Newer Player. Needin' Help

So I've played Dota for a bit and by a bit I mean about 40 hours or so, but all of it besides one game has been bot games

The reason for this I feel that I don't know how laning works in this game compared to other mobas I've played [ Smite and League are examples]. I'm not sure which heroes go to which lane and from what I've looked at I've never really found any good answer for this. Anyone mind sharing a bit of help on which heros / hero type goes to which lane?

As just a bit of extra help the heroes i find myself playing the most right now are: Doom, Terrorblade, and Abaddon

Figuring out the best lanes for heroes at first can seem daunting, but I will try my best to blanket as many topics as I can.

Offlane Heroes (That being the top lane for radiant and bottom lane for dire) tend to contain tanky heroes who can farm under pressure ( Bristleback and Chaos Knight come to mind) usually matched with a powerful lane support ( Crystal Maiden, Lion, Dazzle and Abaddon are good offlane supports). In some higher level matches you will sometimes see just a single hero farming top in order to get experience faster but don't worry about that yet as a dual lane top is pretty safe.

Next up we have Midlane heroes. These ones are fairly simple to identify as they have some similarities. Number 1 the majority of mids have a bottle as a recommended item. A Bottle (just in case you don't know) can be used to give you hp and mana but the main reason it is picked up on mid heroes is because they can store runes located on the river which give them significant buffs and leads into another similarity. Midlane heroes usually have some kind of disable or powerful initiation whether that is a stun, slow, damage drain, and so on. The 3rd big similarity which synergises well to the two above is that midlane heroes tend to be gankers (or heroes that rotate from one lane to put the enemy lane in a 3v2 situation). These heroes can include Tusk, Slark, Storm Spirit, Pudge, Clockwerk. Pretty long description but these are the basics.

Finally as far as lanes go we have the Safe Lane (bottom lane for radiant and top lane for dire). The safe lane usually contains your secondary carry (the primary carry being in the offlane) mixed with another ranged support. Usually the heroes that are recommended in this lane is a carry mixed with a babysitting support to make sure the opposing heroes cannot harass you. Heroes that can fill the safe lane effectively include Terrorblade, Brewmaster and Spectre as carries. As far as babysitting supports go Vengeful Spirit is a viable choice as well as Lion with his stun and hex as and warlock with Fatal Bonds as well as a damage over time/heal over time.

While the jungle is not a lane I am going to highlight this one as well because it is the most specialized. While in LoL the majority of heroes can jungle effectively, in Dota the amount of heroes that can jungle is small. an effective jungler can do one of a few things. For one, some heroes can summon minions such as Beastmaster, Lycanthrope, and Enigma (yes I count demonic conversion as minions) to help them fight the neutrals in the jungle. Some heroes can also take control of the neutral creeps and use them to fight. These include heroes such as Chen with Holy Persuasion, and Enchantress with Enchant. Doom is actually an extremely effective jungler because of his ability Devour which you can use to kill the neutral creeps in the jungle to gain their abilities. Finally some effective junglers include those with some kind of lifesteal. These can include Lifestealer with Feast as well as Bloodseeker with Bloodbath. I understand that some people try to use Legion Commander in the jungle because of her Moment of Courage however I recommend you put her in the lane first and then send her to the jungle so she actually has a chance.

Hope this answers your question,

-BK

What region do you play? I play eu west.
You can add me on steam if you want. Becouse just explaining everthing can be pretty damn hard. Id= Timminatorr

The usual lane setup in pubs is 2-1-2. In higher pubs or competetive its usually 1-1-3 or 3-1-1.
Every lane has one farmer and 1 support.

A well balanced team consists of 1 hard(carry). A mid, a farmer that is no hard carry. And 2 supports.

Or in the 1-1-3 or 'trilane' setup: a solo offlaner. a mid, a carry and 2 supports or 1 jungler and a support.

Chaos Knight is a big nono for offlane.He needs the farm , he needs the levels, both which he lacks in the offlane.

