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Ghost

Warnings : 4

Godlike Posts: 2176 Joined: 01 Jan 2007 gold

Ghost's Guide to... DotA. v6.54b

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 8:40 am

Contents (Ctrl+F worthy list [ the subheadings do not correlate exactly ] )

1. Introduction

2. Farming

3. Denying

4. Harassing

5. Proper use of Spells

6. Tit for Tat

The Experimental Farming Style

7. Jungle

8. Ganking 101

9. Juking 101

Introduction and Explanation

10. Mind Games 101

11. Creep Blocking

12. Mini-map

How to Use Your Minimap

13. Items

14. Using Multiple Units

15. Warding

The Narnians Guide to Warding

16. Orb Effects

Malle's Orb Tables

17. Exterior Programs

18. Special Thanks

The List

1. Introduction .
First I would like to thank you for opening this page, whether or not you read it, I don't mind.
Feedback is appreciated but not necessary.
I would however like to outline a few rules for this thread (my thread my rules ^_^).
All of this has been taken directly from the thread entitled "Rules!" and been edited minorly to suit me.

1 - Avoid lame one-liner posts.
2 - Absolutely NO (harsh) Flaming. (words such as idiot and noob i can handle, go into some vulgarities and you will be reported deleted and warned/banned)
3 - Think before you post (I can't stress this enough)
4 - If you plan on telling me I suck, justify it or risk getting owned (by mods) and expect some retaliation from me

As you have probably worked out, I am Ghost (here Threads- over there but you needn't worry bout that) and this is a guide to well... DotA.
With that out of the way you can now start reading this chunk/pile/wall/mountain of text.
at the end of quite a few sections there are replays, in actuality there are only 5 so don't go getting the same one twice, get the replay if you don't fully understand something or just feel that it would make more sense if you saw it being done, the may eventually be some pictures as well.

2. Farming .
Farming is best described as killing things for gold and there are several ways to do this, some are better then others and some serve different purposes better.

Auto-Attack: you are at the creeps and you press "a" then click an area near the fight, your hero will then run in and start swinging randomly, when the creep you are fighting dies, you will move onto the next creep.
this is probably the worst way you can possibly farm, it is unreliable and stupid, it leaves you open and doesn't get you very much gold, late game or if you plan on pushing this is very effective but not for the gaining of gold.

Last Hit: Getting the last hit on an enemy creep is done by running backwards and forwards (to avoid being harassed) while waiting for an enemy creep to go into "red" life then taking the final swipe giving you gold and a small experience bonus.
as long as you are not pushing this is definitely the preferable option, it leaves you harder to harass due to constant movement and gives you more gold which in turn gives you more items giving you more damage hopefully leading to victory.
If you have a hero with a castable orb effect (small cooldown)

(clinkz/viper/drow/silencer) you can manual cast them to make you last hit do more damage which increases your chance of killing the creep.

3. Denying .
ad the beginning of the game type -di (host does this after entering the game mode) this allows you to see when a unit is denied by making a "!" appear when the unit dies.
Denying is much like Last Hitting but done to your own creeps. When one of your creeps goes into "red" life press "a" then select you creep to run forwards and attack it. You can start attacking your creeps when they reach 50% of their life and you can Deny ally heroes when they are under an effect that may kill them such as Poison Dagger and Doom.
attacking creeps at 50% is a good idea if you feel you are pushing to far as it allows you to pull the creeps closer to your tower (within attack range) making it harder/riskier for enemies to harass you and harder for them to deny (it does make last hitting harder for you as a drawback)

Spells that Deny include:

Dark Ritual
Infest
Conversion
Death Pact

4. Harassing .
To harass is to annoy, this is done attacking the enemy hero, making him take damage and hopefully enough to eat any of his potions making him/her play safe (not last hitting or denying) or even better, heal.

Early game (contrary to popular belief) is not about getting first blood, it is about getting a massive level advantage (there are some exceptions) this makes a forced heal preferable to a kill. as early respawn time is small and they can buy a portal scroll and come back quickly (although it does give a rather nice exp bonus the other way is better.)
Some things to take into account while last hitting are that creeps and towers will automatically focus fire on you the instant you issue the attack command on a hero, this makes harassing harder for melee heroes without windwalk or a spammable spell.

