Beginners Guide to Dota Gameplay

Xarkas Guide to... DotA. 


Ctrl+F to find urself something uselful

1. Introduction 
2. Farming 
Auto-Attack 
Last Hit

3. Denying 
Denying 
Deny Spells

4. Harassing 
Harassing 
Orb Harassment

5. Proper use of Spells 
Nukes 
Support 
Disable 
Example (Chain Disable) 
Area of Effect 
Ultimates 
Casting Animation Canceling

6. Tit for Tat 
The Experimental Farming Style

7. Jungle 
Early 
Mid/Late 
Cunning Ploy

8. Ganking 101 
Introduction 
The musts of ganking

9. Juking 101 
Introduction and Explanation

10. Mind Games 101 
Warning 
The Lucky Noob 
Baiting 
Tower Retreats 
Skill Anticipation 
Illusion Baiting 
Special Mention

11. Creep Blocking 
Introduction 
Method 1 
Method 2 
Special Mention (Earthshaker) 
Special Mention (Prophet) 

12. Mini-map 
How to Use Your Minimap

13. Items 
Introduction 
Necromicon 
Hand of Midas

14. Using Multiple Units 
Who can do it? 
Tab 
Hotkeys 
Warning 
Some useful Facts 
Useful Units

15. Warding 
The Narnians Guide to Warding


1. Introduction . 
First I would like to thank you for opening this page, whether or not you read it, I don't mind. 
Feedback is appreciated but not necessary. 
I would however like to outline a few rules for this thread (my thread my rules ^_^). 
All of this has been taken directly from the thread entitled "Rules!" and been edited minorly to suit me. 

1 - Avoid lame one-liner posts. 
2 - Absolutely NO (words such as idiot and noob ) just praise me 
3 - Think before you post (I can't stress this enough) 
4 - If you plan on telling me I suck, justify it or risk getting owned (by mods) and expect some retaliation from me 


2. Farming . 
Farming is best described as killing things for gold and there are several ways to do this, some are better then others and some serve different purposes better. 

Auto-Attack: you are at the creeps and you press "a" then click an area near the fight, your hero will then run in and start swinging randomly, when the creep you are fighting dies, you will move onto the next creep. 
this is probably the worst way you can possibly farm, it is unreliable and stupid, it leaves you open and doesn't get you very much gold, late game or if you plan on pushing this is very effective but not for the gaining of gold. 

Last Hit: Getting the last hit on an enemy creep is done by running backwards and forwards (to avoid being harassed) while waiting for an enemy creep to go into "red" life then taking the final swipe giving you gold and a small experience bonus. 
as long as you are not pushing this is definitely the preferable option, it leaves you harder to harass due to constant movement and gives you more gold which in turn gives you more items giving you more damage hopefully leading to victory. 
If you have a hero with a castable orb effect (small cooldown) 


(clinkz/viper/drow/silencer) you can manual cast them to make you last hit do more damage which increases your chance of killing the creep. 


3. Denying . 
ad the beginning of the game type -di (host does this after entering the game mode) this allows you to see when a unit is denied by making a "!" appear when the unit dies. 
Denying is much like Last Hitting but done to your own creeps. When one of your creeps goes into "red" life press "a" then select you creep to run forwards and attack it. You can start attacking your creeps when they reach 50% of their life and you can Deny ally heroes when they are under an effect that may kill them such as Poison Dagger and Doom. 
attacking creeps at 50% is a good idea if you feel you are pushing to far as it allows you to pull the creeps closer to your tower (within attack range) making it harder/riskier for enemies to harass you and harder for them to deny (it does make last hitting harder for you as a drawback) 

Spells that Deny include: 

Dark Ritual 
Infest 
Conversion 
Death Pact 


4. Harassing . 
To harass is to annoy, this is done attacking the enemy hero, making him take damage and hopefully enough to eat any of his potions making him/her play safe (not last hitting or denying) or even better, heal. 

