You will be better at Dota 2 if you can answer these questions

Dota 2 is a complicated game, but a lot of people still let the character fight, then keep the old habits and never ask, “Why am I doing this?” Matchmaking pits players against equal opponents and lets them improve themselves through experience. But if you want to develop faster and have a better insight into Dota 2, you need to play the game more consciously. It includes asking questions in each match.

What are our goals and what do we need to do at this time?

Heroes have different strengths and weaknesses, as well as different goals. They change based on opponents, teammates, and the outcome of the early game and the situations unfolding on the map.

This means you need to remember the team’s goal and how you can contribute to it. This information helps you choose where to farm, which lane to push, where to place wards, and when you should engage in random confrontations. If the team wants to push the top, you first need to kill all the creeps in the other lanes to protect those two towers while you push the enemy turret. And if you want Roshan, you need to ward or lure the enemy by attacking another area on the map.

Players also need to think about goals because the vast majority of heroes don’t have an optimal way to build. It must be appropriate to the match situation and time. If you want a lot of combat and put pressure on your opponent, you won’t want to go to Battle Fury. Other items will be more suitable for this aggressive play.

What is the opponent’s goal?

This question takes as much thought as thinking about your goals. The enemy also wants to destroy turrets, gank carry and eat Roshan. If you understand their current goals, you can probably guess what wards the enemy will put, which lane they will push and where to go next. We can sabotage their plans or punish the enemy for mistakes: killing warded supports, killing solo pushers or luring the enemy to attack the team’s carry.

Enemy goals are extremely important in the early game, when the team’s carry chooses where to farm. That’s why the safe lane and jungle are the most dangerous positions for the team’s carry – the opponent will try to gank your carry and destroy the game. Also, destroying the safelane turret creates a clearing for my jungle. It is also advantageous to control the map. In professional matches, carries gather with the team in the offlane to gank the opponent’s carry.

There are two questions to ask to determine the goal: who is stronger now and who benefits more from farming. The beginning of the game means a lot. If you don’t take advantage and let the other side do whatever they want, you could lose.

To avoid that situation from happening, you need to understand the game. Imagine yourself as a Phantom Lancer with a good start to the game. Why do you have to be in the safe lane, where the enemy will soon gather, when you can go offlane, bully the Lifestealer there and take the tower?

How did they kill me?

You should always ask yourself this every now and then and remember that the answer will change with the situation. It helps you understand what you need to do on the map and think about the situation with changes in the enemy lineup.

Imagine you just won a teamfight on the enemy turret and have less than 1/3 health. You don’t have to run to the fountain: healing doesn’t matter when all the enemies are dead. You need to assess the situation and see if you can destroy the turret or at least deal massive damage, even if the enemy can chase the team when they respawn and if any of your other lanes are under enemy lanes. push no. Only then can you decide whether to hit the turret or run.

Another example: when controlling Juggernaut, and only Pudge’s ultimate can interrupt your teleport while using Blade Fury. You will always be safe before the enemy reaches a high amount of physical damage (hand damage). As long as Pudge is in another lane or in ward’s line of sight, you can farm in the most dangerous positions and push any lane that doesn’t have Pudge – within limits, of course. This is not a “maybe” statement: you have to play this way, or you’ll waste the hero’s potential.

Which farm is the most dangerous? Is it worth it?

As core champions with high mobility, heroes can choose the most dangerous places to farm – the scarier, the better. The amount of creeps on the map is limited, and teammates are not willing to take the risk. But if you farm, you will increase your team’s total gold and decrease your opponent’s gold when they enter the jungle. You need to use available resources efficiently.

Farming creeps in my jungle is the safest, but it doesn’t help. Farming the enemy jungle is quite dangerous but useful. If the carry or mid can clear the opponent’s farm, the opponent will lose the farm and the teammate will have more gold to build important items in less dangerous positions. Placing a ward will reduce the chance of being ganked.

