How to improve your gameplay - part 2 Awareness and insights

How to improve your gameplay - part 2 Awareness and insights

Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:34 pm

Okay this is the next part of the articles I was gonna write. It took about two weeks because the previous stuffs I wrote was kinda badly received probably because of the way I wrote it and I forgot to update. Nonetheless I intend to depart from advancing game basics because I saw most people do badly in lane and awareness and insight can aid people in understanding gameplay in mid-late.

Game awareness levels

You can break dota down into many levels. It is an exceedingly complex game if examined right.

Unit Basics
First of this is unit basics. A beginner may not remember unit basics but will know it by playing the hero. For example we know tiny has slow attack and high base damage and 0 armour. Next we know the stats of other heroes present in the game, their approximate hp, mana and movespeed. This is a really low level analysis of the game and will be understood by anyone but is important in our game because it enables us to exact judgement upon situations like when to last hit, how much harass we can withstand and whether we can take them in a 1 on 1 hitting match.

Hero knowledge
Next are our abilities. This can actually get complex because a skill has many functions and some may never be looked upon. Many people gauge heroes based on a certain skill. Take this for example, pudge has a hook. It can damage and save players. This skills is in and on it's own a skill of pudge but it doesn't make the hero until you look at the entire skillset. Without knowing the rest of the skillset we can only determine pudge is a hero that picks a guy out of a fight. When we complete our knowledge with rot and eat, we know he is a hero killer. Many people entirely miss out on the concept of heroes by emphasizing an incomplete portion of the skillset. Prime pick is spectre, she is so often mistaken for a chaser just because she has a dagger. While she can be played as an aggressive chaser, she is in essence a dedicated farmer because she can't AOE for crap to farm and can tp into a fight so she can farm 24/7.


Low level strategies
We can look at low level strategies next. When i talk about strategy, I mean lane choice, builds and minor counters. I will call this low level strategies because on a whole it is insignificant in a 1/10 player case. It is interchangeable, it is copied by many players. Our league build for sven is stormbolt stats to 9 then gs at 10-11 cleave after with bkb treads and armlet/mom . You can be a beginner, you can be a noob, you can be a pro, either way you can copy this build. It is a standard and players of any level are indistinguishable by only looking at this. With this complete knowledge of the hero in itself and a fair few other heroes, we know what's good against what. We know one hero counters and viper in mid will rape void in mid. We also know heroes that build diffusals regularly can be good against broodmother.

Playstyle
Next comes our playstyle. Aggressiveness, what to do in a certain situation, focus on a specific area. This is what defines players. It can also separate good and bad players because better players in dota tend to be well rounded. Some players have bad traits etc they idle too much, they don't have map presence, they don't apply pressure.


Lane awareness
Our next levels of awareness are on the lane itself, what it can do, what it can't and how it will fare based on available spells, available other lane spells like clockwerk missile or sunstrike, base damage and hp of heroes.

Lineup awareness
Next comes our lineup and enemy lineup awareness. This is where we understand what each team is capable of and know the lineup counters and countermeasures to close the gap to superior lineups. A hero counter is not a lineup counter necessarily. Picking medusa vs omniknight is not a complete counter. Finally we have our complete game awareness, our understanding of the "metagame".

Metagame
Metagame is difficult to describe but I would define the way we perceive the game is and what is a superior play irrelevant of what is being played in the game we are in itself. Understanding of items and every hero and plays and strats.

Concluding this section, this is the basis of how strategies are developed. Most experienced players are knowledgeable on every level from the minute we step into the game. But fully understanding some portions will enable us to understand how to potentially play better. We have to combine playstyle and hero knowledge with strategies to define our individual play. We also have to take into account awareness on the higher levels to coordinate the team style and develop item counters, who to gang and where to shut them down so we have less problems from them later. On an individual low level strats enable our playstyle and our playstyle was developed for the strategy. When you understand this you can develop your own builds for any way you decide to play.

More walls of text - individual hero play

With our understanding of the metagame, we can play and port anything anywhere. Even if it's incomplete, we can know many things and play heroes many ways so the game never gets boring.