Offlaners are usually the trump cards, they can get the farm somehow.Be it just by constant ganking ( Bounty Hunter -> Track), be it with ancient stacking ( Beastmaster, Bristleback), or just being slippery enough to survive getting the creeps ( Mirana, Weaver) or by just spamming skills for the farm ( Dark Seer, Clockwerk)

Also, in high level games, the offlaner is the "sacrifical lamb", he's put there to take a beating and he knows he is going to be underleveled and underfarmed.


Telling us the role you played in those games might actually help narrowing down to find you an optimal hero to learn, one that would fit your style, not just picking it for the looks ( I used to do that)

Judging from your choices, you seem to like Tanky Heroes who can turn fights around with their Ultis (I know only Doom covers both but well...).

The simplest way to decide your Lane is to decide how much Farm you need, if you're going to be focusing on Tanking and being useful in Teamfights, you might want to stay in the Offlane (Radiant Top/ Dire Bottom) and pick Heroes that suit that Lane best.

So my suggestion would be to try Offlaning with Bristleback, Timbersaw, Elder Titan and Clockwerk.

As with most "Where should I be?" questions in DOTA, you just have to pick it up as you go along and adapt to the situation.

I just had to throw in: BK your whole post was REALLY helpful for us noobs, thanks for the info

Well thanks for that, it means a lot. Happy I could help you out :)

-BK

Offlane heroes are pretty much heroes that can manage to survive offlane. They don't have to be tanky. IE Lone Druid Mirana Windranger Nature's Prophet all can manage the offlane pretty well. It is all about managing to get levels without dying.


Good offlane heroes are usually able to get levels and gold later on during the game.

I will present you my opinion about how game should be played early after 2.5k hours of doto:

Generally you can divide heroes into 5 positions:

• 1 (ez lane, mid) the guy that will most likely take all farm he can until he have enough items to rape the other team, usually scales well with items he get (be it by strong passive abilities, damage boosters, illusions), examples: Naga Siren, Legion Commander, Ember Spirit
  
• 2 (ez lane, mid) usually some kind of space creator, ganker, 'caster', hero that is powerful in mid game and can keep your team in the game during this stage. He will also have many items and levels, but not as much as #1. Usually needs 1 item to start doing **** to enemy team, examples: Storm Spirit, Invoker
  
• 3 (offlane) he needs to be able to survive solo against 2/3 heroes on the offlane, be it thanks to hp/armor, some escape mechanism. He don't have to take farm, as the only thing he needs to do something in the game are lvls. Getting items on offlaner is just an addition. Examples: Bristleback, Clockwerk
  
• 4 and 5 (woods, roam, support) these 2 are your typical supports, some of them are able to jungle, sometimes they will go dual ez lane, sometimes dual offlane, sometimes 1 ez lane and 1 offlane, sometimes jungle, always roam mid. They are the ones that are responsible for carrying wards, sentries, dusts, smokes etc. Examples: Enchantress, Crystal Maiden, Omniknight, Chen

Now something about lanes:

• mid lane: easiest lane to gank, a little harder to farm than ez lane, but you get all the exp you possibly can. Usually 1v1. Every hero that have strong nuke (preferably aoe) can do well on this lane, unless enemy hero will counter you badly. You want to get a Bottle here nearly 100% of the time to be able to spam your skills and farm creeps/zone out enemy mid laner. Some teams consider this as a farming lane, while other teams will traditionally use ez lane. Ideally you want to have ranged hero on mid, but there are some exceptions. My favorite mids are:
  • Legion Commander - an excellent mid hero, capable of surviving tons of damage, zoning out multiple heroes at once and getting out of sticky situations. She have aoe nuke that's dealing more damage the more enemies it hit and strong heal that's also purging most annoying abilities (slows etc.), and giving you more attack speed. After finishing laning phase she also deals ****load of physical damage thanks to her passive, have like strongest lifesteal in the game (maybe next to Feast) and ~5 second disable that's giving her additional damage everytime she kills an enemy before it finishes.
    
  • Storm Spirit - hero that scales very well with items and levels, one of most mobile heroes in the game. He's that kind of guy that jumps into a fight, kills 2 heroes and flies away like nothing happened at all. He's dealing both magical and physical damage, so he will be useful whole game. Also he's ranged, can easily zone out and farm creeps thanks to his passive ability.
    
