When first starting Dota, you play to own with a hero. Then, as you slowly start to take in the interesting teamgame that is Dota, you begin to develop a sense of roles, of purpose for each player. Soon you start to pick heroes that compliment each other, and heroes that fit in a niche that's missing from your currently drafted hero pool. You become skilled at understanding teamfights, laning, ganking, jungling, pulling, warding and all other strategic tactics that can be used to defeat your opponent.
But now, young treants, its is time to look further. Even though your direct, micro-based tactics are important to the game, you also have to start looking at the macro game. At the changes that's happening because of all the ganking, teamfights, pulling and warding. The game changes as the heroes develop, as pick-offs are made on lone heroes. One small mistake, and it could completely turn a game around. These are the things to consider when you play Dota with the aim of becoming better.
Let's take a look at an example.
You are playing a public match-making game. Your team picks a balanced team of supports, carries and a mid hero. You decide to play the safelane hard carry, and choose Alchemist as your hero. Laning starts, and you run smack into a dual-lane Kunkka and Venomancer. Your melee-support Ogre-Magi struggles to harass, forcing him to hold back or pull. This leaves you almost farmless. Mid and top is going better.
At this point you have to consider the current state of the game. Your original plan was to deviously raise
Greevil's Greed, and quickly farm a Midas, then go Maelstrom, and farm up an AC. But now, the Macro game has changed. Your lane is really hard, so in the long run you won't be able to effectively farm up a Midas. Any Midas after 10min is almost not worth it. Then you're planning on picking up a farming item, after which you'll go a dps/teamfight/defensive item, AC, yet you are at a level and gold disadvantage. So, first things first, for you to get any incling of farm, you need to get control of your lane. So step one is to level 
Acid Spray first. It has a huge AoE and allows you to harass and keep the lane stable without endangering yourself too hard. This in itself will help you get farm when combined with your support pulling.Midgame hits, you're underfarmed, and decide to head to the jungle. Your team is struggling, as they keep getting ganked in their lanes by the enemy's quickly snowballing Nightstalker. Again, item-wise, you consider your position. You could go for a BKB to survive teamfights, but your opponents are relying on ganks to try and take you out. So start off with a surprise
Shadow Blade. This helps you survive ganks in your own jungle, and allows you to start farming up better items.At this stage, you as a team should also consider the global macro. You are being starved, forced out of lanes, and can't get proper vision up for fear of ganks. Instead of continuing your aggressive strategy of midgame victory, you should rather switch to defensive. You have a Alchemist, a great late-game carry. So, you pull back, try and get as many defensive wards up as possible, and defend your remaining towers, all the while making sure your carry gets enough farm.
If successful, you will start to gain a foothold in teamfights when your farmed carry begins to shine.
I hope this gives you an idea of the Macro Game. A few tips to get you going :
- Your lineup affects your Macro Game. If you choose a pushing lineup, your strategy should be aggressive, your item builds reflect pushing (For example,
Shadow Blade and 
Desolator on Nature's Prophet, or Necromicon on a support)- Never use a fixed item build order. You need to be able to adapt depending on your situation.
- If your current strategy doesn't work, don't continue doing it hoping it'll suddenly start to work. Change things up, try new tactics, change your macro game
- Later, when playing in a team of friends or clan scrims, try to set specific end-game goals. Ex. "We want to end the game by 30 min" or "We want to play super defensive and let our carry farm". If the game evolves, and you can no longer hold to that goal, adjust it.
- Adjusting your strategy should extend to all parts of the game. Items, ganking targets, farming locations, ward positioning, etc.
Thanks for reading!
By the way, the majority of carries need the same core items (Treads + BKB for
Yes, but most carries have different sets of cores that they can follow, and the choice of which set of cores to follow depends on the situation as well.
For instance,
So while post core extensions do depend on the situation, the set of cores also depend on it as well.
This is most prominent (imo) in STR carries which can go for straight damage and attack speed or base damage and tankiness through STR items like
As for the article, I really think a major factor in adapting to the macro game is understanding how the situation truly is - a lot of players may mistake a 15-24 score to be an advantage of the latter, and while this is usually correct, there are a lot of factors to be considered here.
These are mainly kills, towers and farm on certain heroes.
Kills are self explanatory.
A tower can balance out a disadvantage in kills (gold and experience) due to it giving more map control to a team. The amount of towers alone is not enough of course - getting 2 tier 1 towers from top and bottom is better than getting a tier 1 and 2 in mid, for example.
A lead in gold, experience and map control is not enough to decide the advantage - an example of this would be game 1 or 2 (not sure which) in the Alliance vs Na'Vi TI3 winners bracket matches - while Na'Vi got all of the tier 1 and 2s of Alliance, LodA still got free farm and was able to carry the game. Even if a team has an overall advantage, if a hard carry of semi carry has a big advantage over the opposition in gold and experience, it can get the advantage back.
There are a lot of other factors as well, like the stage of the game and team compositions.
By the way, the majority of carries need the same core items (Treads + BKB for
Just today I played a game where seeing our lanes were good i just randomed and got an sf.
As pudge was mid and we had ss offlane it might have been a good idea to just support(we already had a lion support. But the enemy had a Doom and seeing his low armor I went on with the sf. I got flamed by the lion for the better part of the 1st 3 minutes. Until i killed off Doom and AM(I know right wierd lane) with SS as my lane partner. The game went on with me 15/0 and lion with an in your face look. In the end he couldnt deny the fact that my SF was the MVP.
I Just think that people should give the others a benefit of doubt about their skill and strategy before making a statement.
Match ID: 451116763
Good article.
1. Pick flexible Heroes if you want to pick 1st, e.g.
2. wait until you know what you'll be Laning against before Picking. The latter also requires you to know which Lane you can take, i.e. calling it, or playing whichever's left.
^ This is usually my preferred option when I play Mid Solo with my friends. I tend to like Picking a Nightstalker at every opportunity (one of my favourite Heroes <3), but I always wait before picking him, and would you know it, half of the time the other Team picks a
Your original plan was to deviously raise
How many games have I lost because some random...person...I solo-queued with thought this was a good idea, that only didn't work because of everyone else... -_-