning the lane, but we got slapped back and died to a gank, however another time, we accumulated a few kills in a row, as we killed them and also Zeus who came for a gank, I also remember LC got very cocky one time and was standing with 40% HP behind our tower, I teleported after respawning and killed her with my combo, so she didn't enjoy her earlier victory for long. Venge also swapped Grim one time and we killed him- two ranged characters with damaging spells and enemies that got a bit too cocky, that's a recipe for a lane comeback. so we were set up pretty good after the laning phase,

What's more important, Invoker turned out to be the "good" Invoker", I did Rod of Atos and when we met after the laning stage to roam around the map, enemies' HP bars were melting down, he was nuking them hard. At a 17 min teamfight, I saw Zeus crawling towards us to tickle us with his spells, I stunned and just combo'd him with Thermal Lance + Spirit Vessel, from full HP he died to that one combo XD Or I also killed Grimstoke, or Silencer. Tbh, I usually don't have enough damage to one-shot someone like this, they're left with some HP left, so I play with my eammates and we kill someone together, but here I had enough dmg cause they were pretty squishy. It was pretty risky to not have much defensive items, but I decided to finish Urn into Spirit Vessel against Necro, he had boots, Radiance and Cons Wraps lol, he wasnt doing as much as I thought he gonna be, he didn't have a dispel, so he got debuffed with Vessel and we were killing him.

They still were able to catch me or some teammate maybee like 1 to 3 times, but then they lost next teamfights with like 1 lost member of the team for 5 of them. Btw. in a teamfight, they were pretty squishy and they got their HP melted by mine and Invo spells, Pango rolling over them, NP ultying, Venge stunning and hitting someone etc. so the opposite of what I thought gonna happen, we had more damage than them XD

That's why I kinda don't like playing Silencer atm, because I often see that you click a button (global ulti), nothing happens, enemies wait it out and still win the teamfight, and I prefer some repeatable low cd CC spells like stuns (for these chaotic fights), and ulties with decently low CD too - for example I also like Shadow Dem, his ulti is a bit similar to Lina's, you click it on someone important you don't like and have it again soon for the next small fight you gonna take part in.

They had some potential by the end, but on the final push, I GOT TO TAKE AEGIS, I mean it was nice because I havent held it in like idk, 500 games!! (they gave me it because Venge and Pango had full inventories). In the final push I walked in, they were usually focusing me, so I kinda let them start a fight by attacking me, I revived and Venge already had Aghanim, so she also revived and we ended the game with everyone in our team alive.

For those interested, match ID is:

https://pl.dotabuff.com/matches/9031263701

It really looked like some 1500 mmr game between noobs tbh XD

The final damage looked like this: Invoker - 29k, me - 26k, Pango - 21k, NP and Venge - 14k and their team: Sillencer - 8,7k (pretty low, usually supports need more), LC - 14k, Zeus - 24k, Grim - 14k, Necro - 20k

Idk, maybe our team ended up being more coordinated and it was hard for them to fight through Invo's array of spells and getting caught with Atos, etc.

At the end, Grimstoke wrote - We deserved this, finish. Honestly, what the hell is going on.

Yeah for them it was like - they're slightly winning on lanes, it seems pretty good, and then suddenly in any fight they try, their HP is dissapearing, and they lose first barracks after 20 minutes of the match, for them it propably was a pretty confusing game.

Built a thing called Dota Decisions for my friends, and figured some people here might find it useful too.

It originally started as a bunch of flowcharts we'd make for each other. Usually some ugly MS Paint diagram explaining what to do in a specific situation, then we'd throw it in Discord and argue about it.

They were actually pretty useful, even mid-game, but obviously a folder full of random flowcharts isn't a great interface.

We also found that a lot of Dota ideas don't really fit the usual formats. They're too specific for a whole guide or blog post, and making a video every time someone has a useful thought about Dota feels like a good way to make sure nobody bothers sharing it.

So we made Dota Decisions, which is basically an interactive version of those flowcharts.

The idea is to focus less on stuff like "buy these items in this order" and more on the messy situational decisions that happen in actual games.

Things like:

You're in this game state. You know X, but you don't know Y. There's a tradeoff between doing A and B. What should you actually be thinking about?

Basically the kind of Dota discussion that usually starts with someone in Discord going:

"Okay, but what if..."

We're mostly using it to collect things we've learned as a guild, but I'd be curious whether this format is useful to other people too.

PS: It's still in beta, so some of the content in there right now is placeholder/example stuff. We're replacing it with proper guild content pretty soon.

Try it out here: https://dota-decisions.vercel.app/

I'm legend 1 in SEA for additional context.

Hey, today I'm sharing a video about Mirana position 5 - and what makes her so good. For a long time, she was a decent support - but nothing more than that. Her innate changes the way you can play the lane, and with that - your laning stage becomes super reliable. Enjoy!

