Gold & XP: The Importance of Lane Phase in Dota 2

You are controlling Lina to go mid and the lane is going very well. Your experience and networth are higher than your opponent’s. You have ‘outplayed’ your opponent’s Shadow Fiend, reached level 6 first and are waiting for the perfect moment to unleash your first Laguna Blade to see the Shadow Fiend souls fly out. But Shadow Fiend is not a bad player and is quite safe to play. You lose patience because you can’t launch combos to finish the enemy and teleport to another lane. After a minute or two, you win lives in the other two lanes with the help of your teammates. Looks like everything is going well. Going back to my lane, I suddenly realized that Shadow Fiend has reached level 9 while I was still wobbling at level 7, and SF now has better lane control.

Why did this happen? The truth is, it happened. Not only in the mid lane, it also happens in the safelane when carries prioritize ganking over farming and then realize that they are far behind the carry.

In Dota 2, small changes can make a big difference. That’s why we love Dota 2. But sometimes, those few small changes are ignored or considered unimportant. One of those changes is the experience reduction, introduced in patch 7.07.

• Hero kill bonus XP (not counting assists) for levels 1-5 reduced from 100/120/140/160/180 to 30/60/90/120/150 (You will still gain extra XP from assist in killing that hero using the assist formula)

This change greatly reduces the effect of any kills obtained in the early game (any hero kills below level 6). Why is that? Because leaving the lane to gank, while ignoring the amount of XP one can gain if staying in the lane will definitely do more damage to yourself than it does. Kyle ‘melonzz’ Freedman once mentioned in a tournament: in the early game, instead of finishing the opponent, let him jog home, this will give him less XP (due to time out of the game). lane when returned can take longer than if the hero is killed early game, the hero will respawn pretty quickly and return to lane very quickly)

This is the base XP that is shared equally among all heroes. In addition, there is an additional XP assist. Let’s consider the above scenario to better understand:

Amount of XP gained

As Lina, you teleport to the safelane, waiting for the right moment to take down the offlane and support the enemy with the other two teammates. Assuming that the offlane side is at level 5 and the support is level 3 (the XP difference is not too big), the amount of XP you get is:

XP from killing level 5 offlane = 150/3 +9 x 5 =95
XP from killing level 3 support =90/3 + 9 x 3 =57

In it, the heroes on the team share two waves of creeps (and deny enemy creeps). So you will receive XP of 200

Total XP gain = 95 +57 +200 = 352

If you are level 6 when leaving lane, your level will now be 6.5 Here is the experience table to level up:

The amount of XP it takes to go from level 6 to level 7 is 640, and this rotation only gives you half the level. During that time, Shadow Fiend completely farmed leisurely in mid and probably took 4 creeps.

XP gained from enemy creeps = 240
XP gained from denying my creeps = 60
Total XP from 4 creeps = 300 x 4 = 1200

Shadow Fiend almost gets 4 times as much XP and 1.5 levels more than you, in addition, also pulls mid tower health quite well. SF now owns the lane and your turrets will die sooner than you expected. This is not really good at all because the mid tier 1 turret is probably the most important turret to defend.

Amount of Gold received

So what about the amount of gold? Let’s find out together:

Average gold per creep wave = 177
Gold from 4 creeps = 177 x 4 = 708

708 is the potential amount of gold that Shadow Fiend can get when you leave the lane to let SF farm alone. In comparison, you will get:

Gold from killing level 5 enemies (assuming net worth deficit and hero’s net worth is 3000) = 244
Gold from killing level 3 enemies (assuming net worth deficit and hero’s net worth is 500) = 202
Total gold = 446

Lina gets 250 gold less than SF and this only happens if Lina gets the last hit on both heroes! If an ally gets the last hit, the gold will decrease even more!

This information may seem confusing. As you can see, prioritizing ganking over lane farming isn’t optimal at all, but thanks to recent changes, that’s not entirely true. Taking advantage of the laning phase is the right thing to do. Ganking isn’t always a bad decision. If possible, join the kill. But not at the expense of the gold and XP you can get from creeps. And this includes getting into the woods early. After Gold and Jungle XP are nerfed, jungling is no longer worth it unless you can clear all large jungles (including Ancients) within a minute.

Average jungle XP without Ancient = 428
Anicent average forest gold = 738

Ancient is ignored because very few heroes can be eaten at level 6 (be it Alchemist or Sven). And without Ancients, the amount of XP from the jungle (1 small camp, 2 mid-range camps, 2 large camps) is much less than 2 waves of creeps!

In general, when a teammate starts spamming ‘report mid, mid not ganking’ (mid doesn’t gank) when you’ve just leveled, just ignore him. Keep farming lane until you reach level 8 or 9 then move. And if you miss an early rotation, ask your support to go mid during that time to make sure the XP isn’t wasted.

Source: vpesports