  • Ember Spirit - now this guy is (usually) your typical glass cannon that you have in LoL, his item scaling is just beyond imagination. Your favorite Divine Rapier carrier, capable of doing rampage in 1 hit. Like all spirits in the game, he's very mobile, he can finish 1 fight, go back to fountain, regenerate in fountain and jump back into another fight just in matter of seconds. Even though he's melee, he can easily farm on mid lane if you only play him right.
    My guide to Ember Spirit just in case you want to learn how to play this hero.
    
• ez lane: traditional lane reserved for position 1 and 2 heroes, usually ones that aren't able to survive on their own, where they can get all core items they need in order to start playing. Not much more to say about it, it's safe because your tower is closer to creep wave than your enemy, making it much safer for you to farm here. Also your supports have very easy way of denying whole wave of creeps in jungle, leaving enemies without any exp/gold and allowing you to farm under your tower. Some examples of ez lane farmers:
  • Spectre - while weak and easily gankable during early game and part of mid game, once farmed she will undoubtedly dominate late game, provided she can farm all items she needs to. Very tanky hero (part of her damage comes from the damage she takes) with slow, movement speed boost for her team, unobstructed movement through trees/hills and ability that allows her to appear in team fight whenever she needs to.
    
  • Faceless Void - also weak during early game, hero with escape ability, 2 strong passives and ultimate ability that allows him to attack freely for 5 seconds. Scales very well with items as well as heroes with big team fight abilities thanks to his ultimate (making him somewhat useful even without so much farm).
    
• offlane: this place is all about soaking every experience possible and surviving first couple of minutes. An offlaner will play at disadvantage, because creeps waves will meet far away from his tower, also he will be facing usually 2 or 3 enemy heroes at once. Some examples of offlane heroes:
  • Clockwerk - excellent initiator, very tanky, able to kill nearly any hero in the game at lvl 7, falling off a little later on. Punishes bad positioning, disrupts all fights he's in with mini-stuns and pushes as well as deals tons of magical damage. Very strong against melee heroes.
    
  • Dark Seer - overall excellent team fight hero, good initiator, scales very well with any team fight ultimates. He have kinda good escape mechanism, his skillset allows him to farm creeps from far far away while denying farm of enemy carry (provided he's melee).
    
• woods: a place for your #4 and #5 hero, they can farm here for wards and other things like here. Some heroes can use creeps from woods to gank and push other lanes. Some examples of heroes:
  • Enchantress & Chen - both can take creeps from woods and use them to gank lanes and push them. Both have heal skills (1 as ultimate and 1 a little weaker).
    

Now to end this - some examples of lane setups:

• 2-1-2: typical pub lanes, you have 5 carries, 2 on top, 2 on bot and 1 on mid. Even better if you have 1 in woods, that will secure fast loss.
  
• 2-1-1 + woods: less typical, but nearly always played very badly. What's important to understand is that woods isn't a place for 3rd carry to farm. 99% of time people pick heroes like Ursa, Legion Commander or Lifestealer and say "woods". Then they leave their team at an disadvantage (playing 4v5), and finish farming after the game ended already. What people can't understand is that going to woods as a farmer is ineffective, makes you underleveled and underfarmed. There are only 3 heroes that are made to jungle from lvl 1: Enigma, Enchantress, Chen. No more, no less. If you see any other jungler in your team - expect quick lose, you're free to hate and report that person for feeding.
  
• 3-1-1: it's like most used combination by professional teams, with 1 hero on mid lane, 1 solo lane (be it ez or hard) and 1 tri-lane (agressive or defensive). Agressive tri-lanes are made on the lane where enemy #1 or #2 is, and they objective is not to allow enemy carry get any farm. Defensive tri-lanes are exact opposite - they are always on ez lane with 2 supports and #1 or #2 hero, and their objective is to secure farm for your farmer. If enemy carry is on mid lane, then your supports should gank it every couple of minutes.

Thanks for the effort.
I'll keep your reply bookmarked :)