Dota 2 is a MOBA game where two teams of five players occupy and defend their base in a PvP battle. Each player chooses a hero from a roster of 124 characters with specific abilities and play styles. To win the match, players must destroy the opponent team’s Ancient while collecting exp points and items. Continue with this guide to learn how to improve your Dota 2 skills and gameplay.
Understand the Game and Your Role
As one of the most complicated games for beginners, the hero roster of Dota 2 is divided into five classes based on their position in the team. Understanding your role and how to cooperate with teammates in a battle is essential for improving your skills.
- First position or Carry: With expertise in damage and attack speed, carry heroes are those responsible for farming artifacts.
- Second position or Mid: Responsible for ganking enemy heroes in other lanes, mid heroes possess good game sense and mechanical skill.
- Third position or Offlane: Offlane heroes are natural offenders of the opponent Carry heroes, setting fights and disrupting them from farming.
- Fourth position or Soft Support: Soft Support heroes take on the supporting role, predicting the enemy’s objectives and getting ahead of them.
- Fifth position or Hard Support: Hard Support heroes specialize in strategic planning and clearing the lane for the Carry.
Review Your Games and Spectate Professional Players
A quick way to improve your skillset in Dota 2 is constantly reviewing your gameplay. Insight Capture offers one of the best game recording solutions to capture and replay your match. You also can store and share your game footage with teammates on a secure cloud-based platform.
Don’t just watch your gameplay but also search for VODs from professional players as learning materials. Using clipping and editing tools, you can create a series of highlights for your reference. Save them to your storage and rewatch them any time as you practice.
Communication and Teamwork
While it is hard to communicate with your teammates during a fast-paced team fight, you should be able to agree on a plan or movement in advance. Sometimes, players come from all over the world, and they might be reluctant to use a mic for communication. Luckily, there are in-game interface tools to send messages to your teammates. Such tools for communication consist of the Primary wheel, Secondary wheel, Ping wheel, Phrases, and Miscellaneous strings. Simply hit on the icons or use a combination of keys to converse your ideas.
Map Awareness and Vision
One of the most crucial aspects of Dota 2 is to know the map and gain a good vision of it. The map is covered by a fog that prevents you from seeing anything unless you have vision. You can place wards in the high ground, jungle, and river to gain info on the opponent’s locations and avoid being caught off guard. Observer and Sentry wards are available at the Base Shop for purchase.
Master the Mechanics of Line Play Research to master the mechanics of line play. There are three paths connecting the Ancient structures of the two teams represented by straight lines: Safe Lane, Off Lane, and Mid Lane. The lanes are guarded by three defensive towers that attack heroes and enemy creeps within a certain distance. On the bottom line, the ultimate goal is to cross the lanes, reaching and destroying the opponent’s Ancient.
Change Your Game Plan and Item Build
Depending on the exact situation of the match, sometimes you’ll need to change your game plan. That said, Dota 2 requires you to try out different tactics, strategies, and experiments to see which benefits you the most. Along this process, you can practice and develop your skills as well.
This also applies to your characters’ item build. Purchase multiple in-game items and experiment with them on the characters. You should have a mix of tank, damage, mobility, support, and situational items. Some recommended items for purchase are Solar Crest, Divine Rapier, Moon Shard, Blink Dagger, and Bracer.
Understand Objectives and Resources
The game has many objectives, resulting in discussions on how to assign priorities to them. However, you don’t necessarily have to follow any priority order. You earn rewards for killing enemy heroes and creeps, taking down structures, and ultimately destroying the opponent team’s Ancient. For example, killing the enemy’s lane creeps gives you exp points and gold in addition to helping your creeps get closer to the enemy’s towers. In turn, the resources you collect will be used to upgrade hero abilities.
Practice Makes Perfect
The last tip for you to develop your Dota 2 skills is continuous practice. Set aside time during the day to play the game and level up your heroes. Focusing on a specific hero and mastering a technique such as last-hitting help you improve faster. Also, always remind yourself that practice makes perfect!