I need help getting out of bot trench!

This is a kinda of a five part post, but mostly comes under the heading of helping me play with/against other people.

Now I've played "competitive" games in the past; I used to play the Pokemon TCG competitively back in my youth to a decent level before moving on to Age of Mythology (stopped playing that because it became too toxic to play), I then moved on to shooters like Quake and CS (left them because of toxicity) and finally landed at LoL with a group of people I played various MMO's with. I had a good experience in LoL because we usually had a full 5 man team when we played, but over time people stopped playing or couldn't play as often so we slowly lost the ability to field a 5 man team. Which is when random people playing on our team exposed us to the flaming and general douchebaginess that goes along with these sorts of games..... again. So we kind of disbanded as a gaming group.

Now you have my life story it brings me on to my first two parts. Is there a group somewhere that will happily let a Dota noob stack with them? And is there anyone that can/recommend to me about translating what few LoL skills I had over to Dota, mentoring as it were?

Time for part three. I play a lot of bot games, usually hard or unfair, and with a custom AI someone on the Dota dev forums made. I've played close to 300 hours of bot games (call me crazy) with either one other person or on my own. I enjoy playing roaming supports, especially Disruptor, Vengeful Spirit, Earthshaker, Beastmaster, Shadow Shaman, Witch Doctor or Jakiro. Ones which have good utility and initiation. These are the types of champions I played in LoL. Are there any other heroes I should be looking at learning as well?

On to part four. I know the theory, and can usually do in games, the basic support things like stacking, pulling, warding, basic item usage, harassing, don't follow guides to the letter, etc..... What else should I be looking to do as a support in a game?

And the fifth and final part thanks to all the guide writers, especially Sando (support guide god in my eyes) and people like Purge for telling me I suck and explaining the basics.

There we have it, a wall of text for you to enjoy. All help is greatly appreciated, as I don't want to come home from a long day at work to be flamed on a game I enjoy and driving me away from it.

First of all, welcome to the community. You should try looking at most heroes as well. Nyx Assassin comes to mind since he can gank really easily, but there's many others that can roam, but it depends when you want to start roaming : At level one, or a tiny bit later.

What every player should be doing is having map awareness and a "sense for danger". Since the dota2 map is very complex compared to the LoL one (because of the higher elevations and stuff) it's significantly harder to anticipate ganking routes.
The warding spots that have significance change a lot during the course of the game. For reference I would advise watching pro games. Especially teams like VG and Secret have very good warding in a lot of games.
Additionally you should be able to read the aggressiveness of the opponent players' movement. At first it's not very easy, but with time you develop that spidey 6th sense for danger. This is really just a matter of experience.

So warning the teammates of danger, raising awareness on aggressiveness of the opposing team, keeping track of the objectives and so on. Making calls for when to push, when to defend, when to engage and when not to engage are very important and sadly most other players will ignore your advice.

From what I've read about the heroes you play, it seems you play roamers that become good once they get a couple of levels (exception being Earthshaker. If you want a more "fun" heroe for roaming try Tusk. When he hits lvl 2 coupled with another stunner, you can get decent kills.
2 level one heroes that you CAN (not the best but can) gank would be imo Treant Protector (with an Orb of Venom) and possibly Ogre Magi (lvl 2 is better especially with Orb of Venom) these two heroes are good because of 2 reasons; 1. they're tanky and 2. they can stack slows with Orb of Venom allowing decent damage applied.
A hero I would recommend trying once he hits lvl 2 is Lion due to his 2 disables.

Something to learn on in future is using Smoke of Deceit for ganking. Really good especially when the enemy team buys wards.

If you're looking for people to play with online. Two of my friends and myself will be getting together for about 2-3 days of pure doto stack playing in the next 2 months (ages away sorry) so you can add me here --> http://steamcommunity.com/id/zerak_kyria if you want to join in and get some experience.

Welcome to the world of Dota! please enjoy your stay. Though I must say everyone here is amazing and will certainly help you.

p.s learn to deny creeps. something they don't have in lol if you haven't already.

The debuff from Orb of Venom doesn't stack, does it?

Hi AieCee. Welcome here!

I've had the same question about heroes a while ago, and got really kind and helpful answers here:
http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/forum/help/advices-to-improve-what-to-do-next-11464
I'm glad to share it today if that helps you.

Some sticky points taken from a Purge's guide did also help me a lot. Not sure if you know it as you seem to know Purge's channel already, but just in case:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3hPXsqkcgE

And if you want to group for games on european servers, here's my dotabuff:
http://www.dotabuff.com/players/164944622

Yes it does. It stacks with slows from aibliies and also from Diffusal Blade active but not with itself from different sources (2 heroes with OoV won't stack) and it won't stack with eye of skadii (at least I am pretty sure).

Ok, I was misunderstanding. I thought that you meant that you could get two Orb of Venoms on two heroes and it would stack. My bad.

dotabuff? need some more stats to be of any help really :P

I'm pretty new to the game as well so i'm not sure what 'Advice' i can give, but if you have played plenty, read guides and watched some Purge-style Vods... Get watching pro games. VG, Secret, EG all have excellent roamers (I especially like Zai and BigDaddyN0Tail, though VG may actually be better).

Other than that, what server do you play on? I'll happily add you, as 5-stack is the best way to play, so if we are one short and i see you online you could well get an invite!

http://www.dotabuff.com/players/54450733