Random tips for players going competitive

Edit: Title should read "Random tips for players going competitive" I'm sleepy. :D

Hello DotAfire poster people.

I haven't been posting or coaching as much as I normally do, because I've been terribly busy recently. A team has asked me to help them ready up for a local LAN tournament, and I agreed. Their MMR ranges between 3.5-4k. The team expected to win is slightly higher; around 4.5-5.5k. I've found that the mistakes that they make are pretty common among average (or slightly above average) players. I think I've really helped them develop as a team, and I'd like to share the mistakes that they make, and my personal solutions to them. Hopefully it's educational.

-Have a general idea of your draft. There are a few basic team compositions that you can choose from:

1 Protect 4
Push
4 Protect 1
Dual core
Tri core

-Each composition counters another in a way.

-Push revolves around exactly that... Pushing and gaining map control/towers. Map control is the ability to push the lanes out in your favor with loss of towers. If you take radiants two bot towers, and two mid towers, you're able to push the creep equilibrium and take rosh with vision and threatening the creeps taking their buildings. This is map control. Vision (Through wards) are only a small part of map control. Taking towers and 5 manning will hurt your experience, especially if the enemies split push. When map control is established, do your best to farm 3 lanes and both jungles to equalize the exp and gold.

-4p1 would revolve around a Medusa or TB getting very farmed. It's a very greedy line up, as you put all of your eggs into one basket. It revolves heavily around grouping, threatening a push but rarely ever actually pushing. If you're fighting a 4v5, you've already most likely lost. Doing it under a tower during a push is especially dangerous for your team. It's best to threaten a push but rarely engage. Just create space. Try not to trade. Keep TPs on hand. You will need defensive supports like Abaddon, SD, or Earthshaker.

-1p4 is the opposite. One support does all of the courier, warding, TPs, etc... This is the greediest line up you can assemble. All 3 of your lane heroes need farm, as does your jungler. This is a very powerful mid/late game 5 man, but a decent support on the opposing team with sentries and smokes can punish this line up easily. Especially if their heroes are not farm dependent, and free to roam on your cores. I do not recommend this line up

-2core is very safe. Usually mid and safe lane are farming (Maybe a jugg and invoker or something). Off lane can rotate at 6 (Nyx vs int, Clockwork vs low mobility cores like SF, etc...) You have two roaming supports and the farm is very well distributed throughout the supports, and majority of the team.

-3core is slightly more risky. I'm sure you can figure this out... 3 lanes farm, 2 supports roam and TP to save. That's about it. Stronger late game than dual core normally, but also more susceptible to push or aggression.




-There are essentially 3 types of heroes in a draft:

-Aggressive (They farm heroes)
-Defensive (They don't farm, they save and prevent snow balling)
-Greedy (They farm creeps)

Aggressive heroes would be Venge, Kunkka (As a support), Bane/Potm, SD/Potm for supports.

Aggressive mid heroes would be like Storm, QoP, Huskar... Someone who is designed to get a rune and kill heroes followed by returning to lane. Greedy mid heroes would be heroes that need gold/levels and don't rotate (QE Invoker before his Euls, SF, Medusa)

Greedy supports would be Enigma, Chen, Shadow Shaman... They need gold, and they need levels.

Defensive supports don't need items or levels. It certain helps, but it isn't necessary. Great examples would be Earthshaker (Arguably one of the strongest level 1 supports in the game). He can literally just sit mid and baby sit your SF from ganks, while stacking for SF to catch up in exp later when SF has his razes ready. Abaddon at level 2 (Since most get coil at 1)... His shield will take off bat lasso whether he's level 2 or 25... It's all the same. So he is a good defensive support. He sits in fog and saves, leeching exp from stacks.

Supports like Chen cannot do this. They can't sit mid with a creep to save from ganks. Keep this in mind if you draft a greedy support with low mobility/low HP. Defensive supports are more desirable than greedy supports. There are exceptions:

Aggro > Greed
Def > Aggro
Greed > Def

If the opponents draft greedy with enig and SS for supports, go aggressive picks. Make them engage without their precious items and levels, then snow ball. If they draft aggressive, you draft defensive. Their team relies on snow balling out of control and dominating team fights later. If they draft defensive, draft greedy. "Oh, you have Abaddon and Silencer? I'm going SF mid and Chen Jungle." SF has no worries about getting ganked from that combo, and they won't try to harass a Chen out of jungle. Just farm up, and beat them in levels/EXP. They can't do anything to stop you because of defensive drafts.


-As a mid, you need to know all of the most popular matchups and how to play them

-Don't jungle if there are creeps in lane. You're spending mana to farm, when creeps in lane are free. The only exception is if two aggressive supports (Like Lion/Venge) are MIA and you're a greedy mid (Like SF) and have no vision or saw that they had a smoke. Go farm stacks until they return. If you must lane, hug the tower and farm from the opposite side of the safe lane (Top half of mid for dire, bottom half of mid for radiant. This is because supports are usually rotating from the safe lane, and the tower will pop the smoke before you do)

-Smokes are used early game to kill the mid if your pull camp is blocked and you can't deward it, or if your team composition favors it versus theirs. If you do not have aggressive supports, you should still buy an early smoke, just to put it on cooldown for a bit. This will allow you to obtain more smokes than your opponent if they don't buy their first one until 20 minutes in (It gives you two smokes over them in this case), and one smoke can absolutely swing a game in your favor. With greedy/defensive supports that don't rotate, just hold your smokes until you want to 4/5 man with them later.

