After writing the extremely popular DOTA2,
I have finally decided to write a more advanced guide. Now unlike the
previous guide, I will assume that you are a seasoned player as the tips
I am about to tell you require basic game knowledge. Here are the top
10 DOTA 2 advanced tips. Don’t fret though, as I will still try my best
to explain the concepts in as much detail as possible. Should be
straight forward to follow.
You might have already heard these terms before. The concept is that,
rather going to a jungle camp, clearing it and then waiting for it to
respawn. If you lure the creeps out at just the right moment, a new
batch of creeps will spawn in their place. So now you have two creep
batches in the same camp. If you repeat a few times, you can end up with
a lot of creeps in one camp, which you can swiftly clear with your
ultimate (or let your ungrateful carry do it), for a huge lump sum
amount of XP and gold.
So basically for simply stacking camps (including ancient camps), at
exactly the 55 second mark, attack the creeps and make them chase you.
When the start slowly retreating, a new batch would have already spawned
there. Repeat as necessary. Remember creeps can spawn every 1 minute
(x:00). Also if you lure the neutral camp creeps into fighting with your
creeps, you can pick of some easy last hits.
The name is short for: Basilius Micromanagement. This is a pretty
sneaky and mostly hilarious tactic to throw your enemy off. Works best
in solo mid. Basically, when your enemy is attacking your creeps leave
the Ring of Basilius off. The moment he goes for last hits, suddenly
turn it on, the armour buff will make them take less damage making him
miss his last hits. Then just deny them. The trick is to be
unpredictable on how you use it, so the enemy can’t figure out why he is
missing his last hits, and to ruin his mental estimation of his damage.
Also to piss him off.
8.Courier Express Service (CES)
I will mention some tricks to help you maximise your efficiency in
using the courier. Some of you might have heard this strategy already,
its called ‘Crowing’. Lets start with a basic trick, when you are
playing mid, have the courier standing a little outside the fountain. So
when you buy your bottle, it will be delivered faster, saving you a few
seconds.
I will also cover some ideas about shift-clicking. Shift clicking is
mostly used for queuing. A time saving trick is to drag an item onto the
shop keeper from some distance, and then shift-click away. For example,
you want to get rid of a useless item, give it to the courier, then
drag that item to the shopkeeper. So now the courier will sell the item
the moment it reaches the fountain. Or you want to sell a tango in the
side shop, drag it on the shopkeeper, then shift click away. The moment
you get in the ‘buying range’ it will sell and you can quickly buy what
you want and return to the lane.
If you want to understand this concept better, and try new time-saving tricks.
This is a very simple trick which can make you last in the lane
longer. When you are low on health and near the side shop, buy a Ring of
Health and enjoy some regen, and then sell it before
10 seconds.
You get a full refund, and more health, without losing any money. And
then repeat this a few times. The only skill this takes is, timing it
correctly. And the only flaw is that you miss some last hits. Keep this
in mind as an emergency tactic to use, and not begging teammates for
tangos, going all the way back to base or calling up the courier all the
way from the base just for a potion.
6.Hand of God
Ok , I am about to blow your mind. If you have read my previous list,
you probably know that you can redirect creep/tower aggro, by pressing
the attack button and then clicking on a friendly creep/hero. Well you
can redirect creep aggro globally. This means that it doesn’t matter
where you are on the map, as long as you are in a 500 range of creeps.
You can do the attack key anywhere on the map, and the creeps (and
towers) of that area will redirect their aggro. This would be super
useful when you are trying to save a friendly hero.
Not only this, but you can also right-click an enemy hero (anywhere
on the map) and that will redirect your creeps (the ones closest to the
hero) and the friendly tower aggro towards them.
5.Blocking Enemy Farm
If you are playing offlane, buy wards. This is the single most useful
item you can buy. Go straight for the enemy neutral camps and ward the
hell out of them. If you are playing support, you cannot win the game
unless you block the enemy ancient camp. An extremely effective tactic
is to buy three wards, and put them on the enemy farms which you think
they will need the most.
As promised before, I added a map with the best places to ward. Red
spots give you rune sight, orange block creep camps, purple are critical
choke points worth to keep an eye on, and green give you base sight.
4.Bottle Refills and Being Nice
When a friendly hero just tp’s to your lane, just hand them your
almost empty (or totally empty) bottle. It will automatically refill,
now you just have to convince them to give it back to you. The bottle
gets refilled because freshly tp’ed heroes have the fountain’s regen
buff on them, and giving the bottle then refills it.
Another tactic is to basically give your bottle to who needs it the
most. If your partner is low on health, give him the bottle to use all
charges, and then take it back. If you are on low health and need to go
back no matter what (the bottle is not enough to bring you to a
respectable health level), give your teammate the bottle, tell him to
use all the charges, then take the bottle back to base. It will allow
them to stay in the lane longer and cover for you. Lastly the ‘pass the
rune tactic’, which means that when you see a rune and you don’t need
the rune yourself, but you do need the recharge for your bottle. Give
the bottle to your ally, he will bottle the rune (and recharge the
bottle), use the rune and then give you back a full bottle. It’s a
win-win, he gets the rune, you get a full bottle.
3.Tread Switching
This refers to switching the focus of the Power Tread boots. The idea is to maximise what you have, you do this by:
- INT – Cast a spell
- STR – Getting attacked
- AGI – In a safe location, where you want to regen mana and health.
- Your main attribute – When attacking and general offensive play
2.Double Pulling
I mentioned pulling before, but as for the slightly more complex
double pulling. Basically instead of pulling one camp of neutrals,
towards your creeps, you pull two. An added benefit (other than a huge
amount of XP and gold for you), is that you deny the enemy an entire
wave of your creeps. For the Radiant, you go to the closest camp to the
lane. Lure them out towards your creeps at the 45 second mark. Cut a
tree at the top with a tango, and then pull the neutral camp right above
it to battle which is raging below. Kill the remaining creeps for the
first camp before the second camp creeps join the battle.
For the Dire, it’s easier as you don’t need a tango. At roughly the
42 second mark, lure the neutrals towards the creeps, to start the
battle. Then rush towards the second camp, and make them join the
battle, making sure that by the time they reach the entire first camp
neutrals should be dead.
I put up a map to give you an idea. The red is the first camp, the orange is the second one.
1.Reliable and Unreliable Gold
I have to admit I found out the difference pretty later on aswell.
The concept gets a little confusing so I will simplify it for you. A
common misconception about dying in the game is that you should spend
all your gold quickly before you die, right? Well its the wrong. Let me
explain. You have two types of gold: reliable and unreliable. You get
reliable gold by killing heroes, couriers, Roshan, Hand of Midas, and
destroying towers. The rest is unreliable gold (creep gold, starting
gold, farming income, periodic gold etc). Follow me so far? Good. Here
is where it all gets tricky, the game treats both these types of golds
as different. When you die, you lose
only from your
unreliable gold pool (Hero level * 30). Secondly, when you buy items,
the shop uses your unreliable gold first. Thirdly, and most important:
buyback uses your
reliable gold. So next time you are
about to die, just buy some TP scrolls (create a keyboard shortcut for
it), and you are good. Your hard-earned reliable gold is safe. But if
you were farming the whole time, then its better if you buy an
ingredient for whatever you were trying to make. Remember, always have
enough reliable gold for a buy back.
Also if you hover your mouse over the gold HUD, it shows you how much reliable and unreliable gold you have.
