The Skillshot guide

Introduction

Hello everyone. This is my first guide, and it is centred on skillshots. I created this guide because learning the mechanics of skillshots are an essential part of the Dota player's skillset. This guide is not generalized for any hero, but will contain in - depth explanations for particular skillshots.

What you can expect from this guide:


-A comprehensive general explanation of skillshots.
-The concept of common sense (very essential).
-The concept of split second judgement.
-Mini guides for specific popular skillshots.


What you cannot expect from this guide:


-Specific hero mini guides.
-How to land skill shots without practice (No one cant teach you that).

What are Skillshots?

It may trouble some that I created a section for "What are skillshots?". Truth be told, I admit not knowing this term well into playing the game. After playing over 300-400 hours, I did not know this word.


Hence, I will first explain the term before diving into the details of the guide.

A skillshot is a type of hero ability that casts a projectile that originates from the point of cast, typically the casting hero, as opposed to directly targeting a unit (which is much easier). Circular AoE abilities are not considered skillshots.

Now with the formal defenition out of the way, I will explain the term with examples.


Some examples are:


Meat Hook

Powershot

Shockwave

Pounce

Skewer

Deafening Blast

Tornado

Sacred Arrow


All of those mentioned above are either target point or not target spells. However, there are many target unit spells that can be targeted at points on the ground and used as skillshots, such as


Earth Spike

Impale

Crypt Swarm

Apart from showing excellent teamwork and being friendly, using your skillshots efficiently and accurately throughout the game will earn you more respect than anything else.

Skillshots are generally challenging to use correctly as they do not auto - aim your ability for you, i.e. you must judge in real time where and how you must use the ability, and whether the ability's effects will be enough to achieve your goal.

Fear not my friends, for I will ease everything for you. (Everything about skillshots, that is)

The Concept of Common Sense

COMMON SENSE

This chapter is not about the general common sense we use in our day to day lives. It is about Dota 2 common sense. It is not necessary that showing common sense in real life gives you common sense in Dota.


That said, learning common sense in Dota isn't as difficult as learning real life common sense is! This is because unlike learning knowledge such as hero abilities, item effects, mechanics, etc, common sense is attained in a more practical way.


Here is a short list of hypothetical moves that should sound wrong (in a general manner) to you:


A Pudge trying to Meat Hook someone from a quarter of the map away.

A Tiny using Toss in a crowd of creeps and heroes expecting the tossed unit to be the hero he desires.

An invisible Nyx Assassin using impale first on his target instead of applying Vendetta burst damage.

Orange.KyXy denying the uncontested Aegis of the Immortal during one of the most important games in TI3.



Now these are just hypothetical examples, and if they sounded wrong to you, GREAT! You already possess the basic common sense anyone playing Dota 2 should have! I digress, but now let's move on to a specific form of in game common sense:



The most important kind of common sense you could ever (and I mean ever) have in Dota 2 is map awareness judgement. Depending on how many wards you have, your team will have partial vision of the map. Now the trick here is to use what's visible to predict what's NOT visible to you.



This is not easy to explain, but think of it in this way. Say the laning phase has just ended because massive ganking from the opponent team has begun to affect the way your team is distributed. You have just lost your mid lane tower. Now, you have wards 1, 2, and 3 set up on the map as shown:



The enemy team wants to buy time for their carry to farm, so they decide to send a Pudge and a Nyx Assassin to gank. You are in top lane, trying to get some CS for whatever core item you need before mid game.


Now while in your lane you spot Pudge crossing the river from the dire side on the minimap thanks to ward #1. He enters your side of the jungle and disappears. Remember, YOU DON'T SEE THE INVISIBLE Nyx Assassin. Now what? You consider the possibilities:


1. He is ganking whoever is in your mid lane via back stab because you don't have any tier 1 mid tower.


2. He is ganking your lane because he can hook you away instead of taking flak from your tower, and finally,


3. He just wants to use your secret shop.


Now all of these are quite possible. But then you look at your map closer, and do not notice him passing by the vision of ward #2 set above the stairs to avoid such a back stab on mid lane.


Now what? It is highly unlikely that he used Smoke of Deceit AFTER crossing the river because most wards give vision of the river crossings, so he must have smoked before if he wanted to do so. And neither is he coming towards mid lane. Shopping in your shop, you guess? Is their courier down? No. Probably not, then.


Your inner common sense kicks in and tells you to get out of the lane IMMEDIATELY. You leave the lane from the far side (running beside the trees) and save yourself the horrible death you may have suffered otherwise.


