Primary and secondary hero roles

Heroes in this role are generally required to have a high level and quite expensive items in their inventory in order to be effective in teamfights. They generally take most of the farm in a team, cleaning lanes and sometimes jungles.

This role can be split in two sub-categories:

Hard Carry

A hard carry is the type of hero that is generally useless in the beginning of the game and is really dependent on getting his items/levels.
These type of carries are generally seen ricing through early-mid game and coming out late-game to wipe the floor with the enemy team.

Examples: Anti-Mage, Spectre, Faceless Void



A semi carry on the other hand, is the type of hero that excels at ganking early game or has skills that allow him to farm a creep wave fast. These heroes reach their peak potential way earlier than hard carries and can sometimes compete with some hard carries themselves, if farmed enough.

Examples: Bounty Hunter, Shadow Fiend, Queen of Pain

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Support heroes, as their name implies it, take care of their team, they are the guys that usually buy the courier and observer wards for the team at the begging of the game. They are generally responsible of keeping the map warded and counter-warding the enemy support.
The thing that most support heroes take care of most of the time is the carry.

This role can be split in two sub-categories:

Babysitter

These guys are laned with the main carry since early game and rarely leave their lane. They are usually good at lane controlling either with their skills or a really good attack animation, or at keeping their carry alive with heals and various buffs.

Examples: Warlock, Witch Doctor, Lich



Starting from early game, roamers can travel across the map to make for some easy kills on the lanes. They usually offer at least one disable and/or have good burst damage. Some heroes can start roaming earlier than others.

Roamers keep pressure on the enemy simply by not letting themselves being seen and obliging all the lanes to play safe. They usually handle the warding/counter-warding as well since they are always on the road even though they are not the guys meant to buy the wards most of the time.
Sometimes having one solo hero roaming is enough, at other times it's best to set up a group of two to roam.

Example of dual roamers : Sven+ Lina, Tidehunter+ Venomancer, Crystal Maiden+ Sand King
Example of solo roamers: Earthshaker, Vengeful Spirit, Sand King

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Initiators, as the name implies it are the guys responsible for starting the teamfight on good terms for your team. A bad initiation can easily lead to a lost teamfight, failing to get key targets inside the initiation can be devastating.

Most initiators are Blink Dagger dependent but there are exceptions. These guys don't generally farm for too long, a couple of basic items and a Blink Dagger is all that your team will ever want you to get most of the time, initiators usually start participating in ganks and counter-ganks quite early.

This role can be split in two sub-categories:

Direct initiator

I have had this problem countless times in my games and I wanted to set this straight in this blog post for the people that take the time to read it at least. Direct initiators are the guys that have a near-instant spell that somehow disables the enemy team.

Examples: Tidehunter, Earthshaker, Warlock



Post-initiators although not a common term in the dota universe, are the guys that usually require some type of setup before they can properly do their combo, examples of good setup builders for these heroes are:

• Clockwerk, since he doesn't do a lot of damage on his own in teamfights and is generally tanky, he usually manages to get the whole enemy team close to him, this type of cluttering from the enemy team allows the post-initiator to get full effect with his skill,
• Tiny with a Blink Dagger,
• Slardar with Blink Dagger,
• Pudge,
• Dark Seer.

Post initiators are dependent on the enemy team's position a lot more than direct initiators since their skills do not act as fast. Post initiators should have a easy time initiating when the enemy team is pushing though.

Examples: Sand King, Kunkka, tauren chieftan

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Not truly a role but more of a characteristic or another way of saying skill-dependent heroes. This category just serves as a meaning to introduce the different sub-roles:

Nuker

Nukers are the guys that can usually keep at a safe distance from the enemy heroes and mow them down with nukes at a rapid rate, they can sometimes substitute the damage dealt by carries with their own nukes, not requiring carry support. They are generally helpless if not farmed though offering no escape mechanisms on their own, if caught.

Examples: Lina, Zeus, Death Prophet



Disablers will keep a target in-place for a long while, they have similar status to nukers except their disables offer some kind of escape mechanism. They are farm-dependent as well for their survivability in teamfights but not as much. They have very high priority in teamfights.

Examples: Shadow Shaman, Lion, Earthshaker

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Gankers are quite similar to roamers, they are effective at killing enemy heroes with little to no help from their allies in small skirmishes, they usually need their levels to be effective at what they do, some start having big impact in teamfights later on, others start to slowly fade away since the game is moving further and further away from circumstances allowing them peak effectiveness.

The difference between a solo roamer and a ganker is that the solo roamer usually needs help from the lane he's ganking to kill the enemy lane while the ganker usually just needs a small distraction so he can kill the enemy. Gankers are usually more item/level dependent than roamers and tend to balance between ganking and farming more.

Examples: Clockwerk, Night Stalker, Batrider






Pushers are good at either clearing enemy creep waves fast or taking down enemy towers fast or both.
They usually have great teamfight potential and for that reason, are focused down often in teamfights.
They are generally level dependent to perform pushes and item dependent for their teamfight survivability.

Examples: Shadow Shaman, Broodmother, Leshrac






Junglers are effective at getting their farm up, undisturbed, in your team's woods since level 1. It's usually a good idea to have a jungler when you have strong solo laners and level-dependent heroes.
Junglers can usually support the adjacent lanes with ganks and pushes but in the same time they require good warding in order to remain effective, some junglers can afford to ward their own safe spots because they also enter the support category, others are dependent on the team's support for their warding since they also enter the carry category.

Examples: Chen, Enchantress, Lifestealer

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Heroes in dota generally fulfill more than one role, for example one of the most versatile heroes in the game, Invoker can be used as :

disabler : Cold Snap Tornado EMP Deafening Blast Ice Wall
nuker : Tornado EMP meteor sunstrike Deafening Blast
semi-carry : Alacrity Cold Snap Forge Spirit Ghost Walk
pusher : Forge Spirit Alacrity
ganker : Cold Snap Tornado Deafening Blast
and initiator : Tornado meteor EMP Deafening Blast


The bad side that comes with this high amount flexibility is the fact that he doesn't excel at any of those roles in particular, his nukes are not as spammable and become more effective later in-game while normal nukers such as Lina and Zeus become capable nukers since level 7, his initiation is actually quite good but situational, his pushing power wastes his teambattle potential since his spells have such a high cooldown, as a disabler he doesn't offer any true disable like the common Lion or Shadow Shaman do and as a semicarry he can be decent but a equally farmed Bounty Hunter can easily outmatch him in terms of damage.