How To Actually Play Dota 2: A Guide For New And Experienced Players

Dota 2 is one of the most popular MOBA games at the time of writing this article, and with 10 million unique players coming to Dota 2 each and every month there are many who do not understand how to play the game properly because Dota 2 is a very complicated game. If you are wondering how to play Dota 2, or just want to sharpen your skills a little more this guide is perfect for you. If you are already playing ranked games most of the time and understand Dota 2’s many strategies this guide still applies to you, we will discuss some advanced strategies a little further down this article.
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Step 1: Get to know the main menu
The main menu is most likely not really appealing to most and might be considered “complicated” for newcomers, do not worry it’s very easy once you know your way around. The image below shows you what the main menu looks like most of the time, You might be tempted to press the big play Dota button on the bottom left to rush straight into battle, but unless you want to be flamed by players with 10 hours more than you telling you to uninstall, read through our explanation of what every button does in the menu, and once you finally do play Dota it might just be you who flames unknowing players to check out their main menu. (don’t scream at people, we all have feelings, and definitely don’t tell them to uninstall, it’s just blatantly rude)

We’ll go over every item in this menu and what you need to know about it. If you are already an experienced player feel free to scroll down to view our more advanced strategies.

In the top left you’ll see a little cogwheel which you can click on, this opens the settings menu.

After clicking on the cogwheel button, a settings menu should open with a plethora of options such as the ability to change just about every single keybind in the entire game, A video options tab for well people who can’t run Dota 2 on maximum details, An audio tab if you want to lower down your toxic teammates, and a General options tab where you can adjust a wide variety of items such as hero icons, map size, auto select summoned units and the list goes on. We highly recommend to create your own keybinds for Dota 2, you’re gonna be pressing buttons a lot and if you don’t know what your buttons do you might aswell stop playing already 🙂 Getting used to these keybinds is very important so you can increase your reaction time in Dota 2 and Get those juicy kills. Everyone likes juicy kills, and they feel even better when Gabe Newell tells you to e-mail him to tell him about your rampage.

Make sure to take your time adjusting all of the available settings in Dota 2, most players don’t go here until they have a few hundred hours into the game so going here early can really put you ahead of most enemies. After you’re done messing around with Dota 2’s options we can move on to the next tab on the top bar. Closing the settings menu is simply a matter of clicking on the top left small cogwheel with the arrow. If you want to return to the main menu screen from any of the other tabs just press the big Dota 2 Logo on the left!

Up next will be the Heroes Tab, a tab many use to brag about their amazing stats with their favourite hero to play, which is one of the many functions it actually has. (But obviously the bragging is the best part)

Once you click on the heroes tab you will be presented with a screen that has all of the heroes currently available in Dota 2, a couple of heroes are added once every now and again but it’s quite rare. If they happen to be added, you might have already seen that we get a huge announcement image on the main menu.

Feel free to click on any hero you like and explore it’s abilites, view your stats and much more. Here you can also equip specific Cosmetic items widely available on the steam community market for almost any hero to customise them to your liking. After you are done braggin about your amazing stats we can move on to the next tab which will be the “Store” tab. I think this tab speaks for itself, here you open treasures which give you cosmetic items for your heroes, purchase different landscapes and many other items. Feel free to browse around at your own pace. The watch tab is used to watch games, as you might have guessed. We can move on to the best tab for newcomers.

The Learn Tab.
The learn tab really is a goldmine for newcomers, come on give it a click, don’t be shy. Once you click on it a small top bar will appear just under the learn tab, by clicking on training or tutorials you are 100% guaranteed to get familiar with the absolute basics of Dota 2. Dota 2’s tutorial system really does a great job of getting you into the game step by step and is often frowned up which is really undeserved, it’s fantastic for newcomers! You immediately learn how to purchase items, what to do in lanes (sort of) and how to play different classes, melee and ranged heroes and you learn the difference between Strength, Agility and Intelligence heroes. After finishing the tutorials even Valve themselves encourage you to go play a multiplayer match, We recommend you practise versus bots but playing an Unranked match has never hurt anyone.