-Supports need to call out items that are being built. If possible, mids need to call out runes that the mid has. I've ganked mid with friends before, only to find out that their mid has a haste or invis. It's very frustrating to use a smoke at the wrong time because your teammate didn't communicate vital information to you. Call out when a hero has a big item: "Slark has his first orb." This means that slark is about 3300 gold from skadi. Wait a bit and gank him. Don't gank him after a big item, because he doesn't lose any gold. Have your team farm up for a few minutes, then smoke and coordinate a gank to take away his unreliable gold. Ganking heroes after they use their midas, or after a big item, is not as efficient as it could be. Also, call out if the carry has a midas. It means that they are very susceptible to aggression early on. They need to be picked on/punished for a greedy pick up like that (Remember, defensive play will generally lose to greedy play).

-Smoke ganks are most beneficial during the day unless you have a hero with high night time vision. When you gank at night, your smoke may "pop" but you don't see anyone because of the low vision from night. This is a waste of a smoke. Smoke during the day when your vision is at its highest. It allows you to make the most calculation before engaging. When ganking, go for heroes with streaks or that have snowball potential. Also recognize your weaknesses in a gank, and choose targets accordingly. If your ganking as a Skywrath and Tusk, don't go after a Rubick with blink. It's just not going to work very well. That ganking combo has a very obvious weakness against mobility. Also, if you're... Lion and Venge looking for Faceless Void and you see a Rubick running around... Don't get distracted. A kill isn't going to cut it. You need to make sure Voids farm is halted. No one cares if Rubick loses his unreliable gold. He doesn't need anything except his ult to be useful. Stay focused on your target. Find Void, and keep him from snowballing.

-Look at a draft dynamically. Don't just target each individual hero one by one. Try to counter as much of the line up as possible. Don't be afraid of non conventional picks if it works in your head. If they have a nature's prophet, you need something to stop pushes right? How about KotL? Well, what if they draft a strong mobility mid like SS or qop? Now KotL isn't looking as strong. Maybe look for counter push in your off lane, something beefier to survive Qop/SS burst. Timbersaw works much better than KotL. So what do you ban to protect your timber? He's pretty susceptible to burst. He likes small ticks of damage for regen. Something like Lion, Sky, or even Venge (If they have physical DPS like SF or slardar) would be great bans.

-This doesn't have so much to do with the game itself, but if you're developing a team... Vote on the captain. Let everyone have a chance to try the role, and vote afterwards. Don't get an ego about it and think "I'm the best. I'm the captain." Be open to suggestions or changes. Don't take it personally. Do whatever is best for the team. I suggest having a team captain for drafting/calls... And a "lane captain" to make micromanagement calls for the tri lane or dual lane. Call out targets for ganks, items for your support/off, items for opponents, smoke timing, stacking camps, ancients, when to take/concede runes, where to prepare to TP, moving to new lanes anticipating a gank, when to push the lane or leave the lane to let the HC get solo, etc...

There's a ton more, but I need to head to my other job. Hopefully this post is informative. Some of it may seem like common knowledge, but I find that a lot of new players overlook things listed here. Best of luck in your games and your team.

-Angelo

+rep

Thanks Smuggels. I hope your team is doing better after the coaching and such from last time. ^_^

One more thing that I forgot to add:

Try to trade as few spells as possible during an engagement. Don't just use spells to use them. Think about the most efficient way of casting your spells and use them appropriately. Here's a great example that I just went over with the team I was helping:

The opposing team initiates on us with a clockwork. Our support (Disruptor) casted thunderstrike, kinetic field, and static storm on the clockwork. Our carry was stuck in the cogs and there was an engagement shortly afterwards. Our tide landed a huge ravage but we ended up losing the engagement, when really we should have won it.

The disruptor should have just glimpsed the clock. The clock spent ult, cogs, and battery assault, only to have all of it negated. If tide had blinked and ravaged, Disruptor would have landed a very easy 2-3 man kinetic field and static storm combo, winning the engagement.

The way that the engagement played out... Clock got to use all of his spells to maximum efficiency and die using them. Disruptor used all of his spells as well (AoE spells) on a single target (Not as efficient). Because he used all of his spells on Clockwork, he was only left with Glimpse for a team fight, which is not exactly a huge impact spell in the middle of a team fight. It's more for initiation and counter initiation.

So... Think about the efficiency of your spells. How are you going to use them to disengage, or engage? can your opponents cast one spell to counter your casting of 2-3 spells? If so, that's probably a bad trade in a large 5v5. Use the fewest spells possible, with the lowest cooldowns, to counter the most spells possible, with the longest cooldowns.

Wouldnt go astray for another one??? :D :D

Great Wall of China ain't got nothing on this. +rep

Edited the title for you ^^

Also, great piece of writing, keep it up mate!

+rep

why not try make a guide abt this?

"In-Depth Basics About Team Compositions" or sth like that :3

Oh, amazing! +Rep, mr. Angelo!
Nice to see you around again, too.

TheGooGaming

You know what?

TheGooGaming + AngeloBangelo + Sando = Everything you ever needed and will need to know about DotA and all future versions of DotA.