Improve my farm

Hello DotaFire

New on the forum, less new to the game. Been playing for a little over a year.

I have always played for fun, I don't ming going random mode with my friends, we suck, we lose but we get a laugh. It's cool. However the only role I really can't play is the carry. Only reason for that is I cannot farm properly.

I play with a boyfriend and friends that are 4k or higher, so I learn a lot from them, my boyfriend is the one who introduced me to dota and taught me EVERYTHING basically. Before I met him I didn't even have a gamer pc and wasn't used to the feeling of playing with mouse and keyboard so I had never touched a moba in my life. I didn't even know it existed. I am very hooked now, but I hate the fact that I can't even carry a little bit with my friends.

As soon as I get a hard carry I have to switch with one of them. I love some of the carry heroes and I do their skills/combos really well, but I am always underfarmed.

Because I have played with so high skilled friends and generally gotten much better since I started I now play Very high skill on match up. So practicing is harder. And please don't tell me to do bot games, I did that for a while to practice last-hitting, but you don't get a real life scenario from it. It's not the same and of course I get a pretty good farm there.

So. How do I best practice and get better at farm? Generally I need to learn to last hit, use my lane right, switch between jungling and laning. I prefer guides over videos.

Hi Eoran, welcome to Dotafire!

There are a few carry guides on Dotafire that cover farming.

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/guide/general-carry-tips-14627

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/guide/playing-carry-the-basics-2405

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/guide/picking-the-right-carry-5822

On top of my head.

Training your last-hitting in lane is pretty important, as well as buying the items that help you with farming a lane (e.g Poor Man's Shield if facing harassment, Quelling Blade if you can freefarm, etc). Good usage of AOE skills like Dark Pact, Waveform or Mystic Snake by putting enemy creeps under the HP threshold and then getting all the last hits with your skill helps a lot. Stacking jungle camps and clearing them with AOE skills is a big help too.
After the laning stage it's generally a matter of having a good farming build on your hero. For example any hero can farm extremely fast with some certain builds like Radiance + Manta Style or Blink Dagger + Mjollnir, it all depends on what farming build fits each hero. Generally it's good to know the farming items : Hand of Midas, Maelstrom, Battle Fury, Radiance and Helm of the Dominator, which heroes each specific item is good on, and how to use them to their maximum.

Do you need advice on a specific carry? Each one has his own way of farming and some of them are just bad at it and farm heroes instead...so you can't really give a general answer.

My guide was recommended :3 feelsgood.jpg

I need to update that, now that I reread it... I'm literally cringing at how I simplified the definition of a hard carry. Oboy.

My suggestions for learning how to farm faster, is to pick two or three heroes who fulfill different roles as a carry (for example, the trio of Troll Warlord, Medusa and Wraith King could work pretty well), and just practice. Last hitting is important, and a good way to practice that is to go into a lobby on your own, no bots, and see how many last hits you can get in 10 mins (once your last hitting is at a good level, getting all 80 shouldn't be too hard).

Now, the reason for picking heroes to specialise in is to learn HOW to farm with them. Most carries farm differently from each other, and a good carry guide should probably tell you how to farm with that hero. Hell, download and watch replays of high MMR games, though if you're new then a lot of occurrences in those games will be confusing. I still don't get the Alchemist fetish of pro dota.

So, what it boils down to - is practice, practice, practice!

If last hitting is your problem, the best way would be to go into a bot game/empty lobby, go into lane, and practise until you can get at least 90% of last hits. Think about it this way, if you can't hit a target in a practise arena, what makes you think you can hit a target in a battlefield? Ya gotta get the basics before you move on.

However, I assume that you can already do that, since you said you don't want to go to a lobby. In which case, your problem is last hitting WHILE in a lane, with enemies harassing and threatening to kill you. Generally it is the support 's job to ensure the carry has a freefarm lane, but you can make it easier by learning how to estimate the enemy's damage output so that you are less likely to die, and to increase map awareness to prevent ganks from succeeding. Try some easier carries that have some kill potential in lane, like Wraith King and Tiny, to put the threat of death on your enemies as well. It will make them think twice about attempting to kill you, and if they do, you have a chance of turning it around. The 2 heroes I suggeated have decent base damage, making it easier to last hit as well.

Something to note, the lane always has more farm than the jungle, and it only increases as the game goes on. If you have a choice between the lane and jungle, generally for most carries the lane is better for farming.

Do not spend time doing nothing. If you find yourself having nothing to do, find a lane, or go to the jungle to farm.

