Which hero to pick if you are new to dota2

People might add wraith king to this list because he only has one active skill but don't be fooled. He requires good mana management which I would not recommend for someone starting out.
You should start with heroes like lion, crystal, dragon knight, Sven, etc.

I personally would recommend ogre magi, because he is tanky, has a stun, a slow, a team helping steroid and has a low skill ceiling. His only con which I think is that he is meele.

Obviously, whichever hero you pick, do play against bots first so that you have a basic idea of how the hero works.

Good Luck, Have Fun!

Abaddon = incredibly difficult to punish, can be played as a Support or Core and works well in low Skill no matter where you end up. While you can Support, try to be greedy no matter what, get Phase Boots + Mask of Madness + Sange and Yasha and alternate between fighting and Farming as necessary. Probably the easiest Hero to pickup and do well with.

Anti-Mage - fairly easy to understand, and when you start out, you'll end up in a lower skill tier very quickly, so your mistakes won't be punished very hard. Get Power Treads + Battle Fury + Manta Style and run around the map Farming. Join your team for fights if you feel confident, otherwise, just keep Farming. You can Blink out of dangerous Situations quite easily, only problem is, you'll probably have to content with your Lane "partner" for Farm.

Lion - Effective in lane, Finger of Death is particularly gratifying, can Jungle with 3 points each in Earth Spike and Mana Drain (practice in lobbies to get used to it). Get Tranquil Boots, Urn of Shadows / Bracer (if someone else builds an Urn) and Blink Dagger.

Zeus - Requires effective Mana management, but is incredibly fun to play. If playing as a Core, use Arc Lightning to secure Last Hits, if playing as a Support use Lightning Bolt to Harrass ( only when you have full mana or you think you can get a Kill)

I agree with the other suggestions you made, but I strongly disagree with Anti-Mage for beginners, he's high skill ceiling in my opinion, unlike what you make seem. That's because although he stays alive with his Blink, to play him well you must know how to farm efficiently, and that's something which takes a bit to understand.

More than that, there are terrible AM around, which continue farming and farming as you mentioned, only to be defeated because a) they didn't participate in any teamfights and thus left their team 4v5 throughtout the entire game; b) although they were farming the enemy team is also farmed and he isn't a guaranteed rampaging hero (what's the point of finally being six slotted if meanwhile they have their Tier 2 and are beating at your barracks?); c) they farmed the wrong items, namely the Manta Style you mentioned (good luck with such a strict item build against Earthshaker, for instance).

When you're new, it's even easier to decide you can just leave everybody to their luck and farm to your heart's content, and that's one the worst errors I see among people even within high skilled games. I think in order to improve all that you can in the lowest time possible, you can't start with "bad vices" so to speak, so it's better to chose heroes that have some ways of contributing to the team as early as possible, in order to begin to grasp the whole early/late concept, and then transition to strong cores such as AM and Dusa :)

(which, anyway, I've seen being very strong with less farm than people usually think, if they are well played and have the team to back them up)

It also takes good game sense to know who to Hex in a Teamfight, it takes experience to be able to boldly commit Finger of Death on a full HP target because you know your Teammate can follow up on the Kill and you're about to get Stunned, newbies won't remember that Mana Drain kills Illusions and will die to a single Naga Siren Illusion chasing them down with Radiance. They also won't have a chance in hell of aiming Earth Spike manually. They'll even get confused over which button is for which Skill.

...and yet Lion is considered by everyone here to be a good beginner Hero.

New players are going to make mistakes, Even with the "simplest" Heroes, they're going to make just as many mistakes with Lion as they are with Anti-Mage, but it's fine. So long as they learn, so long as they have fun, they'll continue to play and they'll improve.

Don't use the skill ceiling as a reason to tell people what they shouldn't play, just think about what will be fun for them.

This is a very interesting argument. If you recommend Anti-Mage solely based on the fact that he is a fun hero, I agree with the suggestion (although for me he is really boring, considering he's a farming hero with little flexibility on his item build). On the other hand, this thread asked for some good heroes in every category good for begginers, and in that regard you do need to consider the skill ceiling, you don't want to recommend new people to start playing Invoker or someone like that just because he seems fun; and I'm guessing you agree that there are easier Agility heroes to start with than AM (such as Sniper or Razor, just on top of my head).

Using badly an Earth Spike or any kind of disable, as a support, is not so bad for your winning chance as messing with the complete notion of farming time and role in teamfights/pushing, those are two completely different things and I think you should begin by learning the first and then progress to the second. We probably have different opinions on this point.

Again on topic and picking from Xyrus idea: for fun (and rektage) we all forgot Undying, what's more fun than planting a Tomb and watching people die to your horde :)

Hence why I recommended Abaddon (Str), Anti-Mage (Agl) and Lion (Int), he only asked for the 3 "classes", that's all the criteria beyond fun I need to consider. I just threw Zeus in since he's the most "fun" Hero I can think of:-

• someone runs at you, they die to your combo
• enemy limping back to base at 100HP, they die
• You use your Ult, a teammate starts spamming >Zeus Ult now, somone dies for no apparent reason 8{D

Actually, that's perfectly fine. Beginners each have their own starting points and Invoker isn't as difficult as some people make him out to be. It's just a case of muscle memory and...memory. All you have to do is be able to Invoke whichever spell you want and remember the Cooldowns without being able to see them.

[[Invoker] is perfectly fine as a starting Hero if you're going to put the practise in. You won't do any worse on him than any other Hero if you build up the memory (+muscle) to play him in Bot matches / 1 vs 1 Mid.

...no

First off - Sniper, squishy with 0 movement speed and no escape, harder to find Farm on than AM (especially with Shrapnel nerf. 1st Skill is a Skillshot. He is far harder to pick up and even to master than Anti-Mage

As for Razor, terrible Stat Growth, can't Farm too well, requires enough courage to dive but enough sense to know your limits in order to get Kills, falls of in the late game.

