Dota 2: Guide to building items for every role in the game

Here’s a tutorial by xuisoko on Reddit:

I noticed a lot of gamers have a hard time getting items and timing items at the right time (timing). You can watch the video tutorial below. In the video, I added a little knowledge test and gave a lot of examples I couldn’t finish in the lesson. In addition, there are many good points in the video that are worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdVxIfIe02Y

1. Starter Item

These are the most popular and used starter items in the pro world:

Ironwood Branch: Item value is everyone’s favorite.
Circlet: Used to trade hits, turrets and to Null/Wraith Band/Bracer or Urn later.
Slippers: Used for ranged carry/mid like Drow/Arc when encountering melee heroes who can’t fight back, to maximize damage. If we meet ranged, we should go to Circlet.
Gauntlet of strength: Only for specialized heroes like Huskar, or if you intend to go to Soul Ring.
Mantle of intelligence: Similar to Slipper, but for intel heroes.
Boots of speed: Very useful for pos 4.
Ring of Regen: Alternative to Bracer, which heals more. Good for Agility hero when having difficulty in lane, constantly harassed, like PL.
Magic stick: Great item in the two outer lanes, can go up in the mid lane if you meet heroes like Zeus, Batrider.
Ring of protection: 175 gold for 2 armor. This is the antithesis of Blightstone and physical damage moves.
Orb of Venom: Up if you are a hero like Antimage, Monkey King (Carry, sometimes pos 4 also). If you can hit the enemy or are in the lane to suppress the opponent, then this item will help a lot. Don’t go to Orb of Venom if you only focus on farming.
Blight stone: Pos 4 can be raised to harass pos 5. A smart carry will counter this item with Ring of Protection.

Health/mana regeneration items:

Tango: At 336HP, the profit is 10% more value than Salve. It’s usually more profitable than Salve if no one is putting pressure on you. On average you save about 10 gold per tango. Don’t worry too much about the 20 gold difference compared to Saslve’s price, because you’re still only about 10 gold more profitable because Salve recovers to 400HP for 110 gold.
Salve: Great against heroes like Shadow Fiend – this group of heroes must invest their entire mana pool in exchange for your health. SF’s mana pool = 2 mango, while you can heal with only 1 Salve. 2 mango = 130 gold, 1 salve = 110 gold. You already benefited in gold over your opponent.
Mango: Usually used to trade hits, if you have a manga, you want to use it to save your life, save your boyfriend or force the opponent to waste a Salve. If the mango trade works well with the opponent’s salve, you’ve won quite a bit. 65 gold for 110 gold, each successful trade, you benefit 45 gold.

2. Small upgrade

Wraith Bands: Best used for trade hits in lane. Only one, or a maximum of 2 Wraith Bands per game. In patch 7.30c, most of the good players didn’t go to Wraith Band. This is a ‘super bad’ item for farming. Gloves of Haste gives you more benefits than Wraith Band. A smart gamer won’t get 4 Wraith Bands to enter the jungle, because Power Tread + Elvenskin give you more value and they won’t be sold to make room for later items.
Bracer: Ring of Regen is 3 times cheaper and heals more. Therefore, if you just want to heal, go to Ring of Regen. Bracer’s advantage is that it does 8 damage to Strength heroes – very valuable.
Null Talisman: Great item. Some heroes benefit from it if it takes 10-20 damage to nuke a wave of creeps with spells. KOTL used to be the prime example and explain why so many people went up to 3 Null to nuke a wave of creeps for this hero. It increases magic damage (Spell Amplification). Therefore, if you’re playing a hero with 2 nukes that can almost kill a wave of creeps, go for 1 or 2 Null Talisman. They will increase magic damage, help you farm super fast.

