Understanding the meta, picking the right hero

I've played about 10-15 proper games after lots of bots practice. During team pick, I struggle to recognize many the heroes from their pictures AND remember who is carry/support etc. I ask my allies, but they often don't respond. Are there any charts of hard counters (so I don't pick badly) and any way of quickly understanding what roles are covered already? It's impractical to search a website as there are 9 other hero's and 1 minute to react. I can play Lich, crystal, Ursa, Bloodseaker, lycan and have fallen in love with Puck.

I imagine it's just a case of play and learn but if there are any in game tools or help I'm missing, I would appreciate the help.

Many thanks,

Type the first characters of the hero's name in your picking screen. The hero will be grayed out because he was already picked, but you'll still see the game's data on him. Among others, his role will be displayed when you hover your mouse on his portrait.




Going to be honest here, if you start thinking about how to counterpick with only 15 games under your belt, there's something really wrong here.
Maybe instead try to learn how every hero in the game works first, and knowing how to pick the right hero for your own team composition?
Of course it's impractical to look online for counterpicks when you don't even know the game well enough to have your own idea of what hero is good against what. Maybe that's because...you shouldn't be doing it? Just saying.

That's perfect advice. You are right, 15 games is nothing, but I'm not an average noob in terms of MOBA's, just looking for the most efficient way to learn.

Perhaps randomize against bots, play the hero with pause and switching to awesome dota fire guides.

Evaluate at the end of the game whether to try him in a pub, play again against bots or scrub him until I get better?

(I know there are a few hero's that just don't work without co-ordinate on and so would be unsuitable to take into pub games.)

Thanks again.

"Everything can work"-Jonah "BigDaddyN0tail" Sundstein

When you're starting out you'll probably be paired up with people who are low leveled. I suggest just learning heroes and how to adapt to the situations at hand.

Example:
Let's say you picked Ursa and the enemies have a lot of evasive heroes (i.e. Phantom Assassin) then consider buying Monkey King Bar.

Maybe the enemies have a lot of disable then pick up a Black King Bar.

Although if you're keen on looking for counters instead then use this app called EasyPicker (or any other dota drafting related app).

Not sure if they're available for iOS though.

Thank you. I get the idea I am playing low level people, and doing OK. I've started the all heroes challenge as the solution to knowing all the heroes (starting at Bane). I read a dotafire guide for each one, play 1-3 matches with hard bots then play a live match. So far I've done 3 heroes and happily won with each of them first time! I think the most difficult hero coming up is Queen of Pain.

I know quite a lot of people hate the idea of someone who's played only 35 games doing the challenge, but it means (eventually) I'll get through all the heroes. I do look at the other picks to confirm I'm not picking exactly wrongly for the other picks.