Hey guys,

So I've put on a new password to our teamspeak server since there have been many people who have joined to use it when we haven't been paying attention.

New password is: swone1

Thanks dudes

Hey guys. This summer I have been working on the constructs of a comprehensive yet brief guide, into many aspects of Dota. I do have many walls of text that I've come up with so far but I was hoping that if I posted it, perhaps you guys would read through it and edit it/give me feedback, and perhaps even learn some stuff from it too. My final result would be that I'd like to post it to a forum somewhere. Anyways I'll just post the outline for now and you guys can tell me what you think. Maybe some categories that could be moved under a different heading or some things that could be grouped together to a smaller category. I know I will have some overlap as is unavoidable but yea, I might be missing some stuff altogether too.

Thanks in advance guys.


1.0 Basics
1.1 Micro Skills
1.1.1 CS (creep score)
1.1.2 Animation cancelling
Attacks
Spells
1.1.3 Micro creep management
1.1.4 Communication
1.1.5 Advanced skills
Juking
Baiting/Kiting
Counter Ganking
1.2 Game Mechanics
1.2.1 Aggro
Towers
Creeps
1.2.2 Spell Immunities
BKB
Linken’s Sphere
Repel
Other
1.2.3 Damage Types and Resistances
Physical
Magical
Pure
1.2.4 Orbs/Unique Attack Modifiers
1.3 Hero Familiarity
1.3.1 Knowing limitations
1.3.2 Knowing what to expect from certain heroes
1.3.3 Broader understanding of the game
2.0 Lanes
2.1 Lane Compositions
2.1.1 Solo
2.1.2 Dual-lane
2.1.3 Tri-lane
2.1.4 Quad-lane
2.2 Lane Control
2.2.1 Winning lanes
2.2.1.1 Harassment
2.2.1.2 Ganks
2.2.1.3 CS (creep score)
2.2.2 Farm
Lane
Jungle
2.2.3 Pulling
Support farm
Creeprilibrium (equilibrium)
2.3 Synergy
3.0 Roles
3.1 Carry
3.1.1 Hard-carry
3.1.2 Semi-carry
3.2 Initiator
3.3 Tank
3.4 Support
3.4.1 Hard-support
3.4.2 Utility
3.4.3 General support
3.5 Pushers
3.5.1 Tower
3.5.2 Creeps
3.5.3 Counter-push
4.0 Item Building
4.1 Knowing your hero
4.2 Knowing your opponent’s heroes
4.3 Knowing your team’s strategy
5.0 Map Control
5.1 Map awareness
5.2 Towers
5.2.1 TP spots
5.2.1.1 Control of Jungle
5.2.1.2 Control of Rosh
5.2.1.3 Counter ganking
5.2.2 Safe spots to avoid ganks
5.2.3 Advantages in team fights
5.3 Warding
5.3.1 Vision
5.3.2 Counter-warding
5.4 Hero/team positioning
5.4.1 Maximizing your advantage
5.4.2 Minimizing risk and wasted time
5.5 Farm/gold advantage
5.6 Control of fights
5.7 Roshan
6.0 Strategies
6.1 Roles
6.2 Synergy
6.3 Items
6.4 Adaptation
6.5 Knowledge of current meta-game
7.0 Continual Learning
7.1 Personal playing history
7.2 Playing history of others

TIER 3

These heroes for the most part are all about pushing. The ability to take towers in a timely manner is what the current meta-game is all about. However, not just taking towers for the sake of it, but taking towers so that the opposing team loses map control and space to farm and move around the map safely. The nice thing about most of these heroes here, is that while their biggest strength is pushing, yet again, they contribute to the team in many other ways.

-Leshrac
-Enigma
-Enchantress
-Broodmother
-Shadow Shaman
-Lycanthrope
-Jakiro
-QoP

*higher difficulty TIER 3:
-Chen


Several of these heroes also fit the description of junglers. Not only do they have the skill set to take a major map advantage but they can also give the team a gold advantage by farming in the jungle. The key here with jungling heroes is to create a gold advantage with one hero that will be transferred into the an advantage for the rest of your team. Junglers are picked for this sole reason. If you are afk farming in the jungle you are doing nothing for your team's benefit and will eventually lose your own advantage as the game goes on since junglers are most effective early game.

TIER 4

These heroes could be sometimes categorized as "hard supports". The support characters that can benefit from a greater portion of farm than regular supports since their items and skills will play a key role in team fights.

