Step up your game! - Becoming a good player

Starting words

This guide is meant to teach people some of the key aspects of making their match succesful.
Mainly by improving decision making, working together and following a code of conduct.

Communication

• Okay, this is the most important part. Good communication will generally lead to having a better match.
  First of all everybody in your team should talk the same language. Because Dota 2 is an international game the language should be the world language: English.
  
  
• If you happen to end up in a game with people talking for example Russian, tell them
  "Could you talk English please?". The same applies for yourself: Only if all members of your party are of the same language, you may talk that language. As soon as one or more party members are from another language than yourself, you should talk English.
  
  
• Be clear in what you say and be polite.
  wrong: "omg u ****ing ******ed idiot stop stealing my lasthits"
  right: "Please stop taking my lasthits."
  
  
• If you want something done from your teammates, ward somewhere, gank somewhere, you have to actually tell them. Do not expect them to automatically help and later blame them if they didn't help!
  
  
• Do not criticize people without actually telling them what they should have done.
  wrong: "pudge u noob lern doto"
  right: "Pudge, you could have hooked Invoker there."

Picking the right hero

If the picking phase goes wrong, there is a good chance you will have a horrible game, therefore I will tell you here how you should pick.

A good lineup ideally consists of:

1. One Hardcarry such as Phantom Assassin, Alchemist, Faceless Void, Spectre.
   
   
2. One Ganker such as Outworld Devourer, Templar Assassin, Puck, Pudge
   
   
3. One Solo such as Clockwerk, Bounty Hunter, Dark Seer, Timbersaw
   
   
4. Two Supports such as Crystal Maiden, Disruptor, Dazzle, Warlock

What this means in the picking phase is, if someone has already picked for example Phantom Assassin you should not pick Faceless Void.

The same is true for the second category. If someone has picked a hero from the second category, do not pick another hero from that category.

Again for the third category make sure there aren't two heroes of this category.

If three people have already picked a hero from the first three categories it falls to you to pick the support.

Beware however that some heroes can fit more than one role. Alchemist can also be played in a support role, whereas some supports are also fit for the ganker role.

There are at least two worst case scenarios if your team is bad at picking:

1. Five carries: In this case if the enemy isn't stupid and starts ganking and pushing early on you will lose before the 30 minute mark.
   
   
2. No carry at all: In this case you have strong presence early on, but after the 30 minute mark you will start losing fights because the enemy carry will have decent damage output and perhaps even a BKB.
   

Lanes and roles

If this stage goes wrong it will often be the cause of people hating on eachother and destroying morale, which lead to having a bad match.

The ganker should always go to the mid lane. This way he can gain the most experience and the fastest level gain.
From the mid lane, the ganker also has easy access to both of the rune spawns and can use the advantage gained from a higher level and the powerup from the rune to make an attempt at killing an enemy hero from either top or bottom lane.

The Hardcarry should go with one or two supports to either the hardlane or the safelane.
If you think you have a good chance to kill your laning opponents, you should go to the hardlane, which is bottom if you are dire and top if you are radiant, as it is easier to dive the enemy tower if neccesary.
If you simply want to farm creeps and play safe you should go to the safelane, which is top if you are dire and bottom if you are radiant.
In this lane the creeps will be closer to your tower which is why it is called the safelane.
Additionally the safelane allows for creep pulling to pull the creepwave closer to your tower if it has been pushed too far.
There are plenty of other guides explaining pulling so I will not further elaborate the subject here.

The supports should go with the Hardcarry to the lane he has chosen. As a support you should provide a courier, courier upgrade, and ward and deward where needed.
You should not take lasthits from the Hardcarry but instead try to harrass the laning opponent so your Hardcarry will have an easier time farming.
If the safelane was chosen, the support may wish to creep pull to pull the creepwave closer to your tower if it has been pushed too far.
There are plenty of other guides explaining pulling so I will not further elaborate the subject here.
If the Hardcarry is not having much trouble with his laning opponent, the supports may gank other lanes if they see an opportunity.

The Solo should go top if the Hardcarry goes bot and should go bot if the Hardcarry goes top. The Solo should not be too greedy for farm and kills. Basically if you do not die, can keep your tower from falling early and you get more experience and levels than your laning opponents, you have done well. The solo can also gank other lanes if he sees an opportunity.

Finally, some heroes are capable of farming the woods. This opens up another source of farm and experience and on top of it gives one of the lanes more experience because your teammates don't have to share their experience with you. However, if one decides to farm the woods, it means the Hardcarry will have only one support and that lane may have trouble if their lane opponents are agressive.

Item choices

This is another aspect that can cause problems with your teammates if you do it wrong.
Try to think of what items most fit your role and decide from that point of view.
On the top of this guide I have given an example of a very bad item build.