Heroes with orb effects (clinkz/drow/harbringer/enchantress/silencer/viper) can manual cast them on heroes without enemy creeps/towers from shifting their targets.
if you harass too much however you enemy will call for a laneswap or a gank, ganks are bad as you generally end up dead and that is never a desirable outcome.

replay with plenty of early game harassing
zues pro spammer

5. Proper use of Spells .
Nukes. Classified by an instant damage spell with a damage/cost ratio of 2/1 or greater. If the spell does a large enough damage over time (similar to Poison Dagger) it is also considered a nuke as well as a support and probably slows.
They are what they are, aim to spam these through the art of mana regeneration and clarity potions, they hurt people, enough said? If you are an Agility or Strength hero these spells are probably close to non existent on you and should be reserved for a bigger combo. nukes can be used to farm providing you have the mana/regen to support it.

Support. These spells heal stun and change move speed, while their damage isn't big/existent, the damage they allow you to do with the effect they provide is generally bigger than that of a nuke, the drawback is you probably will take more damage than you would have if you simply nuked.
Support Spells can be both offensive or defensive.

Disable. More often then not (with the exception of stuns and dual disable [ self and enemy ]) these do NO damage the bright side here is the enemy can't move and failing that, can't attack, these are often chained through items and prevent enemies from fighting back while you chip away at their health (or completely obliterate it.)

spells that silence are great as you can combine this with spell anticipation (elaborated under mind games) if juggs uses blade fury he will spin spin spin, little known the most people it silences non item spells on him and thus he cannot omnislash straight away...
what does this mean?
well if you target a spell such as hex or storm bolt on him it will say "cannot target this unit" so all you need to do is keep spamming it, eventually he will stop spinning and immediately be stunned, while in this state, he cannot target another spell, so what do you do? chain him (this is why hex is great) as he is silenced, take time, hit him around and as soon as it ends tap the hotkey and click on him again to use your next disable (lol for lion, rhasta and bane here) anyway i hope you can see what i am getting at here, silencing spells are invaluable in you arsenal.

Area of Effect. These spells are great, they can be support, nukes or disables and are very useful to any game play.
While their damage is generally weaker (still greater than 1/1) their ability to make multiple units take damage makes it x/1 (x being the number of units involved) if they are nukes they are the best non ultimate farming spells in the game.
when casting an AoE stun on a hero aim to cast it behind him so if he moves he gets hit anyway, but make sure it will hit the hero if it doesn't move (units in AoE will be green'd)

Ultimate Notes:
Omnislash, Eclipse should not be used around enemy creeps and chainfrost should be used when there is a minimum number of creeps.
Wrath of Nature should be spammed as much as possible on creeps but ideally when you can see enemy creeps in every lane on the minimap.

Casting Animation Canceling:
If your hero has a very large animation on spell casting (Crystal Maiden and KotL spring to mind) you can cancel their animations by simply issuing another command after the effect starts.

how not to use zues' ultimate (fail on weaver)

6. Tit for Tat EXPERIMENTAL FARMING METHOD .
Tit for Tat is an early game survival method that I would like to lay claim to have developed and coined over the past few years..
Fundamentally it could be considered a mind game, but this one less less dangerous and is used to farm/deny/harass throughout early and mid game.
the sole purpose is to establish dominance over the enemy, you must last hit as often as possible, whatever you do DON'T DENY. yes this sounds like a really stupid idea but I swear it works for me, the instant the enemy denies 1 creep, you deny 2, if he harasses you, harass back, twice as hard, but nothing foolish.
this embeds in the psyche a sense that, anything he does will be mirrored but better, they will slowly let up on harassing and denying, eventually stopping altogether allowing you to farm freely, when this starts to happen start to deny you creeps rather than last hit his, establishing further dominance.

method works best for solo vs solo (same attack range-ish) and solo vs two*
however if you are ranged it also works very well in solo* vs two

7. Jungle .
Jungling is also known a neutral creeping, at 2:30(3:00 -rd/xl) game time creeps will spawn at set locations in the forest.
every 30 seconds starting from 2:00 game time (3:00 in -rd/xl) sentinel and scourge creeps will spawn and start their march up your lane.
This is the basis for early game creeping/jungle. About 15 seconds into your creeps march [ about 2:45 ] run into the forest and find the closest creep camp and attack one of them once. Having done that run them to near the exit of the forest and have one attack you, your creeps should now follow them back to their creep camp or duke it out where they are.
Use your amazing last hitting skills to steal the gold from your allied creeps (because they don't need it) then try to get back you your tower in time to divert the enemy creeps from your tower to you and then your creeps. by the time you finish them your next creep wave may have arrived providing you with a double wave to push with. Repeat this process every time the green dot reappears on your minimap.
the best creep pullers in the game are Spectre with spectral and Mirana with Elunes Arrow as they can both be aimed roughly at creep creep camps and (provided they hit a creep) will make them come to you no matter what.