Take bounty hunter, he is perceived as a dpser that can chase and finish. We know he does spammable burst damage and can track invis. This is minor info on the hero. So how to put this into use? Fairly easily. We pick our ww and toss to maximize damage. Now with our knowledge of finishing abilities and good ganging, we pick nice dps items and bottle with stats items to stack hp/mana/dmg and boots for ms. We spend the game farming our core, putting track on invis and ganging the low hp heroes because we know they will die in a well executed gang. We shut down problem enemy heroes with repeated gangbangs based on our knowledge of lineup vs lineup and buy sentries to counter theirs. This is our build and strat.

Now comes our play choice. We can ricefarm solo for our dps items and kill later, we can go double lane and spam shurikens to get kills and shut down the lane itself while lightly killing the adjacent lane. We can solo mid quick dagon to maximize our bounty from track and we can play roaming with rune abuse. Each of these plays fulfill the hero role and can ruin some games entirely if played with the correct team and against certain lanes. In the course of this play, we have to be exceedingly aggressive to score kills or no kills = no bounty = wasted time. Understanding the hero and game in it's entirety opens up many options to playing the same hero and understanding which one to use will improve your game so much.

Other examples include:

shadow fiend : ganging with runes + farm, ricefarm, and babysit farm with a healer

axe : solo with battlehunger (lol), jungle, half jungle, double with call, roaming.

sandking : roaming, double stun, solo with caustic.



Understanding playstyle and it's function in our game

A playstyle as mentioned before defines the player. I will divide this into gang/carry/support for simplicity. Gangers walk around creating kills in a 3v1 situation. Although it isn't really a gang, a ganger can also be a 1v1 killer. Carry are the types that either carry from the start and farm up big or farm big then kill everyone with their items. Supports are players who can bitch for their team, feed to meat shield, take less farm and play for the team. So you could say gangers play with the team, carries as the team, support for the team. These roles have no clearly defined boundaries as a ganger can be a carry and a support can be a ganger.

Now to improve the style and way in game. Carry players are generally the most skilled players if they play both types of carries. The important thing to remember when playing a carry is farmrate and map control. You need to farm a lot(speed is of the essence), without it you are useless. A key way to play this style is learning how to gain gold under pressure. You need to know where to farm to be safe and hard to gang while knowing how to open up map control. This is attained by taking part in a 5x5 fight even with less items. If your team is one down you can stand to lose territory easily. You can also solo kill because with less players on the other team they have less resources to shut you down with.

Gangers have to be very aggressive, sometimes even suicidal. You need to be able to gauge tower damage and have good insight into a fight; know what they are capable of and what your team is to minimize your losses while getting away with the kill. Farming knowledge is good as well because you need items to be viable in midgame or late.

Supports have to learn to control their farm. They mustn't steal kills so they have to learn to walk around with nothing and less levels, buy wards and still contribute in a fight. This isn't to say they are a sacrificial lamb but they should be given less gold priority simply because even with it they are less efficient than others in the team.


So the binding or similar characteristics of all these styles is to learn to play without farm. Not every game will go well and you will get owned some games and other games you will have 20k worth of items. So rely on your heroes, normal attack, your resourcefulness in juking, abilities and runes. That is all, if you can't do this, when you suffer under pressure you will lose definitely.

Gang and farm

This is considered a "high-level" skill. The ability to farm while ganging frequently. Okay, not really but it is easily seen in good players and a common characteristic. Know how to balance it and gang where necessary. Creating gangs means you are not farming and farming means you are having no effect on the other team. You have to understand the opportunity costs of both these alternatives to know when you should do what. Personally i think ganging is better in most cases because it gives you spacing and it puts the other team at a disadvantage. Bonus on the side is xp and gold in your picket. There is such a thing as overganging where you keep roaming for kills where none is to be found because a) they have complete vision of the map or b)your team's lineup is not suitable for it at the current game time.


Speedfarming is an important concept in DotA. I don't know who made up this don't get X item because it pushes your lane and you will get ganged. You can go play this if you think so but the thing is no one said to stay in your lane after you "pushed" your lane. No one last hits in midgame, trust me, and sometimes you don't even last hit in early. If you creep a wave really fast you can go do other things in the downtime like ganging someone in another lane.

