Guide to Ability Draft

Introduction

I'm not pretending to be a particularly good DotA-player. At this point, I have put about 550 hours into the game, which is a lot by some standards, but few by others. However, I'm quite certain I could give a few good ideas to think about when you're just starting to try out Ability Draft. Since you never know what skills you will be able to get and since there are countless skills that have a synergy with one another, I will not really elaborate a lot on different combinations, and if you need some ideas for skill build, I recommend you watch people such as Baumi on YouTube, playing Ability Draft or the Legends of Dota mod. You will have to come up with good combinations on the fly, since these really aren't set in stone. What I want to teach you is in what manner I feel players should think during more serious Ability Draft matches.

Ability Draft? Wazzat?

For those who don't know it yet, Ability Draft is a game mode where you get a random hero. These are heroes that you probably know already, assuming you have encountered them or even played them in the other game modes. However, this time none of the heroes have any skills yet. The skills of the 10 randommed heroes are added to a pool, along with the skills of two more heroes that are not present in the match. You get a minute or so to see which heroes are present, and which abilities you can pick. After that, every player picks an ability one after another. You get to pick one ultimate and three normal skills. The precise order of players is random, and it is possible to get two consecutive turns. You have only a few seconds to pick a skill, so plan ahead a little. As a side note, you can't write messages to team members, so having a microphone or playing with a stack may help a lot with tactful ability picking.

Know your hero (and your team's heroes)

This might actually the most important part of the entire process. Yes, your hero is a blank slate, and you can pick any ability that is present in the draft and is not picked by anyone else yet. However, this does not mean that you should mindlessly get the first thing you see. If you choose an ultimate with a huge mana cost when you're playing as Axe, a hero not known for having a good mana pool, you may end up never using that ability. If you end up playing as Dazzle, you're not likely to get a decent damage output, so you may not want abilities that are meant for the auto attacker. A Dazzle with Sniper's Headshot ability would be a serious WTF. On a hero like Dazzle, I would try to get the best support abilities I can find.

Mind your attributes

In general (and note that this is very generalized), intelligence heroes are the least likely to encounter mana problems, especially later in the game, so mana heavy abilities may be better spent on these heroes. Strength heroes are the most likely to become tanky and difficult to kill, making them more suited for suddenly diving into a group of enemies and using initiator abilities like Ravage. They will often have a smaller mana pool, so it may be better to use either passives, low mana cost abilities or abilities that have a higher mana cost, but also a huge impact and a huge cool down (such as Ravage). Agility heroes get damage as well as attack speed as their agility grows, making them the most likely heroes to become auto attackers. Picking passives or actives that boost your attack output may be worth considering. Of course these distinctions aren't strict. There are a great many heroes on which a higher auto attack output will be a positive thing. These heroes may have any primary attributes. However, some abilities are bad on most heroes with a certain primary ability, so your primary ability can be very important. There are certain heroes that will never be able to do a certain something, and often this is partly due to their primary attribute (imagine a strength hero with Outworld Devourer's Sanity Eclipse, which deals damage based on the difference between the caster's intelligence and that of his target, but only if the caster has higher intelligence). The important thing here is, is that you need to keep your heroes natural strengths and limits in mind. Even without their normal abilities, every hero has certain strengths and limits.

Ranged or melee? Perhaps both?

Another thing to remember is whether your hero is ranged or melee. A skill like Duel, which makes you end up close to your target, might not be a bright idea if you're ranged, since ranged heroes tend to be more squishy and should often keep their distance. An interesting detail is that ranged abilities may actually be a good idea on melee heroes. Take Aim will still increase your attack range, even if you're Ursa, and melee heroes can perform ranged attacks with abilities such as Frost Arrows. Note that these abilities will not allow you to perform ranged attacks unless you manually activate them. Putting ranged attacks on a melee hero may be very confusing to the enemy, and may be an especially good idea if your team is mostly composed of melee heroes. This is where knowing your team's heroes comes into play. A team with mostly melee heroes is more likely to get severe harass and end up being outlaned. Getting abilities that turn your melee hero into a ranged hero will help a lot here.

Your inner strength

Another thing to keep in mind is that some heroes have innate abilities. For example, Faceless Void will always be able to move through a Chronosphere, no matter who casts it, even if it is the enemy who does it. If you have a Faceless Void in your team, it might be a cool idea to put Chronosphere on a hero that is not Faceless Void. That way. You will have two heroes that will be able to make use of Chronosphere, for double the fun. This is another case where knowing your team's heroes will help out greatly. From the top of my head, Silencer is another hero who has the innate ability to gain intelligence when an enemy near him dies. He will always have this ability, no matter what your ability build is. Knowing these innate abilities may very well help out.