Middle Game and Late Game creeping is mainly done by a hero with lifesteal or some fast killing AoE spells. It is a great alternative to killing normal creeps as it allows a lane mate to gain some solo exp while you gain about as much nearby leaving you free to assist if your ally feels the need to kill or the enemy tries something on your ally.
pick a route of between 5-6 creep spawn and start running in loops killing them with every respawn. If you are Jungling FORBID allies from creeping where you are is it will result in both of you being under leveled and cost alot of gold. Killing ancient creeps (near sentinel and scourge shops) should be done as often as possible as they provide much larger bounties. This is harder than it seems because they are also allot stronger often with some pretty good special abilities (evasion, cyclone, big life, big damage)
if you can handle them i would encourage it but you also need to be able to do it with some good speed.

If you know the host (and are on hosts team) a cheap little tactic is to claim that you are going "afk 10 mins" (or something similar) while in this state it is forbidden that you are seen creeping or assist allies or the game is up.
while they think you are afk they tend to be slightly more aggressive pushers but avoid team conflicts for fear they will loose because of being out leveled. After 10 minutes you can tell them you are back or surprise them by jumping out with at the same level as their solo.. And grab a double kill.

single creep pull with dagger
the meaning of jungle
some more chen (I like chen)

8. Ganking 101 .
To gank is to put an enemy hero into a very unfair situation, likely resulting in their death.
Ganking is normally always done by attacking a lone hero with multiple heroes (because 2 is better than 1) and ideally killing the enemy, giving you experience (possibly gold) and stealing some of their gold whilst limiting their experience.

The musts of ganking
Bring a stun or a slow.
if they can blink or windwalk bring a silence.
have some way to kill them quickly.
time your moves well.
kill. a failed gank is not worth it, if you don't think you can kill them don't try

PLEASE be aware of the creep march timing, there is nothing worse than sneaking up on an enemy hero and have some ghouls start attacking you, giving away you position and signaling the enemy to make a break for it.

some ganks and lost of failed ganks
Bristleback Gank (lots)
chen gank assister
zues gank spam

9. Juking 101 .
Juking is the art of forest evasion using the terrain to mask your movement by taking an unpredictable path around trees that hides you from enemy vision VIA fog of war.
be aware that most projectiles home and unfortunately they can be followed by your enemies if they managed to get one off.

juke at scourge shops

Pictures coming soon to show the best juking areas.

10. Mind Games 101 .
Mind Games aren't very cryptic and basically all you are doing is getting inside their head, making them do stupid things and partially dictating their moves. You do need to pay very good attention as these sometimes always put your heroes life in danger. These should not be attempted by noobs.

First take a look at your heroes, how do they play? are they aggressive (harass lots)? do they tower hug? do they merely sit next to their ranged creep? do they attack creeps wanting to push a tower early?
These are all factors that will determine how you play this game.
noob like behavior is most certainly a good thing, just be aware that you are not a noob and therefore should not die like one... play the role of a very lucky noob

Then you can move onto the next bit, the mind games.

Baiting:
You are on low life, you have either a stun/slow/nuke/heal on the ready what you are aiming to do is make the enemy think they can kill you making them run at you (and your tower) and attack. This will set off all nearby creep AI to start relentlessly attacking the enemy hero. This is where you pull out your stun/slow and let you creeps do some dirty work or you heal up and make your enemy have second thoughts.
when following this technique however there is a very fine line between success and stupidity, if they have lich, chances are he will be using dark ritual + nova combo, he will kill you. pay attention to mana because if they stun you before your retreat you are probably going to die.

Tower Retreats:
here you attack the enemy hero like a complete loony, in turn setting off their creeps AI the instant they start to attack you retreat, chances are the enemy will then follow you but as it is early game, they will give up at your tower, this is when you turn around and start attacking them again. This is best when done by a ranged hero. Can be done merely if they start attacking you first (in fact this is better), retreat and have them follow you then turn and hammer away at their HP.
you should probably take some form of heath regeneration when attempting this.

