Help on Hero Selection

Hi All,

I'm not that new to Dota 2, probably been playing it for around 5-6 months now.

I can hold my own with ranged hero's particularly Viper but am really REALLY BAD with melee heros.

Have tried Anti-Mage, Faceless and a few others but with little success and I get ruled in the game. Very little kills and a shed loads of deaths.

Please could anyone suggest a melee hero I could start off with and then work my way up :)

Thanks

Don't try hard carries first, not until you've learnt how to farm in a good way: playing Anti-Mage or Faceless Void is pretty difficult for people with hundreds of hours of playtime too, it mostly depends on your support(s) and the Heroes you're facing.

Instead, you can try with melee supports like Abaddon, Nyx Assassin or Sand King, especially the first one since he has a free "second life" thanks to his ultimate. If you want to play carries, the only one I can suggest is Lifestealer because he has built-in magic immunity and deals pretty good damage even without items; Wraith King is pretty easy to play too, but he needs more items in my opinion. About the mids, either Dragon Knight or Magnus as they have long range nukes and a first-item Bottle is enough to keep their mana high: at first you might fail some ultimates with Magnus (so I suggest to try DK before him), but you'll eventually get the hang of it.

Talking about no-no Heroes, try to stay away from Faceless Void, Lone Druid (if we can consider him melee), Anti-Mage, Phantom Lancer and Phantom Assassin, as they usually need to get a lot of gold in the early game.

Thanks for the advice there Peppo, I going to try Abaddon for a few games and see how it goes :)

Any advice on last hitting through from what I have read that is just practise and more practise till you get the hang of it...

It's just about practice, though on melee, you might want to consider getting a Quelling Blade, helps a bit, especially if you are new.Then just try to slowly play more and more games without it, so you don't get overly dependent with it.

Of course, if playing support as Peppo suggested, you don't actually want to take the last hits. Wraith King is a good hero to start getting acustomed to melee in my opinion, if you want to carry.

Do you buy Stout Shield on Melee Carries? because a lot of players go wrong by insta buying a Quelling Blade thinking it will make it easier to Last Hit when they're getting Harrassed non-stop.

As for Melee Heroes to try, I would stay away from Hard Carries that need 30:00 minutes of Farm to be useful, try Heroes that are stronger early on, but are still easy to get into, like Dragon Knight or Lifestealer.

yep i agree with xyrus. if you want to go for a carry, grab a midgame carry. They simply need less farm and can easily snowball out of control (which most pub enemies cant handle 90% of the time). Lifestealer, Juggernaut, Bristleback, Slark and Ursa come to mind.

Other fun to play melee, that arent necessarily carries.

Abadon - great utility hero. Durable as f*ck; strong laner; even has some carry potential if ignored by the enemy team.

Bounty Hunter - 24/7 ganker, who makes up for not lasthitting creeps by getting kills with Track. Can 1shot squishy supports in the lategame.

Night Stalker - a good mid hero with uniques mechanics. Can get out of control very early, thanks to him being a superb ganker. Also very tanky.

Kunkka - definitely no easy to learn hero, but he can play against any hero in a 1v1 scenario. Tidebringer makes him a strong laner, as it provides "free" harass when farming. If you combine his Q and R, you can get many many easy solo kills.

Clockwerk - one of my favorite heroes.... such a good ganker and teamfight initiator ...also you can punish enemies who are out of position very good. Might also be a bit tricky to get used to though.

Thanks for the advice there :)

I normally use the Quelling blade to get last hits but might change that up to the Stout Shield to see what effect that has.

I've started of with Abaddon but will also try a few other heroes mentioned here.

Again thanks for the info, hopefully it should help my Kill Death ratio and team play!!

Regards

First melee hero that i learned was Juggernaut. He is great fun, with easy last hit animation and high early kill potential. I woulds sugest him.

Also, Stout Shield is a must buy starting item, in my opinion, for reducing that incoming damage when you go in for your last hits, and it also builds in Poor Man's Shield, which is a great, cheap, early game item on agi carries.

Thanks for everyone's help here. Have been playing Abaddon and Bounty Hunter. Better success with Bounty Hunter as he can get away early game with his Shadow walk and his Jinada does help somewhat with last hitting. Also the Track does make up for failed last hits with extra gold

Just need to get used to his dynamics but the games so far, I've had more kills than deaths so that is a good thing and it seems the team is making more gold.

Just a quick question on combo's people would use for ganking.

I've been trying out

Shadow Walk
Track
Jinada
Shuriken

Thanks

I would recommend:-



It's best to Jinada them 1st so they're Slowed and you get the extra 30-120 Bonus Damage, then Track them so you can chase them down and Attack them. Always, always, save Shuriken Toss, if you throw it straight away, they can just Town Portal Scroll back to base, unless you have a Monkey King Bar. Once they're on low enough HP that Shuriken will finish them off, you can throw it.