How can I improve survival rate or anticipate attacks?

Hi all, I'm pretty new to DOTA but so far I think it is an excellent game. I really do have a lot of fun playing but I have some issues I hope you could help with.

Before joining any real games I played over 50 bot matches to get used to Last hitting and some heroes. I've found my two favourite heroes to be Drow (inb4 no carry for beginners) and Silencer. I can play both these reasonably well; in-as-much as I know what items to buy, how to build my spec, how to engage the enemy and I can get lots of last hits.

The problem is that I die stupidly easy with both characters. Drow you kind of expect it because they don't want the hard carry getting farmed up.. it's just gank after gank.. but nevermind.

Silencer on the other hand I am surprised how easy he goes down. I just always seem to get the worst lane opposition ever. They always seem to be able to kill me easily yet I can barely do anything to them. They always come in pairs yet when I ask for help to try gank then my lane partner never wants to oblige.

So, as you all probably know, going in random publics isn't the best, unless you're lucky chances are there will be minimal communication and bad group synergy. The upside of this is that you'd expect the same to be true for the other team. This does not seem to be the case however..

I've won my fair share of games now but it always seems so reliant on just having one person giving commands (which i am not skilled to do yet) and 4 people listening.

Some heroes seem to have crazy skill sets as well.. Like Riki.. his damage is just incredible after only 5 minutes farming he one hits me. Same for phantom assassin.

I don't know how to adapt to this game because there is no beginner or intermediate or hard setting to go with players with equal ability. I can do the killing part ok, I just get killed far too much myself.

The problem is how are you supposed to learn how to play 100+ heroes, or learn how to counter every hero on every character, or learn exact item builds for certain opposition characters. I already spent days reading guides and help videos before trying a bot match!

I enjoy this game but I feel like I can never get better at it because there is no chance to. I spend half my game waiting to revive.. Everyone else is just at the level where they know what I will do before I even do it!

So please, help me out.. just give me some basic survivability tips or ways to make learning this game easier.

I play random which forces me to play as different people. I will just alt tab to this to figure out how to spec and such. I used Dota Alt Tab when I started as it seemed to be easier to figure things out from there.

Also you start off in tiers so it's all similar playing ranks.

Hard to say for sure without seeing one of your games, but it'll probably be lane positioning if you're relatively new. Both your heroes are relatively squishy with no escape - if you get caught out you will probably die. I know it sounds obvious but are you taking enough regen and keeping your health top'd up?

Try to prevent the lane moving too far away from your tower by attacking your own creeps when possible - this keeps you closer to safety. Make sure you're attacking from long range, and take any opportunities to harass melee heroes like Riki if you get the chance (and it wont cost you a last hit). Also try to position yourself towards the edge of the map, away from potential ganks.

Try to keep an eye on the mini-map incase their mid is on the way to gank. Oh, and yeah the game will automatically put you with players of similar skill...even if it doesnt seem like it sometimes!

This 2 heroes normally get ganked early to prevent them from owning late game.
To increase your survival, you can:
1)buy shadowblade.
2)Always have a TP scroll with you
3)Always look at the map. If you see gankers (mostly intelligence heroes) missing, it would be wise to back and stop farming for a while.

You'll eventually learn what every hero does naturally as you play the game. As you learn more about these heroes, you eventually will learn their weaknesses too. Silencer is a fantastic hero but is squishy so he'll need good positioning and some items to keep him alive. Mekansm for the extra heal, bonus armor, regen/etc and Force Staff for the extra mobility.

You always want to constantly adjust your positioning depending on the fight, if there is a fight that you cannot escape no matter what then just stand there and deal as much damage as you can.

Start with a few heroes and gradually expand your list, learn the mechanics whether it's positioning, map awareness, last hitting then to the hero mechanics. Both go hand-in-hand so don't worry too much, when you learn the game mechanics you'll also have a better understanding about why this hero does this and that.

Well, the two heros you played were squishy glass cannons. Try heros like Timbersaw or Weaver.