3. Selection of shoes

Bootless: Heroes like Storm, QoP Weaver can choose to go barefoot. This is not an optimal choice but allows the hero to quickly rush an item like Orchid, and then put it on the shoe later. This allows you to put pressure on the enemy’s greedy heroes.
Brown Boots: Extremely valuable, acceptable throughout the game for some heroes.
Wind Lace: Alternative to shoes if you have a neutral item that increases movement speed like Fae Grenade. Also, it’s well worth the extra movement speed boost if there’s an item slot left for heroes like Elder Titan.
Power Treads: The best shoe for farmers. It doubles Meepo’s stats. Change Tread every time you cast, change Tread to heal. Extremely valuable.
Phase Boots: Many people don’t know about this but Phase Boots movement speed percentage will be more beneficial later on. If you have Yasha or an item that grants movement speed, Phase Boots’ active phase will give you faster movement. It is beneficial for heroes that have a long turn time, or possess a skill that increases movement speed like Razor.
Arcane Boots: Maybe Dissamble. It adds mana, beneficial to Strength supports like Dawnbreaker, to split the item onto Lotus Orb or Holy Locket later.
Tranquil Boots: Good for heroes roaming, it adds movement speed, helps you go faster and saves gold for healing. It’s like Heart of Tarrasque mini version. This is my favorite shoe when playing pos 4.
Boots of Travel: Great item, if you want to play greedy and increase farming speed. If the game doesn’t end early, you can skip an important item to boot in mid position.

4. Build items for Support after the lane phase

Here’s the build order that can help you have a good game:

0. Starting items
1. Choose between: Ring of Bassilus, Headdress, Buckler if needed (rarely up unless required by core)
2. Shoes
3. Upgrade Tranquil or Wand
4. Raindrops
5. Most pos 4 on Blink – or Force Staff/Glimmer Cape/Medallion for pos 5
6. What the team needs (be it defensive or offensive items)

5. Difference between defense and attack items

From now on, don’t follow any default guidelines. Consider what your squad has. The team with Lina can take down the enemy without your support?

If possible – build defensive items to protect Lina.

If not – build an attack item to finish off the enemy if needed.

In general, offensive items are usually much more expensive than defensive items.

6. Glimmer Cape vs Force Staff

Glimmer Cape has a shorter cooldown than Force Staff, stronger late game because the cores won’t have room to carry stealth detection (Detection). You can use Glimmer more than once in each teamfight. It’s beneficial against AoE damage and cheaper: it’s a bargain in terms of value. Glimmer cape can be countered by Detection and completely countered by Nullifier.

Force Staff: Up it if you encounter Skywrath Mage, Invoker or any hero that wants you to stay in one place like Slark, Lifestealer, Riki. Force Staff is countered by Nullifier

7. Build items for Core

If you need to farm and be a carry, you will most likely need mana regeneration. That means 1 of the following 4 items:

Echo Sabre
Mage Slayer
Battlefury
Orchid

If you are carry and don’t need mana to farm like Lifestealer, Void:

Maelstrom
Mask of Madness

Note, these are farming items, so it is not necessary to build one of them in the game. If you need to fight and gank continuously, then we have many other item options.

8. Carry: SnY or Manta?

Manta beneficial for farming, dodge projectile (eg Sven’s stun), destroy Silence and Root.

SnY benefit from burst damage, hard disable like LC Duel, Bane Ultimate, Instant Stun like Fissure from Earthshaker, Lift from Rubick, etc.

SnY and Manta combine farming and combat. These are great items if you’re not sure which way the game is going, because they mix farming and combat.

9. Exclusive Offlaner

If it’s an offlaner, does your team have another way to initiate the teamfight?

If so, get a utility item or a tank like Vanguard to push turret 1 and then on to what the team needs next.

If not, you’re probably the one who should be the first to Blink (not always).

Rush Vanguard in some heroes is as strong as rush Helm of the Dominator. For example, if you are an Underlord, then Underlord can carry the lane on his own.

10. Don’t follow the pattern

You play Queen of Pain? Don’t rush Orchid because you’ve been on Orchid 1000 times before. If the game has a lot of ‘paper blood’ heroes that don’t have an escape mechanism and are easy to die, then QoP should go to Kaya then BKB, Shard.

This way you can process multiple objects at the same time. If they have too little health and no ability to escape, the Orchid is too wasteful of gold and does not work to its full potential.

This is just one example out of thousands. Hope this article has been of help to you. In the next article, we will show you how to build in-depth items for every position in Dota 2.