Choosing your abilities

Again: mind your hero type and team composition

I have already said a this in the previous part. For some heroes, a supportive ability build will work better, for others you may want to try initiation. However, in some cases, you may not be a great support hero by nature, but still need to get a support build. Sometimes, no one in your team will have a great support hero, so someone will have to make the sacrifice and get a support build in order for the team to get a good chance at winning.

Synergy

However, there is a lot more it than simply picking skills that suit a particular role or attribute. Some abilities have great synergy with each other. In normal matches, playing Tidehunter usually means that you want to get a Blink Dagger. That way, you can blink into the middle of a group of enemies and use Ravage to stun the group, after which your team is supposed to finish them off. Epicenter is another Blink Dagger skill, and there are quite a few more of these. In Ability Draft, however, you could get Ravage and a blink skill, instead of Ravage and a Blink Dagger. If you pick another skill that requires Blink, such as Skewer, you will end up enjoying a great skill synergy. It may also be a good idea to look for synergy within your team, so that your different skill builds can complement each other, but this will be very tricky if you aren't playing with a stack. And as mentioned earlier, also go for synergy with your hero's natural properties (your primary attribute, tankiness, etc.). Nothing is more annoying than an ultimate that has a higher mana cost than the size of your mana pool, or having an initiation ability that requires you to be tanky when you're squishy as heck. Synergy is the keyword in this game mode. Synergy with your team, between your different abilities and, most importantly, with your natural properties. For some ideas on abilities that have good synergy, look for "Legends of Dota" or "Ability Draft" on YouTube.

Plan ahead, be flexible

To get skills that have good synergy with each other, you will need to plan ahead a little. And since your turn to pick will only last a few seconds, not having a plan will mean you either have to pick an ability in a panic or get a random one. So, plan ahead and try to figure out a good skill build. However, don't count on it to get a combination of four skills that was exactly what you had in mind at the start. Getting two skills that are just right is hard enough. Also, be flexible. A player might just throw your entire plan overboard, so pay good attention so that you'll be able to change your plan at the last moment, if this is needed. If there are a lot of stuns, it will be easier to plan a skill build that involves you getting a stun. If there are a great amount of really good ultimates, or if all the other players have already picked their ultimates, you might consider not picking one until you've got those other skills you really need to make your idea work. If there are few interesting ultimates, or if you really need that one ult, it will become a matter of "first come, first serve". Don't wait too long, or all the good ones may be gone. In the end, planning will involve considering which abilities you prioritize, and how fast you think certain abilities will be gone.

Another thing to keep in mind: stuns and other annoying disables, especially reliable stuns, are almost always good picks, and can synergize with almost anything. They are also sometimes greatly underestimated. Escape mechanisms may not be so bad either if you're going to do an offlane solo or plan on a certain skill build, but you should never depend on these abilities. Nature's Prophet's Teleport is what makes NP so good, and this skill is a great tool when you're planning on ganking a lot.

Items

Getting items that aren't in your hero's normal item build

Item build guides have always been meant to be more of a general guideline, but in this game mode, a build guide can be even worse to follow literally. For example, you may need a bigger mana pool than usual due to you having more expensive spells than your hero usually have, or better health regen due to you playing more like an initiator than you would do with your hero's normal skill build. You may require items that are normally not built on your hero to help you with these things. You may also need some extra items that add a good synergy to your abilities.. For example, if you have Tinker's ult Rearm, Boots of Travel are a really good idea, no matter what your hero is, as your ult will refresh the Boots teleport ability, allowing you to travel between locations whenever you please to do so. It's almost like having a level 4 Teleport. Another example is Faceless Void's ultimate Chronosphere. If you don't have a blink ability, there is a good chance that you'll want a Blink Dagger, even if the item isn't normally built on your hero. And if you ended up playing support-like, you may have to buy the courier and/or wards, even if your hero isn't normally supposed to do so.

Not getting items that are in your hero's normal item build

Another thing is that on some heroes, certain items in their build guides are meant to be used in conjunction with one or more of their skills. For example, Blink Dagger is often built on Centaur Warrunner to help him use Hoof Stomp for initiation, which stuns enemies in a small radius around him. However, if you didn't pick an ability that requires a blink, or if you did but also got a blink ability, an item like Blink Dagger will be a waste of money. Of course this doesn't mean you should shun your build guide. For example, items like Heart of Tarrasque are almost always good on almost any strength hero, and I often find myself building Butterfly on agility heroes. There are things that just work.

Last thoughts

There are a great many things you may want to keep in mind when playing Ability Draft, but in the end, playing this game mode well just boils down to doing what you will have to do in order to play any MOBA well, and indeed what you will have to do in real life as well: use rational thought before doing even the simplest of things, and when you do those something, try to do it skillfully. And keep in mind, both thinking skills and doing skills come with practice.