Questions About Towers, Neutrals And Runes

Hey, I'm a relatively new player to DotA, and I have 3 questions.

1. How exactly do runes spawn? I read, in like, everywhere, that they spawn every 2 minutes. Minute 2, 4, 6, and so on. But the thing is, they don't.. I've been playing a lot of Storm Spirit mid lately, so I'm trying to learn to control runes right. Every time I hit an even minute in the game, I go to the runes, and neither spawn. And no one took them, because I can see all enemy heroes on my map.

2. Exactly the same question for neutrals. I've read that camps spawn every minute, so I kill a camp in a way that the time is about X:50 and run out of the camp, and yet they don't spawn at (X+1):00.

3. How exactly do towers work? Yeah, again, I know this question is like everywhere. And every time I saw it it led me to some priority list on whether or not you're attacking the enemy hero, something that looks more like towers from LoL. I've seen players attack and kill enemies under their towers without the tower attacking, and I've happened to be attacked by towers even with minions around me. The only thing I've noticed, and I'm not even sure about it, is that when the tower changes to a new target, it chooses the target closest to the tower, be it hero or creep.

Help appreciated!

1. Right, each 2 minutes runes spawn. They spawn on the top or bottom area of the river. I guess you already knew that. Also, if there's already a rune spawned, another won't spawn. I suggest you to place some wards in the runes area so you can always know where they are and who takes them.

2. If you are near the camp when they are about to spawn, they won't spawn because you're blocking the camp. If someone sits in the spawn area, the neutrals won't spawn. But yeah, they spawn every minute.

3. Towers have a specific targeting priority that determines which enemy it will attack. This list represents that priority in ascending order:
Closest enemy unit or hero attacking a friendly hero with auto attack
Closest enemy unit or hero attacking the tower itself with auto attack
Closest enemy unit or hero attacking any friendly unit with auto attack
Closest enemy unit
Closest enemy catapult
Closest enemy hero
The tower will only switch targets under three circumstances:
If the targeted enemy unit or hero dies
If an enemy unit or hero targets a friendly hero
If an enemy hero being attacked by the tower manually attacks a friendly unit or hero (in which case, the tower will select a new target based on the above priority order).

Source dota2wiki.

I just realized in a practice game how dumb I am.. It's top OR bottom, not both...

And Hades, thank you very much for the info on the towers and about blocking the camps.

Thread can be locked, I got my answers.

No problem mate, if you have more questions, feel free to post here :).

Basically what Hades said, but for camps, if ANYTHING(Including its own creeps/wards/ect.) has vision of the camp at all, it will not spawn. If you want to stack a camp you attack it at around 53 seconds of each minute and run away, they will chase you and will lose vision of their camp, thus spawning more creeps.

You can also use this to pull the creeps into lane before the wave is just about there and you can get the creeps and neutrals to fight. Pulling and stacking are a staple to being a good support, its not something you always have to do, but in certain situations it forces the enemy to push under tower, allowing the carry to get easier last hits and avoid harassment from enemy heroes.

As far as I know vision of the camp does not block the spawn. Only if a unit, ward or a specific projectile (like Clockwerks Rocket Flare) is in a certain area around the spawnpoint at the XX:00 mark ,they get blocked.

You can see that at the small camps. They pop up even when you have vision.

since the first 2 questions already got answered:

Usually towers attack the NEAREST unit. When you attack a hero, however, u will gain tower aggro unless the tower is hitting another unit atm --> if that unit is killed, the tower will attack you right afterwards, if you are still in range.

in short: the tower-aggro doesnt change spontaneously/instantly --> usually the tower is locked to one target, until it is killed and then searches for a new 1 with the #1 priority to those who attacked a hero recently, while being still in the towers range.

Sometimes the tower randomley decide to change targets even if its original target isn't dead. At least for me.