Scub Needs Help Un-Scrubbing

Alright. So here I am.

I'm shamelessly(fully) admitting I am a scrub. I only have ~150-200 hours played, and this is including time spent queuing. And I am much more of a scrub than I'd like to be. There's a specific set of heroes with which I am at all decent. I feel I need to become more well-rounded if I want to be good at DotA, as well as just tips and guidance as to how to become better.

If anybody has tips, leave them here please.

If you're willing to mentor a filthy skrub who can't quicscop, I play on the US West and US East servers.

PM me for dotobuff m9s.

-Be adaptive. Build items and play heroes according to the situation. I wont say pick heroes accordingly, because noone likes counterpicker and im bad at it too.

-Think out of the box. Have you ever killed an enemy with clever tricks? Well i didnt do much but when i killed someone with an illusion bait, you're going to feel proud.

-blame lag

Blaming lag is always good, but you should maintain friendly relations with your teammates and own up to your mistakes.

If your team is angry with you, they won't want to save you, or go in on a fight you initiated.

As for actualy gameplay tips;
-Last hits, last hits, last hits. You may feel like at 150-200 hours you KNOW how to last hit, but practice makes perfect. EG.Fear played a QoP and didn't miss a last hit for 7 minutes. Are you that good?

-Don't chase unless your hero is built for mobility (e.g. Timbersaw, Puck, Queen of Pain, etc.). The biggest mistake I see people making - and even pros sometimes - is they dive a tower to get an enemy with low health, or they chase them all through the jungle with no hope of catching up. This misses you out on farm and XP.

-PLAY EVERYTHING! I'm not saying you have to be good at every hero, but go on your dotabuff, click 'heroes,' and scroll down to the bottom. All those ones that you haven't played? Play them. You need to become acquainted with the inner workings of each hero so that you can counter them, or, if the situation arises, use them effectively.

-Get some friends. This probably has more to do with enjoyability than with how good you are, but I think you'll find that you play better with friends than when you play without.

Step 1. Pick your most played Role and your 3 favourite Heroes you play in that Role. Now look at a recent replay for each of these Heroes.

Ganks/Teamfights - Before you start the replay, look at both Team's Lineups and try to figure out who should focus on Ganking, who should go in 1st in a Teamfight, who goes in 2nd, etc. until you can work out what you should have been doing in fights. Now work out who you should have been Focusing in fights, how should you use each Ability (e.g. if you have a Stun, is there someone you can Stun to prevent them getting a troublesome Ult off? if they get it off, who then becomes the biggest threat? etc.). Now watch the replay and see where you went wrong.

CS - It's not important how many Last Hits you got, it's important that you miss as few as possible (especially if you're a Support). Look at all the opportunities you had to Last Hit a Creep and count how many Creeps you could have reasonably Last Hit. Obviously if you would have died getting that Last Hit, or even taken a few hundre damage to get it, then it wasn't worth it. If you were huddled under the Tower because you had no vision and there was a Pudge that had been missing for more than 10 seconds (even if it turns out later that he was elsewhere) that does not count either.

Positioning - This is rather difficult to get as it's based on both your Hero and other Heroes as well as everyone's Items. Try going to just before the start of a teamfight, e.g. a fraction of a second before Tidehunter used his Blink Dagger (and Ravage). If your team got Initiated on, did you have vision of the other Team, or if not, when did you last have vision of them? Where are you at this point? How many Abilities can be focused on you in the next Second? How many of your Abilities can you use on the right Hero at the right time in the next second?

I wouldn't recommend this early on, you're not going to know how every single Hero should be played with 100-150 Games, but if you do try a Hero you've never played before, do it in a lobby or a Bot game so you can focus on getting used to the Hero.

Always good advice. If you don't have any that play DOTA 2, use the matchmaking section and see who you can find.

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/forum/matchmaking