Skill anticipation:
If centaur runs at you, what do you think is going to happen...
a) he stomps
b) he attacks you once
c) he hugs you
anticipate what he does, the answer is clearly (a) as it allows him to damage via the stop then damage you further with normal attacks. if he runs at you walk back a bit then when you see his animation for stop start run further away resulting in his loss of mana.
If you are on low life and Stealth assassin hits level 6 there is plenty of money on him turning up just behind you any second, if you have a directed single target stun/hex select it then start spamming the button on the area just behind you. When and if he does decide to attack you, he will be instantly stunned allowing you to follow up with a potentially killer combo. (hex, ward, shackles, lightning)

Illusion Baiting:
Get an illusion rune then get it down to about 50% life on some neutral creeps.
Find yourself an enemy hero and hint at your illusions existence by allowing glimpses through the trees.
statistically your target or one of your targets allies will see the illusion and start pinging it and decide to gank you. By this time you should start having the illusion run away into the forest (making sure to keep out of range) and keep running away allowing them to see where you are going until it is about to expire then juke to seemingly disappear completely.
a competent enemy will see you the first glimpse but when you treat your image as a real hero, the enemy will hopefully believe it is real and waste a couple of spells on it.

Special Mention:
Both Ashka and Magina have the ability blink.
If you select blink then click a location near the enemy and start spamming "s" you will animation cancel giving them the initial animation but not actually blinking, putting your spell on cooldown or using your mana.
This is very annoying and is enough to drive enemies mad as they think you are about to blink.

plenty of baiting early game
Bristleback (signature imba damage reduction) mind games
zues bait and spam

11. Creep Blocking .
Creep Blocking is the art of slowing your creeps progress, this keeps the creeps closer you your tower making it easier to last hit and deny.

To block your creeps wait near the first tower outside your base and as you creeps are coming past step in front of them and start moving towards your tower occasionally tapping "H" once then immediately ordering to move towards you tower again.

Alternately as the creeps are coming past you first tower move on front of them and start to zigzag, continue this until you reach you tower.

There are 2 exceptional creep blockers, they are Prophet and Earthshaker

At level 1 grab prophet sprout and wait outside your base when the creeps spawn immediately cast sprout on the more compact group and head towards your final tower blocking any creeps who make it out.

Earthshaker runs on a similar principle but you are aiming to divert them. Stand outside your base on the side of the ramp and when creeps spawn cast fissure to block them off proceed to your last tower.

pictures/replay with creep blocking coming soon

12. Minimap .
The minimap is what it says it is, a mini map.
Heroes are big dots on the minimap and creeps are small.
if you see a big dot where it shouldn't be, ping it with alt+click and add a small message saying "<colour or hero> care <lane they are closest to or a headed>" or something similar to that.
if you pass a rune, ping it and mention what it is.
if you are going to initiate a gank, ping it say "ganking <hero> be ready <allies/lane>"
never spam pings as it annoys the f**k out of anybody on your team. and the instant Roshan respawns, ping him then ward or kill.

13. Items .
To use an item in your inventories active ability you simply need to click on it. Items that you need to use faster should be placed in the top slots and items with no abilities in the bottom.
You can also use the number pad to activate items but i find that it is quite out of the way and not really where i want to go when buttons are in need of some quick pressing.

When fighting Necromicon: Do not land the killing blow on the blue summon, unless you can handle 200/400/600 damage as a penalty. The 100 bonus gold is nice.

When using Hand of Midas: use it as soon as it cools down, aim to be near a high level neutral creep at the time, failing that you always use it on an enemy melee creep.

Highest Hand of Midas Gold Given

(taken from http://www.dota-allstars.com/wiki/Midas)

14. Controlling Multiple Units .
There are very few time where you will find yourself controlling multiple units they are: when using Chen, Enchantress, Beast Master, Dirge or Broodmother or using the items Helm of the Dominator and Necronomicon.

Tab is a godsend here as it allows you to swap between multiple units/subgroups (for multiple units) that you have selected.

You can hotkey units or groups of units with ctrl+1-9.
Hotkeying a courier is always a good idea, you can hit the hotkey, then click on the portrait of your animal to quickly center on the base for item buying.
You do not need to hotkey heroes as you can reach them by pressing F1 (F2, F3, and F4 for meepo) but i like to do it anyway (as group 1) sometimes as it is easier to reach the number 1 than F1

Avoid feeding summons such as Necro'lic's revenants, Furion's Treants, dirges Zombies, Chens Converts as they give a nice amount of experience and gold.
Spiderlings and Spiderites can be fed to any hero (pudge is the exception as flesh heap > spiderlings) as they spawn in such great numbers but give minimal amounts of gold and experiance.