I think a few Match IDs would help here, "Underfarmed" doesn't really explain the problem. It could be that you're just getting outfarmed by Heroes that Farm faster, or it may even be that your Item choices need improving, e.g. getting Hand of Midas when you should be getting Drum of Endurance and vice versa, etc.

Welp, let's start with Last Hitting, obviously this is different for every Hero, so you'll start doing better if you play a Hero regularly. For example, Gyrocopter has pretty low Base Damage and an unusual Attack Animation. This can be an obstacle if you aren't used to playing him and can detroy your ability to Last Hit before getting Phase Boots. Practising Last Hitting with him is important in order to get the timing down to the nearest 0.1 seconds as you have a much narrower window when being contested in Lane by someone with higher Base Damage.

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If you find yourself being contested in Lane, there are 2 simple tricks that will usually make securing Last Hits easier:-

1st, look at your Creep Wave, and the opposing Creep Wave and determine which Creeps on both sides will be in Last Hit/Deny range next. Make sure they both have roughly the same amount of HP, throw out an Auto-Attack on the enemy Creep if it's HP is higher, or Damage your own Creep when it gets below 50%HP if you can bring it down to the same level as the other Creep in only 1 Auto-=Attack. Your opponent now has to choose between going for the Deny and going for their Last Hit.

2nd, stand near the Creep Wave and Right-Click a Hero (doesn't matter if they're in range or not) and this will Aggro the enemy Creep Wave if you're within 500 Units of it. Move back to pull the enemy Creep Wave onto your Ranged Creep, this will usually Pull the next Wave a little bit, but the main benefit is that you have a much easier time Denying your Ranged Creep, or securing a Last Hit on a Melee Creep if it much lower on HP. Both Creeps are also deeper into your Creeep Wave meaning the Offlaner has to put themselves at a higher risk in order to contest you.

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Next, Static Farming vs. Pushing:-

Keeping your Creep Wave close to but not under your Tower is a good way to ensure you can safely get CS and controlling the Creep Wave to do this is known as Static Farming. There's plenty of info on Static Farming out there, so I'll just compare it to the alternavites, which are Pushing and either damaging the Tower or rotating into the Jungle.

Static Farming is the safest way to get CS, between roughly 40 Gold for each Creep, as well as Periodic Gold, you can get roughly 350GPM if you get 3 out of 4 Creeps. This is almost always what you should be doing at lvl1, but if you have some space (e.g. if the Offlaner rotates into the Jungle to catch up on Farm and lvls), then you should start Pushing out the Wave and either Farming the Jungle, or chipping away at the Tower. While Pushing the Creep Wave can give anyone in the Offlane easy Exp and some Gold, it gives you vision around their Tower, and depending on how fast you Push the Wave, you can even clear out a Medium Camp while the Creep Wave damages the Tower (if no one is there to pull the Creep Wave past the Tower).

Farming a Medium Camp every minute is going to increase your GPM by roughly another 120, so this is a great way to speed up your Farm. If you can take down a Tier 1 Tower single handedly and get the Last Hit, you gain 310 - 410 Gold from it.

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Beyond that, there's how efficiently you move around the map. For example, if you've taken the opposing Tier 1 Tower in your Safe Lane with the Creep Wave meeting where the Tower used to be, and your Offlane is Pushed out under their Tier 1 Safe lane Tower with no other Heroes than their Safe laner on the map, they may be getting ready to Push Mid.

After the 15:00 mark (or earlier depending on the game), rather than waiting until a fight starts, try to Push Waves constantly and force the opposing Team to move as you want them to. For example, if you take a Tier 1 Tower in your Safe Lane and Push the Creep Wave past the river, 1 of 2 things will happen. Either someone will come to Farm that Creep Wave and prevent the Tower from taking damage, or noone will come. If noone comes, it's because they're doing something they believe to be more important (which can often mean a Smoke of Deceit train is headed your way).

If you manage to take down both Towers in the Offlane and Mid, and your Hero is quite mobile, consider getting a Support to Ward up their Jungle, so you can safely Farm their while keeping Mid and the Offlane Pushed into their Base. This allows the rest of your team to Farm the Safe Lane and your Jungle, but this is a risky move (be vigilant for Smoke Trains).

If you have space, keep clearing Waves as fast as you can, and rotate to a nearby location to Farm more Creeps (Jungle / Ancients / TP to another Lane, etc.). If you can't safely Farm the ohter team'#s Jungle, avoid TPing to the Offlane, but fel Free to Push Mid, Farm Ancients, rotate to the Offlane and Push it out, then TP back to the Safe Lane or Mid (whichever has a Creep Wave closest to your Tower).

So long as you're clearing Creep Waves without dying and staying where it's safe, you'll find your GPM will stay quite high.

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