-Tiny
-Axe
-Bane
-Lina
-Lion
-Witch Doctor
-Warlock
-Pugna
-Dazzle
-Ancient Apparition
-Invoker

Some of these characters can fit into an initiator or semi-carry role, but none take the roleof being a hard carry.

------------------------------------

These are just a few heroes to consider that if you learn them, you can be guaranteed that your repetoire of characters will be well used come CM time. There are more heroes that are very effective with team compositions, but for the most part, these few heroes are the most used in the current meta game. The lowest tiers do not necessarily mean the easiest characters to learn and are for new players but they are the ones that are picked usually the most often. The more your understand these heroes, the more you will understand Dota. Remeber, there is much more to the game than just getting kills.

Enjoy and happy learning. Lets try and get each of our bank of heroes that we can play, much higher this summer.

So many people want to learn new heroes but when it comes time to play heroes that will work in a good team composition, people have learned characters like Zeus, or Alchemist, or Kunkka, etc. While these heroes are all good and have their place, few fit well into a broad team composition. These heroes do have skills that work effectively but unfortunately they offer little to the rest of the team. To create a good team composition, it is important that each hero can take up several responsibilities in the team in order for the team to have a well rounded composition and synergy.

As an example, lets look at venomancer. This is a character that is often picked up for counter push in the current meta-game. As the game progresses and teams start to make large pushes, venomancer's low cooldown on his plague wards enables him to have up to 8 wards defending a tower at once. This brings enemy creep waves to a complete halt as they die quickly one by one to veno's wards. This also helps him get his farm up since in the early stages of the game venomancer is often given the role of babysitting and warding. When it comes to a teamfight, venomancer does a few things. Popping his ulti to get the most people in it, as well as initiating with his gale, also trying to grab as many units as possible. However one over looked use of venomancer's skills is his wards. You can often trap heroes into tight spots or save allied heroes who are trying to escape through tight spots but placing a ward in the path of your opponent. And on top of all this venomancer has his passive slow against any fleeing heroes. But perhaps the biggest strength of venomancer is his ability to spam his wards wherever he walks, leaving a trail of visibility and total map control.


I want to list off a few heroes that you guys should keep at the top of your list for characters to learn. It might be a good thing to try and learn them on a tier by tier basis and as you master them up the tier's you will also begin to have a greater appreciation for how the game works and how support heroes are so essential to a team.

TIER 1
These heroes are the absolute core of any team. They perform their roles in the game with little to no items and are frequently relied upon as the warding person for the team. A person who can play one of these characters well, with little items, will greatly benefit their team.

-Crystal Maiden
-Vengeful Spirit
-Venomancer
-Tidehunter

While its true that these heroes can benefit from farm (especially tidehunter for the purchase of a blink) they are most often used in the total support role for the team. When you play these heroes, your entire thought process has to change from, "I need to farm for this item" to, "I need to make sure wards stay up, wards are countered, that we have invis detection (if need be) and that we always have smoke if we need it". Rather than thinking that you have 500 gold for boots, think if you have wards and other things for the team, once those are up, then you have money for your items. Another thing to keep in mind is you have to spend money to make money. If you purchase smoke of deciet's you canmake 600 gold off of a successful gank rather than just thinking that you need to hold onto your cash.

TIER 2

These heroes are (for the most part) some of the most picked aside from your core support heroes. They fit the current meta game incredibly well and can contribute to the team in many ways. Some of them can even take on solo lanes as well. But the thing that they all have in common is that they are supports and their responsibilities are all about giving your team an advantage.

-Natures Prophet
-Windrunner
-Dark Seer
-Beastmaster
-Earthshaker
-Sandking
-Shadow Demon

Sometimes these heroes will take up the warding role to help the core heroes farm for some pertinent items when the strategy depends on it. Other times they will most likely be used as support/utility heroes who contribute greatly to the overall outcome of a team fight.


...continued (ran out of room)

Hey Guys!

So I've talked to several of you about possibly taking Dota a bit more competitively. I'm hoping to get us practicing a bit more and doing some stuff on our own that we can still do that will increase our playing as a team. There are many things that you can practice on your own that will greatly benefit both your playing ability, as well as your coordination with teammates in game, and your own personal micro-game play. In the next couple of weeks I'll be trying to put together some stuff that you can do on your own and at your own leisure. Please try your best to put in at least some practice time each week to better your game so that when our skrim times do come, we can see the improvements. Also try and play some pub games with each other as well and try to work on teamwork in game. In the next little while here I will post a bulliten on core heroes that everyone should learn and some guides to learning new heroes in the future.

Thats all for now.

Cheers

Tyson