Make sure to select unranked, or practice with bots. Recently new players are made unable to play ranked until they have a certain amount of games played in the unranked gamemode to make sure nobody ruins someones day trying to make it up the ranking ladder.

Step 2: Understanding the core mechanics
Dota 2 has endless amounts of strategy to it, we will discuss some of them a little further down in this article. But understanding the core mechanics is really something everyone must understand to be able to function properly in Dota 2. Once you have joined a game, the first thing to do is make your way to your correct lane, this entirely depends on what role and hero you play so we can not really decide for you what to do. Where to play and what heroes to play is something that can only be learned by experience. We recommend when starting out to just pick a hero you like and just play the game. People might get angry for playing the game wrong but remember, this is unranked and you are not harming anyone’s score. We all started at the beginning.

The 2 teams, Radiant and Dire.

Each team has 5 players to make a total of 10 players in one match. One is red the other is green, Green being your allied creeps and buildings and red being your enemies creeps and buildings. this switches up depending on which side you play but radiant has the bottom half of the map and Dire the top half, this is easily recognisable by the difference in towers and other buildings. Radiant Buildings usually have a white glow and Dire buildings usually have a red glow.

There are 3 lanes, Top Lane, Middle and Bottom Lane

Middle is most of the time taken by a single hero, bottom and top lane are usually both taken by a carry with a support. Other terms for Bottom and Top are “Safe Lane” for Bottom and “Offlane” for Top on radiant and “Offlane for Bottom and “Safe lane” for top on the dire side, (radiant is green, dire is red on the map shown above) There is a very high chance someone else on your team will tell you where to go depending on what hero you picked. View the very complicated picture below to get a slight idea of what we mean with the lanes. You can see offlane and safelane are switched on the other team.

Oh, we also have this dragon called “Roshan” you can find him in his pit on the left side of middle. He looks somewhat like this.

If you manage to kill Roshan, he will give you an extra life called The Aegis. This will make you respawn in 5 seconds at the exact spot where you died, but the aegis will be used so you will die like usual the next time. If the aegis isn’t used within 5 minutes it will heal the carrier for a couple of seconds to then dissapear and be reclaimed by Roshan, which means you will have to kill him again. Do not go for the kill early in the game, Roshan is a very strong dragon and you will need your team to work together on this one. Killing Roshan multiple times results in greater rewards each time.

So, you understand the map, know where to play your hero and what now you ask? You farm creeps, these little dudes fighting each other, if you get the kill, otherwise know as Last hit or CS which is short for Creep Score, you earn gold and experience, the gold is used to purchase items to make your hero stronger and the experience is used to level up your abilities and gain special perks. After a while you might notice your hero is stronger than the enemy or the other way around if you are unlucky, this might result in other players starting to fight you. Once you realise this point it’s crucial to make correct decisions. One bad fight can result in a loss of the entire game. Unfortunately many of these decisions are only learned by experience, but watching pro Dota 2 players play really helps to increase your understanding of the fighting fase.

If you happen to be on the lucky side, and you beat the enemy team for once, you might notice they respawn after a certain amount of time. In the time that they are dead make sure to push for some objectives, they are known as towers and barracks or shrines. The first row of towers is known as a Tier-1 Tower. These are the furthest away from the base and have no backdoor protection, which means you do not need allied creeps to be near the building to destroy it. Attack the tower until it falls and you gain map control, making your space to farm in bigger and the enemies space smalller. Tier 2 towers are the second row, tier 3 the third row and so on, From tier 2 towers onwards you will find that the towers have backdoor protection which means you will need allied creeps near the building to destroy it. After you destroyed the tier 3 towers you might find a pair of barracks behind it. A ranged barrack and a melee barrack. The barracks explain themselves, if you destroy the enemy ranged barrack, your allied ranged creeps will have increased damage and health, destroying the melee barracks does the same for melee creeps. If the enemy happens to destroy your barracks the same will happen for them, their creeps get stronger and yours stay the same until you take their pair. Having stronger creeps will push the waves towards the enemy which will further limit the space they have to farm gold and increase your space to farm gold in. The final step is to destroy the 2 tier 4 towers defending the big ancient, the big round building each team has. Once the ancient is destroyed, the game is won by the team who destroyed their enemy’s ancient.