Early game (contrary to popular belief) is not about getting first blood, it is about getting a massive level advantage (there are some exceptions) this makes a forced heal preferable to a kill. as early respawn time is small and they can buy a portal scroll and come back quickly (although it does give a rather nice exp bonus the other way is better.) 
Some things to take into account while last hitting are that creeps and towers will automatically focus fire on you the instant you issue the attack command on a hero, this makes harassing harder for melee heroes without windwalk or a spammable spell. 

Heroes with orb effects (clinkz/drow/harbringer/enchantress/silencer/viper) can manual cast them on heroes without enemy creeps/towers from shifting their targets. 
if you harass too much however you enemy will call for a laneswap or a gank, ganks are bad as you generally end up dead and that is never a desirable outcome. 

5. Proper use of Spells . 
Nukes. Classified by an instant damage spell with a damage/cost ratio of 2/1 or greater. If the spell does a large enough damage over time (similar to Poison Dagger) it is also considered a nuke as well as a support and probably slows. 
They are what they are, aim to spam these through the art of mana regeneration and clarity potions, they hurt people, enough said? If you are an Agility or Strength hero these spells are probably close to non existent on you and should be reserved for a bigger combo. nukes can be used to farm providing you have the mana/regen to support it. 

Support. These spells heal stun and change move speed, while their damage isn't big/existent, the damage they allow you to do with the effect they provide is generally bigger than that of a nuke, the drawback is you probably will take more damage than you would have if you simply nuked. 
Support Spells can be both offensive or defensive. 

Disable. More often then not (with the exception of stuns and dual disable [ self and enemy ]) these do NO damage the bright side here is the enemy can't move and failing that, can't attack, these are often chained through items and prevent enemies from fighting back while you chip away at their health (or completely obliterate it.) 

spells that silence are great as you can combine this with spell anticipation (elaborated under mind games) if juggs uses blade fury he will spin spin spin, little known the most people it silences non item spells on him and thus he cannot omnislash straight away... 
what does this mean? 
well if you target a spell such as hex or storm bolt on him it will say "cannot target this unit" so all you need to do is keep spamming it, eventually he will stop spinning and immediately be stunned, while in this state, he cannot target another spell, so what do you do? chain him (this is why hex is great) as he is silenced, take time, hit him around and as soon as it ends tap the hotkey and click on him again to use your next disable (lol for lion, rhasta and bane here) anyway i hope you can see what i am getting at here, silencing spells are invaluable in you arsenal. 

Area of Effect. These spells are great, they can be support, nukes or disables and are very useful to any game play. 
While their damage is generally weaker (still greater than 1/1) their ability to make multiple units take damage makes it x/1 (x being the number of units involved) if they are nukes they are the best non ultimate farming spells in the game. 
when casting an AoE stun on a hero aim to cast it behind him so if he moves he gets hit anyway, but make sure it will hit the hero if it doesn't move (units in AoE will be green'd) 

Ultimate Notes: 
Omnislash, Eclipse should not be used around enemy creeps and chainfrost should be used when there is a minimum number of creeps. 
Wrath of Nature should be spammed as much as possible on creeps but ideally when you can see enemy creeps in every lane on the minimap. 

Casting Animation Canceling: 
If your hero has a very large animation on spell casting (Crystal Maiden and KotL spring to mind) you can cancel their animations by simply issuing another command after the effect starts.
6. Tit for Tat EXPERIMENTAL FARMING METHOD . 
Tit for Tat is an early game survival method that I would like to lay claim to have developed and coined over the past few years.. 
Fundamentally it could be considered a mind game, but this one less less dangerous and is used to farm/deny/harass throughout early and mid game. 
the sole purpose is to establish dominance over the enemy, you must last hit as often as possible, whatever you do DON'T DENY. yes this sounds like a really stupid idea but I swear it works for me, the instant the enemy denies 1 creep, you deny 2, if he harasses you, harass back, twice as hard, but nothing foolish. 
this embeds in the psyche a sense that, anything he does will be mirrored but better, they will slowly let up on harassing and denying, eventually stopping altogether allowing you to farm freely, when this starts to happen start to deny you creeps rather than last hit his, establishing further dominance. 

method works best for solo vs solo (same attack range-ish) and solo vs two* 
however if you are ranged it also works very well in solo* vs two