So, because a lot of us aren't pro, just average, I'll write about things out of the viewpoint of an average player. You know who you are, those guys that can play, but can't seem to get that exact thing right, or do that specific pro manoeuvre. We are the underdogs, the possibilities, the background pros. I welcome you to my blog.

So, the recent update to Dota 2 brought us the first of the Single Player tutorial-esque quests you can do to teach you how to play the surprisingly complicated game of Dota. I braved the short quest, and got through it fairly quickly, and I have to say, I am impressed. They've done a pretty good job at starting off on the basics and teaching the prospective Dota pro a few things to help him along. As Valve progresses, this will obviously have more and more quests to complete, eventually maybe even including challenges for the veteran player that finds the early quests pointless to their skill level.

You play as Davion, the Dragon Knight, who's goal is to …
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So, I have this secret hate. This burning hate for one hero in particular. I never play her, and curse the enemy team if they decide to employ her services in noob stomping. She's the dark ranger, Drow Ranger.
Now, to start off, you never see a Drow in high-tier or professional games, and there's a reason for it. Drow is a easy kill, DPS hero with an amazing slow ability as well as a Silence. This exceptional skilled hero comes with two passives that increase her raw damage. This makes for a surprisingly easy to play with hero, but she is very weak and dies quickly.

Sadly, she gets played a lot, according to Dotabuff. Most chosen hero in public games. Now, we as the average player will cringe when we have to face this annoying hero in the throes of battle, as we don't know how to deal with heroes like her that are generally considered (by the less pro people) as a 'noob' hero. But really, its a new-player hero. It comes with only 1 real skill, an autocast, and fairly easy way to kill…
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We all know about the item, and many of the beginners in Dota 2 find it a waste of 135 gold that could be spent on another 2 Iron Branches. But, this is most definitely not the case. One of the best items in the game is the Town Portal Scroll.

When in a fight, its always a good idea to have mobility. When you consider the size of the map, its a large liability to not be able to help your carry that's getting ganked top, or to assist your offlaner on an aggressive push against your tower. To solve this problem, we buy a TP scroll. The scroll is a once-off use item that teleports you to any friendly structure. You can use it to TP back to your base, or more importantly, to aide your allies near a tower.

Now, I know that it uses up a valuable item slot, and you might ask yourself, why buy this 135 gold item that I might use, while I could keep it, and be nearer to my 1100 gold Vitality Booster.

Take a car tracking system. Its purpose is to provide you with the ability …
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A strange mentality I'm seeing in games is starting to become annoying on many levels. When a game is going bad, and you are getting 'pubstomped', there seems to be always a guy blaming his own team for being 'noob'.

Yesterday, a client came into the DVD Rental store I work at. The woman brought back a DVD, placed it on the counter, and started complaining. She told me that she placed the DVD in her DVD-Player, and it refused to play. So, as always, I took out the disc, and checked it for scratches. There weren't any. Upon telling the woman that there seems to be nothing wrong with the disc, she continued on to tell me that she has the best, state-of-the-art DVD player, and that the disc must be faulty because her player is perfect.

Now, my metaphor is a bit in reverse, but it'll do. Just because your team loses, doesn't mean your team is the 'biggest noobs on Dota', and 'should uninstall Dota'. In fact, I have come to realize that very often than not, you lose a game because the ene…
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Now we know that Captain's Mode games involve a lot of strategy even at the picking phase. When playing CM, you concentrate on choosing a balanced team that will out perform the enemy's team, and also assign lanes to the correct heroes for the job. But some people forget that this is also half-true in normal public AP, SD or any other mode really.

I am sure that a lot of games you lose are because of team match-up and lane choices. Because unless the enemy is extremely bad, if you have the wrong hero for the wrong job you are faced with being annihilated before you've even started.
To illustrate, let me give you an example. Let's say you see the enemy picking up a Drow Ranger, Warlock, Silencer, Witch Doctor and a Dragon Knight.
Quickly analysing the line-up can significantly increase your chances of winning.

The first thing we see is a Drow. We all hate and love this hero for her amazing damage and slow. Although fairly nerfed, she is still a significant hero and needs to be co…
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When playing in pub games, you won't find advanced laning such as Tri-Lanes or Solo Hardlanes. You will find the default dual top, and dual bottom lane, with a solo mid. But one day you might want to try it with a group of friends in a 5 stack party, or even in a pub where someone requests it. So here is a general rundown of these advanced laning techniques :

The Tri-Lane

It became popular a while ago, and is still considered a fairly common strategy in the pro scene. This lane setup's main purpose is to give your carry the safest farm possible. To do this, you send two supports with a carry into the safelane (the long lane, bottom for Radiant, Top for Dire). The jobs of the two supports are to harass the enemy (be it one, two or three heroes), pull creeps from neutral camps to keep the lane from pushing to the enemy tower and the most important task, protecting the carry. This lane is usually sustained for the first 10 minutes or so of the game. After that the supports will usually s…
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Being in the 50th percentile of the great Dota 2 player base, accented as "Normal", doesn't mean that you need to play like an average player. In fact, one of the reasons you continue playing Dota 2 (enjoyment hopefully being the most important reason), is to improve yourself. What better way than to watch the pros do it.