Step 3: Increasing your skill level
You understand everything about the game, know what all heroes do, know their roles and you understand you have to play the objective. You might be wondering how to increase your skill level further beyond this point. Watching Pro Dota 2 players is a great way to increase your understanding of the game. Twitch.tv often has a plethora of Dota 2 streamers and they are many times talking about their thinking patterns. Reading online guides like the one written here and watching YouTube videos are also great options if you don’t like to watch Livestreams. If you really want to have some personal help you can hire Dota 2 Coaches, these will watch you play and give you personalised help or answer any questions you throw at them, Hiring a Dota 2 coach can really skyrocket your skill barrier since they are more advanced players who have years of experience. Asking your friends for help if you have buddy’s who already play dota 2 can really be a great tool. They are most likely interested in giving you some tips to improve!

Step 4: Understanding Dota 2 Slang
Understanding Dota 2 slang is crucial to being able to communicating clearly with your teammates and understanding moves, spreading info and so much more. We’ll make quick list of things you might hear:

Go Bot = Go bottom lane.
Go Top = Go top lane.
Go Mid = Go middle lane.
Jungle = the creeps you can farm outside of lanes, mostly around shrines.
CS = Creep score or last hit, the amount of creep you killed or missing a kill on a creep.
Last hit = same as CS.
Runes = go for the bounty runes, these runes give a huge gold boost to your team if you manage to take them before your enemy does.
Gank = help your teammate kill an enemy player or if you are getting ganked, enemy team members are trying to kill you.
Defend = stay under towers or on high ground to defend the objectives.
Push = Go for objectives, push enemy towers.
Shrine = The small buildings in the middle of the jungles, they heal your hp and mana for a short period of time and go on cooldown for a specific period of time after using.
TP = town portal scroll, use these to Teleport to your towers and shrines to help your teammates or to get back in lane quicker.
Feed = Getting yourself killed on purpose, giving gold and experience to the enemy team.
Rosh = Go for roshan, Head to the roshan pit and kill roshan with your team.
There are many more terms to sum up but these are the most common ones.

Step 5: Learning Advanced Strategies
While we are far from experts or pro Dota 2 players, we do have a couple of tricks up our sleeve we would like to share with you.

Smoking, Also known as using the smoke from the shop to go invisible with your team and gank an unsuspecting enemy player. If you manage to get the kill, your team will have a slight advantage and Dota 2 loves it when you have slight advantages.

Taking Roshan while you killed the enemy team, an entire fight can be turned around by giving your carry 2 lives instead of just one.

Ratting, a very frowned upon strategy in Dota 2. It means taking heroes that usually summon units to push objectives while the other team is not paying attention or if they are fighting with the rest of your team. It might make the enemies mad but hey, you got that tower.

Baiting, you or one of your team members goes slightly into enemy territory while your enemy hides behind trees or in the fog of war. The enemy thinks you are overextending and go for the kill on you, that’s when your team pops out of the fog of war and fights the enemy as a surprise!

We hope you enjoyed the read and learned something from us. Let us know if we missed something, or if you would like to add something to this list!

If you would like to learn more about a specific hero in dota 2, we are currently in the process of making a guide for every single hero in the game, stay tuned!
If you want to read the original article, click here: https://blackpandagaming.com/how-to-actually-play-dota-2-a-guide-for-new-and-experienced-players/