There is not enough farm on the team to last hit all the time either. Take this into perspective, there are 3 lanes and one neutral per side. If we don't have the upperhand we only have access to our neutral. The enemy has control of one or two lanes. This means you only have 1-2 lanes and one neutral for 5 people to farm. This is why dota as a farmgame is a flawed concept. How to farm? This only applies to heroes with some farming capability because spectre can't farm for crap anyway so she spends 24/7 doing it. Say you have potm or cent. When you see a creepwave clash 1-2 enemy melee creeps are damaged, one very little. Hit the ranged creep once, bring the slightly damaged or one of the untouched ones to half hp by normal hit, then use starfall or stomp. Proceed to auto-attack last hit the last creep. This takes like 5 seconds and you got 4 creeps. Now go repeat on the next wave or go to another lane. Additionally you can go neutral.

Resource Management and alternate actions
Rune abuse (talked about in previous article) to go ganging the adjacent lane or return to kill your lane or dislodge them from the lane. Resource management is very important. Gold is fairly scarce so keep it simple. 2-3 heroes on your team should well farmed above the others. Supports don't do that well with so much farm but some other heroes do so use your knowledge of the game to understand who to give it to. If you have qop, don't steal creeps from your backup carry or main. It's really stupid and you have lategame guinsoo shiva orchid and they have like a maelstrom.

Some side things to mention. This is really basic but a third dimension is pushing. This is where you push up your lane to get more control of the map so you don't have to def as much and/or killing towers and base. When you have finished your gangs or you think it's time to stop farming you can try for tower taking OR roshan. Roshan control is sometimes very important because it is like a tower and you get a free life for one of your heroes.

Understanding this concept leads to versatility in roles and creates map pressure. You can even go on a rampage getting hero kills left and right while remaining the most farmed in the game. This is individual skill.

Weighing your options, Lane control and controlling other lanes
Minor part on this, it's 100% obvious. There are opportunity costs in lane control. Try to balance it. Many time you go another lane to help them out and your lane opponent gets freefarm time so you really have to be down their throats and keep pressure on the necessary heroes.

Executing gangs
Be subtle, if you get a rune people think you went to gang the lane in the direction you walked in. You can double back and kill them instead. If you grab haste, they don't expect you to reach them in 2 seconds so sometimes they get caught off guard backing not early enough. Chain abilities, no two people stun at the same time, use your spells as early as possible. I can't stress this enough, use a spell as early as you can, it cools down and you use it again in the fight. So you have two impales in a fight instead of one. Positioning is important, don't go indirect routes all the time. Example of this is bot scourge tower. If you are sentinel it is sometimes better to appear out of the trees from sent forest instead of walking round the back and getting tower bashed, risking he walks into the river and the guy in mid counters you.


Carry tps. It saves lives. If another lane is getting its ass kicked turn a 2v2 into a 3v2. Similarly, tp out if you are dying. It is better than walking around juking for 2 hours in a forest for no reason. If your teammate is chasing someone, a boots of travels tp can be used to tp ahead of them and catch them.

Sight

Knowledge of enemy positions is important. Scouting gangs etc. Nice tip is to keep an eye on the rune spots at all times for map control. Taking first towers early can also be good because it cuts their sight so you have more angle to gang from. Also keep an eye on their neutrals, it is easy to predict if they are neutralling and you can go kill them in there 2v1.

Taking the base and reflection on current gamestyle

It is worth noting that taking the base is often very difficult. The entrance forces clustering on the part of the invaders while the defenders can spread out on the inside and pour AOE onto the incoming wave. This is often why teams fail in the current version when being too aggressive. Initiation is important but should not be overdone because of current issues without blink dagger and what not. Focus firing without proper positioning can cause your team to get caught with their pants down. This sometimes lead to your allies and you repeatedly dying, their lategamer having time to farm and you slowly lose control until you cannot recover and is then converted into a freewin for your enemies.

Golden rules for 100% easy pushing into a base(common sense):

1)Make sure ALL your heroes are well farmed relative to the other team before taking part in the team fight.

2)Pick off one or two people farming outside the base before sieging

3)Ninja potshots before going in


Don't emphasize push too much , just farm while you have the upperhand to press the advantage. Yea, they have easy creeping with all the creepwaves at their frontdoor BUT remember they have no sight therefore are easier to pick off, have to share the farm, and have no neutrals unlike you.

