Help with Micro-intensive Heroes

I'm not really looking for a devoted mentor to play with or anything, I just needed some specific help and this seemed like the right place to post it.

Other than Earth Spirit and Invoker, both of which I just haven't put the effort into learning their very unique playstyles yet, I can play pretty much every hero reasonably well. I've read up on them all, and played games with them all, and feel like I can at least hold my own if I happen to random them.

That is, all except for heroes who rely on micromanaging to fully succeed. For some reason, they completely throw me off and I end up dying while I try to figure out what button controls which hero, and how to use their skills fluidly, etc etc. It really bugs me, because I would love to be able to play heroes like Lone Druid and Chen effectively, considering how great they can be when played right.

I only practice with them in Bot matches (unfair difficulty), in which you can only really learn so much. Basically, I'm very very slow at switching between units and using all the abilities to actually do anything worthwhile.

I'm a fairly good player, so it really weirds me out that I can be so bad with certain heroes. I learn best by reading really good information on topics, so I don't really need someone to play with or learn by watching, I've tried it. So maybe there's a really good guide around, or someone could just type up some pointers that helped them?

Try different hotkeys. I don't play micro (I'm not that good yet), though.

LD doesnt even require micro, compared to chen.
As for help with chen, go play Warcraft 3, where it all began.

Pretty much, just use "TAB" to switch between the Druid and the Bear. It's really that simple, just tales a bit of practice, like pressing "Q" to Toggle between Melee and Ranged on Troll Warlord. 8{D

What if you have control groups. Sometimes when I have all my units selected and I press tab, it shows the icon for that unit but all the units still follow my command, not just that one.

lol yeah, I actually can use LD pretty effectively. I just included him because he's one of the first heroes with more than one major unit that comes to mind. Perhaps Meepo was the better example :p

I'm kinda fuzzy on control groups and how to set them up. Are they different for each hero, and will they require setting up in each game?

Control groups say if you were playing Zet, Chen, Visage, Meepo, Lycan and Invoker considering you should be microing your forge spirits and not letting them get killed for free gold. Shadow Demon Is another one you want to set control groups for, disrupt your carry at the beginning of the game and set the illusions to a control group so you can use easily provide more dps later on by disrupting your carry and laying some hurt down

to set control groups you need to have macros set for them, this can be done in settings, in this example I will use the most common default groups that being keys 1-6 (not the numpad)

to set a control group select the units you wish to have in the group, then hold down control, then hit the group hotkey you want to assign them to, for example if I want all my units to be bound to the One key then I will do as follows:

• Select all of my units
• Hold down the control key
• while still holding the control key hit the 1 key

Example 2

As Chen I want to make a control group for all my centaurs so I can chain stun the enemy hero in a gank, I want the group to be bound to my third control group

• Select all my centaurs, this can easily be done by manually moving them all to a spot then highlighting them
• Hold down the control key
• While still holding down the control key press down the key bound to the third control group, in this example this is the 3 key
• You have now made a control group for your centaurs, this will cause you to select, and on double tap center on them and deselect all other units

Although there are numerous videos out there I am thinking of creating some videos to help new players as when I was new I could never find comprehensive up to date videos to help me, If you think I should then tell me, if I feel its really needed I would be happy to do it. Also hades if your watching I think an official dotafire channel could be good, ill make a suggestion in a more appropriate section anyway

Hope this helped
Fleet

On a side note, I'm back from my holiday to a warmer part of the world ;) time to play some dota