There is various ways to do this. Going on Twitch.tv will give you various streams that you can watch which features all the major tournament games between pro Dota teams. All games of the large Dota 2 tournament hosted by Valve, The International, is free to watch inside the client itself. Not only is this a lot of fun, its a great way to learn tactics that you otherwise wouldn't normally encounter in public games.

But just because you only play soloques doesn't mean that you have to play like a solo quer. That extra TP support, that random call for a smoke gank. It can all help you and your team improve and win, even if it might not always synchronize well with o…
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Although you might not play them a lot, Captain's Mode games are actually pretty fun to play when you get the hang of it. Usually better with friends, this mode allows for Hero drafting, which is basically two teams taking turns to ban and pick heroes for the game. But I'm sure many of you guys don't know exactly how it works, so I thought I'd enlighten you.

How it works

If you are a five stack, the party leader will always be the 'Captain'. This means he will be the one making the choices. But it's always good to talk it out with your fellow team mates to maximize your chances by getting good input. Drafting are started Radiant, who gets the first Ban. A ban is simply choosing hero that neither you or the enemy team can pick. Usually those heroes that are considered very powerful gets banned out first to prevent the other team from acquiring them.
In the current Meta some common first bans are Io, Magnus, Dark Seer, Batrider, etc.

After Radiant's first ban, comes Dire's first, t…
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When you hit midgame, and teamfights start to break out, a whole new level of dota emerges that goes far beyond farming, harassing and ganking. Teamfighting requires not only good items, but also effective positioning, effecient focusing, and skill synergy. But, like any sport or even war, there are more to fights than just numbers. Players themselves get affected by being focused, disabled and being low on life.

So, today I will focus on teamfights, and on what could metaphorically be called the Morale Bar, which is actually the HP bar.
Consider a teamfight. Skills fly, right-clickers click, and pretty soon you see your HP bar falling below the half-way mark and still fall very fast. Your mindset at the start of the fight was, 'let's own them all'. Now, however, you start to feel a bit more 'scared'. Not real fear of course, its only a game, but you fear for the life of your character. This will make you more inclined to flee, and less inclined to stay in the fight. The lower life …
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If you watch pro games, you will most certainly see many tactics that they use that may seem unfamiliar to you. But many of it is fairly easy to do, you just need to know how. I'll describe some of the tactics, strategy and skills that is more well-known and used even in public matchmaking, and also more advanced tactics for competitive teamplay.

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Juking

The first fairly easy and probably commonly known tactic is juking. Juking involves moving in such a way as to make it hard for the opponent to track you. This usually means running behind trees to make the enemy lose vision of you. This allows you to change direction, or TP out while you are out of sight. Other ways to juke (for instance if you have a blink), is to run into the jungle, juke around a tree, then blink in an opposite direction. If you stay out of sight you can 'juke' the enemy into moving in the direction they think you moved, completely confusing them and getting away safely.
A great guide on Juking can be found right h…
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As a possibility, we are already half-way to becoming more. Our skill is on the edge of great, and as such, so should our attitude be when we play the game. This however, is where we fall short.
Public match-making is a great tool to play with nine other, randomly selected players in a 5v5 skirmish to the death. This method gives diversity to games, as so many people are different, and use different strategies, some of which you can learn from.

But, the match-making system has a large flaw, and this flaw is of a great disagreement on many people's lips. The Dota community seems to think that the major flaw of this MM system we're using is that they get matched up with 'noobs', 'Russians', 'Brazillians', '*******s', etc. They want various different systems, including region locks, and a better MM system, etc. A way to weed out the 'bad' players, so that only good players are left.

Sadly, this is not the solution to our problem. The one major barrier is, and will always be, language.…
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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 bett…
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So a few more advanced tactics and skills that can help you become pro.

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Blocking Heroes

In the same way you are able to block creeps you can also block enemy heroes to your advantage. Especially when playing support or even as a carry you can block enemy heroes to prevent them from fleeing or reaching an ally. In later game this will not be as effective as there will be a lot of heroes to deal with in 5 man teamfights, but early game you can block the enemy from finishing off your carry by simply walking in front of him and blocking him from reaching attack range. And in the same way you can block an enemy from escaping while your carry right-clicks him to death.
Just be careful as you can also block your own allies from escaping or initiating properly.
Pro Tip : You can use controlled or summoned creeps to block, giving you a chance to escape or secure a kill, but it requires a bit more micro.

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The Magical Stop button

Many heroes has skills that have a cast animation, be it short o…
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