I will keep the intro short and jump straight to the point, but before that I want to specify a few things that you should always keep in mind.

1. Don't be greedy.

A lot of players (most of them) want to play flashy heroes, make flashy moves, be the star of the team. The only problem with this mindset is the fact that those heroes that can be flashy are usually the heroes that need most farm to even be relevant. In short words, everyone wants to carry, but when a team has 3-4 carries, they will usually (90% of the time) lose the game before they can even get their core items. Now, this is just my opinion, but the games are not won by carries (in 70% of cases), but by the supports. Why ? Because the supports can do a lot of stuff with just a few levels (some even at level 1), while a carry needs a big amount of farm before he can become active on the map. What can a carry do when a Rubick + Disruptor ganks his lane, or a Lion + Skywrath Mage ? There is absolutly nothing you can do, except die.

So, don't be greedy when you pick your hero, always check if your team has enough disables (slows, silences, stuns) and make the right choice, even if it's not the most spectacular one. A Cristal Maiden can help hero entire team so so so much just with her passive aura, not to mention the 3 disables / nukes that she has.

2. Don't tilt your teammates

Yes, we all played that game when someone in the team seems completely lost on the map, with no game-sense and bad decision making + he is sucking hard at his own hero. Yes, we have all been there. The best thing you can do in this case, is try to compensate. Look at this like you have a chance to really step up your game in order to compensate for your bad teammate. Cursing him / flaming him doesnt help either, he won't get better just because you trash talk him. Be polite, or if you can't be, just dont say anything and try to focus on your own game.

3. Giving up the game

Sometimes a game seems lost and you lose motivation to play. Yes, it happens to all of us atr some point. You know that even if you play at your best, you will still lose the game because the enemy has too big of an advantage or you just dont have the right heroes, etc. The thing is that there is still something to be salvaged from that dead game, and that thing is you.. Instead of just being afk in the fountain, try a new item build, a different skill build on the hero you play, use that apparently lost game to try new things that you are too afraid to do in a winning situation.

Before talking about how to play as a team or part of a team, we need to talk about how to improve as a player in Dota2. There are many ways in which you can grow as a player, but I will try to break this down in 2 ways.

1. Mechanical Skill

Mechanical skill is required in order to play the game. It covers last hitting, knowing how much damage each of the nukes do, stuff like that.

A. I would say that farming is probably the easiest you can improve as part of your mechanical skill. You need a lot of practice with a lot of heroes before you see actual improvements. Each hero has a different attack animation and base damage, so you absolutely need to try most of those heroes. Farming is easy once you get to have 100 damage, but what about in the early game when you have 45-55 damage and sometimes you have to last hit under tower? It's not easy to coordinate with your tower and still last hit well, but with enough practice, you will eventually improve.

B. Another component of your mechanical skill is knowing the cooldowns of most heroes. This will play a big part when trying to outplay / outskill an opponent, either in laning phase, teamfight or a 1 vs 1 situation.

C. Knowing what each item does and how it affects you and your team in different situation. Lets take the Pipe of Insight as an example. It offers your team extra magical resistance. When in a fight, you need to know how much damage the enemy nukes will do and how much of that damage will be blocked by your hero's magical resistance. Knowing this stuff will allow you to push your hero to the limits, playing it in the most effective way. Same things go for armor and other things.

D. Always be aware of yours and your opponent's HP pool. If you want to kill an enemy hero, first click on it and check his HP and items, then quickly calculate the amount of damage you can do to him before he can either escape or counter - initiate you or receive help from his teammates. Never go on an enemy hero, unless you are sure you can kill him in relative few seconds. The longer it takes, the more likely you are going to be counter-initiated by his team.


2. Game Decisions

We talked about how to practice the mechanical component, but this one, the decision making is harder to learn because it takes more time and you have to be patient. How can you improve your decision making?

A. Watch your replays from your own perspective and honestly judge your actions. Look for the moments you either got a kill or got yourself killed. Watch those moments again and think if you could have done any better with the information you had at the time. Sometimes we do a very bad move and still got a kill, but that doesnt make the move any less stupid. Be your own judge.

B. If you dont have time for replays or you are too lazy, do this: When you finish a game, try to analyze it: Why you won / lost ? What were the key moments of the game and how you handled those moments ? What could you have done more to help your team ? Why did you got ganked ? How was your positioning ? This shouldn't take more than a few minutes and trust me, it will pay off eventually.

In some games you can win the game by default (just by the picks you have), as long as all 5 of you are decent with your heroes. This doesn't happen every game, but when that time comes, you feel good about your picks.

Try to put it this way: If your team has the same amount of skill as the enemy team, how will the game decide a winner ? Well, this question has more answer than 1 and I will cover them all.

1. Picks

If your team has about the same amount of skill as the enemy, the hero's synergy in a team can win the game. I am talking about heroes that complement each other well, like: Tidehunter + Silencer + QoP + Anti-Mage and Disruptor. This is just an example of a team composition that has most of the strenghts: 1. Team Fight 2. Split Push 3. High Ground Defense 4. Ganking and 5. Counter Initiation. It's the kind of lineup that can end the game fast or go late and still have big chances of winning. It's the kind of lineup that can punish the smallest mistake of your opponents (by having a lot of mobility and chase potential).