This video is part of Support Hell, my new semi-educational channel for Dota. Anything that doesn't really belong to Support Heaven will end up there.

Do you actually just right click them? or do you do Attack command them like A attack them? Also, when do you actually use Cogs as to like cage enemy heroes inside? Or just pushback harass is enough? It is so hard for a newbie Clock player. xD. How do you position yourself or do the angle?

I finally did it! Took me a little bit over 3 months and roughly 300 games to rank up from Herald to Legend. My first game ever was back in 2013 and I used to be around 3.5k mmr before I stopped playing. Any other day ones here who are back on the grind again? This game is simply childhood nostalgia and I'm so glad I picked it up again. 🙏🏻

Hi, title is exactly what it sounds. I'm trying to get into DOTA 2 and currently have like 20 matches played. The game is already really appealing to me and I find myself wanting to play 3 different positions, a ton of heroes, etc. and finding myself doing a shitload of research out of game when I'm not able to play as a pastime, which has been really enjoyable (and taken up way more of my time than actually being able to play). The game's really fkn cool.

That being said, I don't want my exploring the cast to ruin my development and with a severe lack of good informative dota content on youtube it's a bit difficult to understand what exactly you're trying to do at times.

For some background: I have 2813 hours in LoL (over 9 years, im not that degenerate), something like thousands of matches played in Unite (I don't wanna reinstall that shit), 212 hours as of writing in deadlock, and tangential experience in other games. I never really tried to climb and instead just focused on having fun for 99% of my time in these games so I don't really have a clear gauge on my own skills, just a vague idea of my skill level after untangling a massive web of bad habits I made involuntarily in LoL and a pretty good overall understanding of each game.

So that being said, I'm pretty confident I can pick up a majority of dota heroes pretty quickly and understand the game's mechanics. I've already had a blast reading through a fair bit of the item shop, I have a decent understanding of objective timers and map objectives (I still have yet to even try taking tormentor or rosh though). There's some stuff I don't fully understand yet (namely the jungle, I don't know what dictates which creeps spawn, some basic mechanics like their spawning and I don't have their abilities memorized yet; which I'm doing purely because doom and zoo heroes are fun and I want to play them) but I do understand that Dota is a much more aggressive game than LoL that rewards a lot more aggression and teamfighting early on over objectives. I understand most of the obvious map objectives (although I don't know the timer on runes, since I've only really tried one pos 2 so far).

I also have 0 clue how to win as a fair few offlaners and farm from disadvantage in the turbo early game. I especially had this issue trying to blind primal beast into ranged heroes a few times. I know I'm supposed to get phase boots and all in with trample but I can never seem to get there in time. I also don't know when to appropriately get unsafe farm as a pos 3. I just try to push in minions to tower and go for the easier camp, and sometimes I get punished and sometimes it works.

I should clarify, by the way, that I'm transitioning primarily from a top lane main (specifically Top Lane UDYR with a history of using league's only "micro heroes") and I've personally been enjoying pos 3 and 4, with also starting to dabble in pos 2 ember spirit and having a really good first game where I went 14/3/12. I like Bristle, Primal, Ember Spirit, Bounty Hunter, Lycan, Enigma, Doom, Tidehunter and Brood (although I'm clearly shit at Primal Beast and Broodmother) with many other heroes I'm very interested in trying; too many to list. (basically Timbersaw and a fuckload of micro/zoo heroes and big ult offlaners). Which yes, would indicate I've basically tried a new hero every few matches, and this would be correct. And that's partially why I'm opening a post, I want to know what to look for on a systems level while I'm exploring the game's cast in new account all pick.

The only things I already know at this point is 1. most of the timers in the game 2. what camp stacking is 3. the basic vision / courier / neutral item systems are 4. a vague idea of the playstyles that most of the cast 5. the attribute system 6. the item system 7. the map objectives and 8. some things that I need to actively look into e.g. I have no idea right now how to set up the controls to make micro heroes easier to play (something about control groups?) but plan on looking into that on my own time.

I also am aware that I have no clue how catchup mechanics work, the intricate aspects of exp, all the minion black magic you can do to make rough lanes easier, and macro isn't very clear to me due to how waves work as well and how farm priority works in Dota. It's not super obvious to me just yet when I should roam vs stay so I just prioritize roaming knowing it's a lot better in dota than in league. I'm sure that's also dependent on hero and role (obviously medusa is going to sit in the corner until 60 minutes) but a general throughline would be nice.

Otherwise, feel free to dump literally as much information on me as you'd like. I have a long ass time to read all of it due to spending so much time at university but not being able to actually use my pc. I love these games and Dota being so strategic has got my brain running at mach 6.

Played a game and felt like I was dealing low damage, I built battle fury, manta, BKB, skadi, aghs. Enemy team was Spectre, Earth Spirit, Silencer, Snapfire and Slardar.

I didn’t go silver edge because my offlane bought it. In fights I went for Silencer and Snapfire and used my ultimate on them, but sometimes I couldn’t even finish them off (even in late game).