Some facts about controlled creeps
* Controlled creeps can be easily killed with Devour (Lucifer - Doom Bringer) and Hand of Midas.
* Hand of Midas doesn't work on creeps dominated with Helm of the Dominator
* Creeps dominated by Helm of the Dominator can be heavily damaged by Purge (Diffusal Blade, Medusa - Gorgon and Satyr Trickster)
* Ancients can't be dominated.
* Roshan can't be dominated
* Roshan spawns immediately at the start of the game.
* Roshan respawns 10 minutes after dying.
* Neutral creeps spawn every minute (starting at 2:00)
* Most Ancients are spell immune
* Creeps will not spawn at their camp spots if there are remains of any corpse. The trigger that's used to activate spawning is that the area is completely empty (wards prevent spawning).

USEFUL units you may end up controlling and their abilities:

Kobold Taskmaster (Level 2)
HP 400, Damage 24-27, Range 100, Armor 0
Speed Aura (+12% Movement Speed to Nearby Allies)

Gnoll Assassin (level 2)
HP 370, Damage 28-36, Range 500, Armor 1
Envenomed Weapon - 2 damage for 20 seconds

Forest Troll High Priest (Level 2)
HP 450, MP 300, Damage 25-32, Range 600, Armor 0
Heal (5 Mana) - Heal 15 HP

Satyr Hellcaller (Level 6)
HP 1100, MP 300, Damage 49-55, Range 100, Armor 0
Shockwave (100 Mana) - 100 damage in a line
Unholy Aura (+3 HP regen to Nearby Allies)

Satyr Soulstealer (Level 4)
HP 600, MP 400, Damage 24-27, Range 100, Armor 1
Mana Burns (50 Mana) - Burn 100 mana

Satyr Trickster (Level 2)
HP 240, MP 200, Damage 7-10, Range 600, Armor 0
Purge (75 Mana) - Slow by factor of 5 for 5 sec

Centaur Khan (Level 5)
HP 1100, MP 200, Damage 49-55, Range 100, Armor 4
Hoofstomp (100 Mana) - Stuns 2 seconds, 25 damage, 200 AoE
Endurance Aura (+20% Attack Speed to Nearby Allies)

Polar Fulborg Ursa Warrior (Level 5)
HP 1100, MP 300, Damage 49-55, Range 100, Armor 4
Clap (100 Mana) - Stuns 2 seconds, 25 damage, 200 AoE

Unfortunately i do not know the exact stats to the new creeps but when i find them i will make sure they are listed, i can say however that good units to find are the...

Ghost (ice attack, casted orb attack 20% slow)
Alpha Wolf (command aura +20% damage(i think))
Dark Troll Warlord (ensnare 1.5 seconds and summon skeletons)

chen multi unit control

15. Warding .

As there is a MASSIVE well written guide to this already, I will leave a link.
The Narnian's comprehensive guide to Warding
this is slightly outdated but should keep you covered as the essentials have not changed much.

16. Orb Effects .
These tables are not mine, they were made by Malle at Dota-Allstars.com.

HERO ORB EFFECTS

ITEM ORB EFFECTS

17. Exterior Programs .
I do not condone hacking in anyway but a couple of non-hack programs that deserve a mention are:

Inventory A+
I use this, all it does is re-route some keyboard commands (makes it think you are pressing something else)
basically.
` = toggle heathbars (it is like a permanent alt)
alt + q/w/a/s/z/x = activate inventory slot 7/8/4/5/1/2
thats pretty much it, I highly suggest it.
it can be downloaded HERE
AS OF WARCRAFT III PATCH 1.22 - this add on is slightly more limited in use as you don't need health bar toggle.
if using 1.22 you are better of with dota keys, unless you are lazy (like me)

DotA Keys
I do not use this as i have found it too hard to set up, it is probably better then Inventory A+ as it allows you to also configure skill hotkeys to anything you want (q/w/e/r is suggested) if you feel you can't hover over hotkeys well enough get this but be prepared to be annoyed whilst setting it up.

18. Special Thanks .
Having finished writing this i would like to thank caspican for his guide to warding, yukino_silvermaine for the link to orb effect tables, Shimrra_3 for not going spaz at me for not playing DotA with him and reminding me to add some stuff (more typing I hate you) the guy who wrote THIS
I did change it slightly. And you fools for reading it/suggesting sections to add making this the most complete Guide to general DotA play in existence.

If you feel that any work here is yours and you are not given due credit please contact me (with proof) for your name to be added to the thanks list of have the work removed.
if it is similar (but not too similar) be aware that as this is a very specific vague guide containing everything so there are bound to be some similarities.

Due to the invention of DotA Wiki, this guide is practically useless.
I am however going to maintain it and try add things that Wiki doesn't know.
_________________
The zombie octopus puppet master says comply .

Can people send me any good .54 clockwerk replays.

Last edited by Ghost on Sun Aug 10, 2008 11:34 am; edited 13 times in total