Mid lane of OpTic Gaming, Quinn “CC&C” Callahan explained:

“What I want to tell you all to improve the most is to play Dota without thinking about farming a jungle. No, never farm a jungle. It sounds ridiculous because of course you have to farm as many jungle fields as possible. But playing without jungle creeps forces you to think about your next moves, and where I want to be on the map, what the team needs to do. Because you will always have to think about those things, not head to the jungle farm next to Tier 3 while the team is in the lead. You need to think about your next moves, and play proactively, take lane creeps proactively, choose your direction. You take the mid turret, you don’t go this way but go to this yard, you come and push the other lane, and then eat this yard, go to that yard, or you eat the stack with the team, with four people. Then move here and there. All of this, you need to plan ahead.”

It’s very dangerous to farm next to an enemy turret when there are two heroes there on the map, but this position gives you the most information and forces the enemy to react. The danger depends on the hero and the farm, and sometimes you can escape in such a situation.

Carry sometimes has no choice but to farm in his jungle. For example, the hero didn’t start well or the enemy hero countered his carry too well. And that’s why you need to think about how the enemy can kill you: in such cases, we have to depend on our teammates to create space.

What’s going on in lane?

Balancing creeps in safe lane is quite difficult. It affects a lot of things and gets messed up easily. First, it determines how proactive the team is. We only take the initiative if the enemy creeps are on our side of the field. Otherwise, attacking the offlaner on that side will only make the situation worse. Even if he dies, the creep wave stays in that side turret area. You can ruin everything if you harass the enemy hero, because then ranged creeps will switch to attacking supports (instead of your team’s creeps, thereby unbalanced creeps). That’s why you need to choose when to play proactively and not just think about how you’re going to ‘kill’ your opponent in the lane.

Pull is a good way to help balance creeps and make the enemy offlane ‘starve’. However, if the carry has a hard time last hitting the turret and can’t stay out of the turret’s range, then pulling the creeps can destroy the carry’s lane. Sometimes, dragging creeps with siege is not a good idea: it can be the only tool that deals damage to enemy turrets.

Is it worth using TP scroll?

Players usually don’t think too much when using the Town Portal scroll. Everyone learned how to use them in the tutorial: die, respawn, tp back to lane. But TP is a very valuable resource.

In the early game, how support reacts to ganks matters a lot. A TP can turn the tide, especially if the opponent is turret. That means it’s not always advisable to TP immediately after dying in lane. Of course, it will take you 30 seconds to jog out, but you must always be ready to react to hazards.

The decision depends on how much help the carry needs. Obviously, if the support dies because some strong hero on your team is pressuring the safe lane, it’s best for the support not to keep the TP scroll. If it’s a 1-1 trade and the creeps are still on their side, then it’s better to run up.

Teleport becomes more important to carry after the early game, if your hero pushes lane better than the opponent. Don’t teleport from home just to farm earlier, because it will tie you to that area. The enemy usually gets enough information to react: you won’t be able to join team fights, defend turrets, win Roshan, and defend because you just TP to farm. It’s better to run up and lose gold than to miss the opportunity to protest.

The same goes for heroes that are good at split-push. Their teleport will be on cooldown, making it harder to survive a gank: for example, Blade Fury with TP is no longer an option.

What will happen in team fight?

Team fights in Dota can get very chaotic, and you need to have some idea of ​​the situation at hand to understand them. How will it start? Which team can initiate the teamfight better? Can it be countered? Who will be the important hero on the opponent’s side? Who will the enemy kill first? These questions will help you get on the right track.

Imagine you play a ranged carry like Luna and have Clockwerk on the opposing team. Team fighting without a Force Staff or at least a Black King Bar can be extremely dangerous, especially when the opponent doesn’t need to focus on other heroes. As long as Clockwerk is alive or has a skill, don’t rush to use Force Staff: you will die more easily if you use it early.

Dota is a complex game, and one person cannot think of everything at once. It’s best to break it down into elements one by one: focus on goals for 10 games, then practice 10 other games with the TP mindset, and so on. The questions are quite difficult, and it is difficult to answer while the game is in progress. That’s why players need to make assumptions based on available information. Errors will occur because the player does not always have enough information; It is very easy to lose the match after a miscalculation. But you should pay attention to the game as a whole, not just an outcome: there’s no way to prove that hypothesis without practice. If you don’t take risks, nothing will succeed.

Source: Cybersport