If you want "easier" Agility Carries, then Phantom Assassin, Weaver and especially Gyrocopter are better options.

Sacrificing your team and your Towers, is actually a smart play when you're a Hard Carry, because you end up. Now you may be asking "wtf does this have to do with choosing a beginner Hero?!" The answer is that it's easy to play Anti-Mage, it's easy to afk Farm and focus on ratting while ignoring your Team, it's even fine if you lose a set of Rax. Just keep Farming, outFarm everyone, then Man-up and make them cry! It's incredibly easy to do, just don't overextend, and even better

...When you go knocking at their base, wiping out an entire Team by yourself, you feel like...a...GOD!

For example:-

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1377156247

Take this game of mine, you might notice that I was stacked with 4 other DOTAFire members. I was laning with Tusk (UltraSuperHype) at the start, but there was no sense him staying in Lane, so he went Romaing after leeching a couple of levels. I'm up against Bloodseeker + Warlock as Tiny. I don't remember my CS at 10 minutes, only that it was terrible.

Later on, I started rotating into the Jungle...so did Alchemist (Dimonychan). Anyone who knows this guy knows he sure as hell ain't gonna make space for me to Farm, but let's look at that final GPM, 765. That's far higher than our Solo Mid Alchemist (who was having a far better time in Lane than I was).

So, I've got to share space AND Farm with 3 other Carries, and worse still, we couldn't take Teamfights with our Lineup early on, let alone 4 vs 5.

I ignored Teamfights completely and chose to focus solely on Farming

Now, I know you think this is a mistake, but let's look at the alternative, I can join my Team, die repeatedly (like Dimony #ShotsFired) and have 0 impact in the game. As you might have guessed, we lost fights and we lost lots of Towers in the 1st 25 minutes of the game.

I still kept Farming

So, I have the least deaths on my Team, I have recovered from my ****py start, what now?

Now I'm 4 /5 slotted

I don't remember which Items I had by this point, but after I had my Black King Bar, I decided, "it's time, time to win". I then proceded to ignore my Team as they died in another Teamfight

...meanwhile, Xyrus is knocking at your base AND HARD!
They TPed in after I took Bot Tower
I activated my 10 SECOND BLACK KING BAR
I killed 3
I zoned the other 2 out
I took Bot Rax
I fought again
I took Mid Tower
I fought again
I took Mid Rax
I got the hell out!

This is why Anti-Mage is a good Hero for beginners, it's much easier for a beginner to afk Farm efficiently on him than on Tiny, but you can still get the same results. Farming is boring, but when you're under pressure to make every second count, you won't yawn, you won't get weary, you'll push through, you'll overcome and when you do...

...YOU MAKE FUN OF ALCHEMIST'S GPM BECAUSE HE TOOK YOUR JUNGLE FARM!!! 8{D

Dagon and Blademail come to mind. 8{3

So playing a hero who needs a big(4200 g can be a lot for beginners) item and can't fight without farm is good for beginners and in trench generally? Ayy lmao, why not get Naga then, you get ez Radiance, shift-queue your illusions and get ez money then repeat that x10000 times and go rek their base, I mean it's not like you can get 4 carries farming your jungle while your enemies just push your towers easily in tench, right? :DDDDDDDDDDD

If anything, heroes like Gyro and Weaver are good as AGI carries to start with, Gyro can fight without farm and is easy to play while having a decent midgame and lategame, Weaver can pick up MoC and go kill potato tier scrubs even if he gets no farm(which is possible only is you have another carry in your lane, Weaver can solo vs anyone in trench because invisibility is OP) while teaching ppl positioning, mana management and general awareness.

I strongly disagree with you Xyrus, but I get your points and you get mine, I think it's because we consider different things to be important when considering someone new to the game :)

The game you described must have been very excited for you, but it was one in say 20, and in the other 19, if the enemy team counterplayed you correctly, you would have lost the game for your team because of AFK farm (also yeah, Alchemist as a greedy core shouldn't really join fights if he's losing them, and probably Dimonychan plays better heroes that contribute throughout the whole game so he didn't succeed with Alch (from what games I've seen from him he's really,really good with heroes such as Ember Spirit and Lina, where even without the core items he makes things happen).

And I've seen games lost because of carries that stay out farming too many times now, specially, as I mentioned already, in higher tier games (even yesterday's first in-house is a clear example of this), to ever advise that to someone new. I don't want any begginer EVER to AFK farm, because that makes for a very poor learning curve, a bad and difficult habbit to correct and big ego issues when the game sense and experience progress. Whereas if you teach someone to first contribute to the game in all stages, and learn how to teamfight, it's much easier to explain to them after that in which cases you can and you should AFK farm, and how to do it properly. Otherwise you end up with a lot of inflated big stars and many lost games, and at least for me that's not really funny :P


On the other hand: yeah, Gyrocopter and Weaver seem nice alternatives, although I still stand by what I said about Razor and Sniper (my posts have been so long that I will abstaing of boring you more with reasons :D)

Xyrus, you are really proud of that game aren't you.

Actually, i wouldn't suggest Weaver to beginners. yes that hero has invisibility, but he is also the squishiest of all invis heroes. Not to mention that weaver has no way to keep enemies down( Riki smokescreen), no gpm booster(bh) nor a farming mechanism (clinkz). Weaver needs very good positioning to not get blown up by the enemy, and needs items badly.

Weaver is a hero that cannot ay from behind at all, even worse than clinkz in that regard. Clinkz when behind can push towers faster than weaver, and can rush orchid to help in ganks. Weaver, every time i play from behind i feel like a deadweight.