Dota 2: all you need to know about the game

Dota 2 is an online game known and played by thousands of people all over the world. It requires a mix of mathematics, timing, variables, problem-solving, predictions, teamwork, and intuition. Dota 2 players have to learn how to make quick decisions, with millions of dollars on the line.

The main goal is to kill the enemy’s Ancient before they find yours. To start off, the players have to choose a character to play with, also known as a hero. There is a variety of 100 unique heroes to choose from, and they all have three different attributes: agility, strength and intelligence. Each one of them brings different elements throughout the game

 

How to play the game

The game starts with two teams of five players each. Just like most MOBA games, after the player chooses a hero in Dota 2, that same hero will be on the selected team and, consequently, unavailable for drafting for the other team. Any hero can level up with their skills and fill multiple roles.

Going a little deeper on the heroes’ attributes, agility means they want to buy items that increase their attack speed and the damages to the enemy; strength is for the heroes who are usually better at surviving damage and want to be in the front setting up fights, and intelligence is for those who are able to stay between aggressive burst and defensive abilities.

Apart from that, each hero has four skills to level up. The strongest skill generally defines the hero and it all gets challenging when you have to figure out how to use them all in tandem with your team.

There are two game modes for beginners: Single Draft, where the game chooses three heroes randomly (one from each attribute mentioned above), and the player gets to select from these choices instead of having to decide between over 100 options of heroes. This game mode helps the player learn a small set of heroes at first. The second option is All Pick, the most popular game mode for both ranked and unranked public matchmaking. It lets players select any heroes from the entire pool, as long as it hasn’t been chosen by the other team.

Whichever the mode you choose to play, the game itself is divided into three phases known as the Early Game, the Mid Game and the Late Game.

 

Early Game

The Early Game starts at the very beginning of the game and it lasts about 20 minutes of in-game time. There is about a minute of dead time at the start, and both teams can keep moving around the map freely. You can take this time to buy some starting items, like Iron Branches, Tangoes and a Healing Salve in case of emergency. After getting your items, you can go to one of the lanes staying on your team’s side of the map.

There are three lanes: top, middle, and bottom. They spawn a sort of “lane creeps” every 30 seconds and run down each lane for both teams, attacking any non-friendly units along the way. Once the creeps spawn, the game officially begins. Both teams meet in the middle of each lane to attack each other. It is important to know that in the Early Game creeps are stronger than heroes, and will easily kill them in minimum time.

 

There is a unique mechanic in Dota 2 called “denying creeps”, that is when heroes attack their own creeps. This means that any enemy heroes around will get no gold from the creep since they will be unable to land the killing blow themselves. In this case, they receive a drastically reduced amount of experience from denied creeps, while the team that scored will receive 30% of the experience.

 

Mid Game

After the first phase comes the Mid Game, when teams move around the map and begin to push and destroy towers. This is when most heroes will be more liven to take fights and teams will start engaging each other in full five-on-five clashes, focusing on gaining more gold and experience. The more towers you destroy, the more gold you get.

Map control is another advantage that pushing towers gives you. This will give you the ability to see your opponents’ movement and go wherever you want without being detected.

The Mid Game is a good phase to analyse the enemy’s moves, knowing where you expect the opponent or the fights will be. The last aspect that defines the phase is that there will be a lot of ganks that often involve up to three heroes – depending on how much damage you need to get a kill.

<h3> Late Game </h3>

 

The Late Game starts on the 40-minute mark and continues until the end. It is all about winning fights and pushing towards the Ancient. The place where these fights happen depends on a few factors, and the last fight of the game involves destroying the enemy throne.

Because of the increased respawn timers for each hero, mistakes also tend to be punished more heavily in this phase. Even the smallest mistake can change the match, especially if the team who’s winning or gets a key pickoff can capitalize by pushing a lane.