2. Timings

Again, if your team skill is about the same as the opponent's, hitting your timings right, can win you the game right there. A fast blink on a deadly ganker (like Axe, or Legion Commander), or a fast orchid on a Clincz or a fast Mechanism on Enigma. These are all timings that as fast you reach, the easier is to win. Let me explain this in short words: A fast Mechanism on Enigma will allow your team to group up as 4 or 5 and push each Tier 1 tower. The enemy can't really fight into a Black Hole + Midnight Pulse + a Mek, at about 10-12 minute mark, there is just no way, unless you guys make a very big positioning mistake. A fast blink on an Axe or Legion Commander will force your enemy to stay more grouped up (same in the case of Clincz with Orchid). This is a win in itself, because if the enemy is grouped, you can split up the map and farm much more efficiently, getting farm and levels faster than the opponent.

3. Controlling the map

Now this is a good one, but requires a good understanding between your team members. It's also really easy to do in the early - mid game, as long as you know how to make it work properly. The easiest way is to pick a hero that has a deadly ultimate (Tidehunter, Enigma,Magnus, etc), get a fast mek and push all tier 1 towers. That will give your team a lot of gold advantage, but since you are grouped up, you will suffer in experience, so: After you pushed all Tier 1 towers, try to secure Roshan, which will give you even more gold and a lot of experience that you missed by staying grouped up. Plant aggressive wards and punish every enemy who overextends. In this type of strategy, is very very important to know 1 thing: Never go in the enemy jungle without vision or with less than 3-4 heroes. Why ? Because the enemy will most likely be grouped up (since they dont have any Tier 1 towers left) and if you go in their jungle as 2 and encounter 4 of them, you will just give them the way back into the game. So what you should be doing, is split up and farm for a few minutes, get your next big items and push again. Inch by inch (having the gold advantage) you will win the game.

4. Turtling

This is also a very very viable strategy, but you need a very specific type of lineup. First, you need 2-3 heroes that are extremly good at high ground defense (AA - Tinker - Tidehunter - Disruptor - Magnus - QoP, etc), you also need a hard carry, one of the best there is (Spectre, Anti-Mage, Phantom Asassin, Sven, etc). There is no point in turtling, unless you have one of the hardest carries that can push fast after a won teamfight. Remember, if you chose this type of strategy, dodge the enemy as much as you can, never take fights unless it's on your own terms and always have vision on the map.

5. Split Pushing

You can win the game by split pushing immobile opponents. If the enemy team doesnt have mobility or it can't punish split pushers, consider this one as your strategy. If you have an Anti-Mage and a Nature's Prophet, you cant really fight the enemy until later on. So, if they try to group up and push you to death, just split. Anti-Mage can push one lane and the NP can push the other lane. This way, you get your cores farmed, and keep the other lanes pushed (buying even more time for your entire team).

What I am trying to say, is that you can win a game with a lot of strategies as long as you have the right heroes for each scenario, but you 100% must have a strategy, If you dont, your only way to win is to completely outskill and outplay the enemy. So, ALWAYS HAVE A PLAN !!!

Depending on the patch and meta, you can play 2 or 3 heavy cores. There is not a right way to play the game, Dota2 is so complex, that you can play it in hundreds of ways, but some things stay constant. One of those things is the number of cores. This is the biggest problem, by far in the 2.8K - 4k MMR skill bracket.

So, one of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that the mid hero needs to constantly gank their lanes (helping them). This is not how it works my friends. The mid hero is there for a reason. You can easily see that usually pick mid heroes that can benefit a lot from levels (and farm), like Invoker, Shadow Fiend, QoP, Outworld Devourer, etc. These heroes need as many levels as they can get, so constantly moving on the map is not really an option. But why do people still think that the mid needs to help ? The answer is simple. Because most lineup have 3 heavy cores + a jungler that doesnt do much, so you end up with 4 cores and 1 support. If you play 2-1-1-1, then of course you need help in the safe lane or even in the offlane, because you only have 1 support. So before crying about "mid doesnt gank", think better when you pick. Instead of that Legion Commander jungle, pick a second support and go 2-1-2 or 3-1-1 and then you wont need any help from the mid hero.

A lineup with 2 supports has infinity more chances of winning against a lineup with 1 support (as long as they dont mess it up very badly). Why ? If your lineup has 1 support, he will have 0 farm (since he is the one to buy all the wards, sentries, dust, smoke, courier and stuff), he will also suffer greatly in experience (since there is no place for him on the map) and thats how you properly lose a game. If you have 2 supports, 1 can always put pressure on the mid lane, winning mid + winning safe lane is in most cases enough to win a game in this skill bracket, so ALWAYS PICK 2 SUPPORTS.

In my experience, having 1 hard carry + a flexible mid represents enough fire-power to win a game. The other 3 heroes should just facilitate the game for those 2 heavy cores; let's say 2 supports + an offlane Tide, or a Centaur, etc.

Cores need both farm and levels and if you have too many of them, you will lose map control very fast and in result you will lose the game. Trust me when I tell you that if you have 2 supports in the team in this skill bracket, your chances of winning will increase massively.