Nature's Prophet role is to destroy enemy structures.
Clearly a dagonDagon will not help you destroy a tower and neither will Aghanims or Refresher orb.
The health regen from the tranquil boots is not needed because Nature's Prophet uses treants to tank the damage from towers.
Furthermore the battlefury and skullbasher are specialized items for melee carries and are very ineffective for ranged heroes.

Decide what items you want based on what you need:

Need more damage? Get a Daedalus.

Need more tankyness? Get a HoT.

Do you get disabled a lot? Get a BKB.

Do you need to initiate? Get a Blink dagger.

Do you need to keep your team alive? Get a Mek.

Leveling and using abilities

There are many ways to level and use your abilities. A lot of those ways are the wrong ways.
You must think of what ability truly defines your hero and take that ability first.
For Nature's Prophet you might think Teleportation is a cool skill. Well it is, I"ll give you that, but even more than that he is defined by his Nature's Call. Thus you should level the latter first.

Another example of a very wrong skillbuild is what happened in a match I played not so long ago. I was playing Spectre on a sidelane and my lane partner was a Sand King.

What he did is levelling his Caustic Finale and his Sand Storm with no points in Burrowstrike. This very wrong skillbuild resulted in making it impossible for me to farm because of Caustic Finale killing all the creeps and pushing the lane.

If this wasn't already bad, we also missed a kill because he had no Burrowstrike to stun the enemy.

Coming to the usage of abilities now, there are good ways, inefficient ways, and even detrimental ways to use abilities. The good way is stunning an enemy hero that is trying to run away, so that your teammates can catch up and kill the hero.

The inefficient way is to use Sven's Storm Hammer on a hero that is already under the effect of stun by Sand King's Burrowstrike. This leads to wasting stun time because the stuns overlap.

The detrimental way of using abilities, and I see people doing this A LOT is using abilities in such a way that they actually help the enemy rather than their own team!

The most obvious way is casting banishment-type abilities on enemies that are under the effect of a hard disable while your team is trying to kill that hero.
What I mean by this is an Invoker casting Tornado on an enemy which your team is trying to kill, and which is under the effect of Beastmaster's Primal Roar.
This will give the enemy invulnerability, and after the duration, the stun debuff on the enemy will be gone. Now your enemy can happily walk away because Invoker has betrayed your team and is now helping the enemy.

Other similar examples include Outworld devourer casting Astral Imprisonment on an enemy under the effect of Bane's Fiend's Grip or Shadow Demon casting Disruption on an enemy under the effect of Batrider's Flaming Lasso.

Another ability that is often used in a very detrimental way is a Faceless Void casting a Chronosphere in such a way as to enclose his allies but leave dangerous enemies like Sniper and Viper outside of the Chronosphere, enabling them to trigger happy and kill Faceless Void's allies.

I know I have said earlier in this guide that supports should not be taking the farm of the carry but I cannot stress this enough. If you play Rubick in the support role please for god's mercy do not use Fade Bolt to steal your carry's farm!
Also if you are playing Queen of Pain in the ganker role, do not steal your carry's farm with Scream of Pain. Similarly if you play Timbersaw in the Solo role do not steal your carry's farm with Whirling Death and Chakram. It may all seem obvious here but I see people doing this all the time. Remember that the carry is always number one priority!

So the bottom line here is that you should be aware of how you level your abilities and be careful when and even more importantly when NOT to use your abilities.

Behavior in teamfights

Remember your role in a teamfight and act accordingly. If you play Tidehunter you should not be passive, hang back and wait for your allies to initiate. YOU should be the first one to go in. If you play the Hardcarry role you should not go in first but you should be ready to immediately follow after Tidehunter uses his Ravage.
Also try to always help your allies when they are in trouble. If your team has a Sniper and he is being chased and focused down by the enemy, do not leave him alone! Heal him if you have abilities to do so, stun the enemy, attack the enemy, try to tank the damage for Sniper. He is your Hardcarry and can do a ton of dps but he is also very fragile. If he is dead he is doing exactly zero dps so keep him alive as long as possible!

Why Nature's prophet as theme hero?

I've used Nature's Prophet as theme hero because I feel he is the spirit and the essence that most defines the game that is Defense of the Ancients. He can fit a wide variety of roles, he can farm in any lane including the woods, he scales with items like a carry, but most of all he is good at exactly that which wins matches in Dota 2. You can play Riki and have 40+ kills but still lose the match. You can dominate the teamfights like a Lich and still lose the match, but in the end Nature's Prophet does that which is only way to actually win a match: Destroying enemy Towers, Barracks and eventually their Ancient.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading. I hope this has helped you to step up your game and become a better player in general. Be sure to comment and feedback and vote! If you like it, tell your friends about this guide as well.