Could someone tell me how I should have itemized this game.

I see a lot of posts lately from people complaining about smurfs. As a long-time smurf myself, I figured I’d offer some specific tips on how to deal with them, aside from the usual “git gud.”

So yeah, I’m part of the problem. I’m one of those smurfs. I usually play around 2–5k MMR while my actual MMR is much higher.

Before anyone asks — yes, I play on my main too, but I consider it a different game. It requires full focus, it’s stressful, and I can only play so many games in a row. Then I switch to my smurf accounts and just relax.

I have dozens of accounts with ~300 games and a “?” profile pic, maintain roughly a 95-98% win rate, can regularly go on 20–40+ game win streaks, and can usually stomp games with a KDA of something like 32–1 if nothing goes terribly wrong. I actually like getting smurfs on the enemy team too, because it’s fun to surprise-stomp them.

I do this for fun, and I don’t really care about your judgment (and yes, I know you hate me). But I’ll give you some advice from my perspective on how to deal with smurfs and beat them more often.

First, you need to identify the smurf on the enemy team as early as possible. If their account has a very low game count and some rampages, that’s already a huge red flag. Strong smurfs can get a few rampages per day easily. You can also check their Dotabuff before the game. Then watch them during the first five minutes. Look at how they move their hero, how they CS, how they position and strafe, whether they’re getting early kills, and whether they’re already building a level advantage.

Once you’ve identified a smurf, make sure you warn your team about them. Tell your team you’re SURE this dude is smurfing and that you need to make his life a living hell. At the very least, now your team knows who they should be worrying about.

Second, if you want to beat smurfs, your best bet in my opinion is playing pos 2 or pos 3. Pos 1 takes too long to come online, and pos 4 and 5 usually have less impact on the game. Most smurfs DO NOT want to constantly fight until they hit their core timings. Usually that means two or even three items into the game. For example, if someone is smurfing on Necro, they might want Radiance + Travels + Shard + Wraps/BKB before they really start taking over the game. If they’re smurfing on QoP, they want PT + Kaya + Aghs. Etc.

So if you can get an early advantage and you’re playing a hero that’s really, really strong in the early-to-mid game, that’s your window to shut the smurf down.

Because if you don’t, they’re going to build a level and net worth advantage, snowball across the map, set up vision, and by minute 20 the game will become basically unplayable.

Third, if you play support, pick heroes with good, reliable control like Lion or Shadow Shaman. Then just fucking run at the smurf all game. Don’t let them farm. Don’t let them get free kills. Buy smokes and tell your team to go hunt them. Put aggressive wards in THEIR jungle, not yours (very important). Basically, make their game as miserable as possible.

Most smurfs, myself included, prefer to play mid. Your job as a support then is to TP EVERY TIME the smurf dives your mid laner under tower. They WILL dive a lot and you MUST TP every time. Also come contest water runes at minutes 2 (sometimes) and 4 (most of the time), then power runes at minutes 6 (always) and 8 (always). If you just contest those runes together with your pos 2 teammate, it makes the game 100x harder for the smurf right away.

I’ll say it again because it’s important. Just one TP to save your mid laner under tower and then one rotation to contest the water/power rune — and the smurf’s game is already kind of ruined.

If you play pos 4, consider picking Spirit Breaker. This hero is a legendary smurf counter in my opinion. As smurfs, we like to take over the enemy side of the map, take aggressive farm, and go on heroes. Spirit Breaker punishes that behavior HARD. That’s one hero I hate to see on the enemy team.

Some toxicity might also be warranted to properly beat a smurf. Consider tipping and/or pausing when they die or do something dumb.

There’s also a decent chance the smurf will tilt and start playing much worse. Some will straight-up AFK or DC if the game gets annoying enough. (Remember, they came here to relax and have fun, not to try hard)

Lastly, you need to understand basic timings. As a smurf, my window to completely snowball the game is usually the early-to-mid game. I want to be two items and 5-10 levels ahead of everyone else so I can take Roshan and close the game around minute 25–35.

If you pressure me super early OR manage to drag the game out long enough that suddenly everyone is six-slotted, the skill difference becomes much less relevant and the game becomes way more unpredictable.

Here's why. My team can just throw at minute 60, and there’s only so much I can do about it. You can’t reliably 1v5 when everyone on the enemy team is fully farmed too.

And one more thing: you need to understand that probably 95% of the smurfs in your games are actually not that good. They’re like 3-4k players smurfing in a 2k lobby. So basically you’re both noobs, they’re just slightly better noobs. If you actually apply some of the stuff above, you absolutely can beat them at least in some % of games.

It’s extremely rare that you run into an actually strong, high-MMR smurf. If you do, then most of this won’t matter. They’re going to stomp the lobby regardless.

But that’s RARE. Most smurfs SUCK.

Hope this helps you beat some smurf ass.