Now this is just a defensive way to use map awareness. A more offensive way can be noticed here, where I land a blind Meat Hook as Pudge that may seem lucky when first viewed, but becomes quite obvious when you notice the ward vision I received before attempting to gank him.



Because I saw Bloodseeker doing the easy camp, I figured he'd be doing the hard camp next. I called Shadow Shaman , walked up to a place where hooking him to would get him trapped, imagined where he'd be standing if he were doing the camp, and let the hook fly in that direction. There is a slight touch of luck in this hook (because I had no vision of him whatsoever and he may have just skipped the camp altogether) but the main reason the hook landed was because I noticed Bloodseeker on the minimap as soon as Shadow Shaman put up his observer ward on the high ground beside it.


I will add more to this section as more examples come to mind!

The Concept of Split Second Judgement

^Split second blademail reaction.


Split second reactions are required in the game regardless of whether you are using a skillshot or not. However, they are more important when considering a skillshot. Want to know why?


Anyone who has studied 2 dimensional graphs knows that there is an x axis and a y axis. In Dota, think of these axes as representative of aim and time. In an ability where you don't have to aim , you only have to consider your time window for using the skill (whether it is staying in cast range, or at a specific time in combat), and hence you only have one dimension to worry about.


However, when using a skillshot another dimension called aim is added. So now you not only have to worry about the time window of your ability, you must now set it up such that you have the correct aim within that time window in order to land your shot correctly.


This adds another dimension to your ability and makes using it more difficult in react and use situations.


Unlike common sense, most split second judgement cannot be taught in theory (here) but is mastered in game when you get to use your skillshots.


A fair amount of split second reaction preparation is achieved by watching professional games. If anyone remembers the Liquid vs. LGD.cn loser's bracket match in TI3, I watched that game multiple times just to understand how Bulba as Clockwerk managed to split second react in every fight/pick off and managed to acheive those great hooks. This helped me alot and my Clockwerk skill has moved up ever since.


Here is a short video of his plays in that match:

Mini Guides for Specific Skillshots

Here are some tips on how to land specific skillshots:

Meat Hook

The most popular skillshot in Dota 2. Mastering this ability is every pudge fan's dream!


Overview:


Ability: Target point

Damage: 90/180/270/360 pure, depending on skill level.

Range: 700/900/1100/1300 units, depending on skill level.



Whenever you use the meat hook, the actual hook is launched after a delay of around half a second (cannot find the actual delay, would love it if someone helped me out here with the actual value). Also, the hook travels at a speed of 1600 units/second.


This means that you cannot land a hook on a moving target by aiming at it's current position, neither can you count on a standing target to remain standing during the time you cast the hook and it hits the unit.


What this translates into is that you must aim the hook by imagining where the target would be by the time the hook crosses the distance and reaches the target's potential position!


For parallel hooks, you must judge whether your hook range will be enough to catch the target by the time it reaches the target location. For this I always click a little ahead of the target while aiming the hook, as it is always assured that the hook will pass through that point.




For perpendicular hooks, you must judge the velocity of the moving target and accordingly hook slightly ahead of it (assuming the target isn't trying to juke you by jumping left and right. For that, you may fake hook i.e. start to hook but use the stop command just before it launches, to make them move first, and then use your hook).




While judging this does need a bit of practice for moving targets because each hero has his/her/it's own movespeeed and skill movement (such as Blink or Waveform), a slight amount of brain work is also required to land the hook for most targets.


For example, if the enemy hero is last hitting and you are in a position to hook them if your creeps weren't blocking you, you should wait until the enemy is killing your last creep. Launch the hook as soon as he delivers the final blow and removes the creep out of your way to land a very hard to dodge surprise Meat Hook.


I would love to explain how fountain hooking is done, but that has been patched (and the alternate methods of doing it haven't been confirmed), so I do not feel the need to explain it. Newer players will never feel the thrill of landing a fountain hook in a pub game :'(



If there is any other aspect of using Meat Hook I missed, (other than the practice, which cannot be done here) please feel free to tell me.

THIS GUIDE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

The first skillshot miniguide I posted was for Meat Hook.

I intend to add mini guides for the following:


Powershot

Hookshot

Skewer

Sacred Arrow


and any other (essential or difficult) skillshot that may be mentioned in the comments.


Please be patient, I will certainly complete the guide within a week or so. Any constructive feedback from the community will be highly valued.


Thank you for reading.

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