Lineup

Know what team is good against what. A team of nukers will ruin a team of lategamers and a team of global nukes/damage will counter a team of gangers. tps help too. When you make a team of heroes, make sure you have good synergy, you have some countermeasure to the enemy strat, strong lanes and enough lategame and not too many farm heroes. Have an ideal team so you know what you want to work towards and make sure you have good 5x5. Know who to shut down at the start. Place your good lane against their key heroes. Know who to focus in teamfights and buy items to counter them. Like hex for void and bkb for stuns and silences.


How to know what's good and what's not

Consider the individual aspect of the hero, then consider the entire skill set. Know what are good lineups and whether they would have a place in one, know the items they can use and how easily they get countered. Know the environment dota is played in.


Taking this from another thread is the 6.52 terrorblade. Hate to beat a dead horse but this is important to know because this shows understanding of the game as a whole. I said tb was an overpowered hero and several people disagreed. Okay let's look at the current metagame, blink dagger is removed so stun is nerfed, slow is good and gangs/fights need good ms and slows. No other melee agi boasts a ranged form with minor hp buffer and the ability to farm safely from level 1. No other melee agi could spawn images so reliably and make it like a dd rune hero earlier on. No other melee agi hero had a survival ability like sunder. From what we know, he had high ms and good damage earlier on, and a sunder so he could contribute midgame because he farms fast. He farms stat items to cover the low hp. Soulsteal in lane regens faster than a tango. Then understand this, the previously good heroes like lina are superweak without blink. Even tb has a good chance of taking them on when caught offguard. He could be a solo or a jungler in any lineup. He also pushes towers midgame with images. All his item options were buffed, skadi is cheaper, eagle is cheaper, sny is better. Basic fight looks like this, he spawns ranged images and walks in dpses everyone, sunders the tank/carry and everyone focuses it. Most carries look this monstrous lategame but it was his effectiveness earlier on that made him nerfed. So sny is necessary for him to get a good ms now.

Replay
Continuing league replay fetish
SK v DG 6.52e 1.22
Despite having a bad arrow day Rikka shows map control using potm against SK gaming. Mass bkbs to counter sk's ogre/lion/silencer.

Roaming BH 6.53 1.22
Roaming bounty hunter play by WG-_-Dendi. Good show of how to gangbang heavily at the start while maintaining decent farm. The pressure from Dendi's constant skirmishes led them to heavily outlevel Sentinel while he tracked their main carry - clinkz. Solid play by Pajkatt and noslana too with their str carries. Man1ak goes lothars dagon sand king.

XcN vs Sk 6.52e 1.22 (Recommended replay)
Flawless spectre carry by SK.Loda. Balancing farming with aggressive play to get one up on XcN in every gang and teamfight. Awesome support by Hailo also in the form of lich king, who ended with nothing but bracers, vlads and meka.


Conclusion
To cover the whole thing, try to understand the game with an open mindset and take in everything. Know each aspect of the game. Even if you don't know numbers, heck i don't even know the name of weaver's ult, just know what's good, how to play, balance your play and how to exploit. Develop your own game and go with it. Be modest. If I were to rate myself on a scale of fail to godlike I would say bad to ok.

Don't look too much into this if you think it's "elitist". It is okay if you think so. This can be food for thought then.

Links to other articles
Part 1- The lane
Part 2.5- What's awesome

Last edited by argggh101 on Tue Jul 29, 2008 2:16 pm; edited 4 times in total

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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:50 pm

wow this is a great guide!
thank you so much for sharing.
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There is no best hero in dota. Every hero has his or her place in each game.


I WILL BE A DOTA-MASTER! gotta own them all

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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:07 pm

i need to copy paste this... lol..
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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:05 pm

Good work... very insightful.
Replays are a nice touch, keen to see them.
Thanks.
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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 5:00 pm

Fantastic Article!!!

Helpful for all but the top tier pros

Bring us more! =]
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"His real name is M. Night Shamalamadingdong!: -DJ

-Jeff

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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:04 pm

Thread moved.

Library material.

Update if you can.
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Stupid questions will not be entertained.

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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:01 am

nice
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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:05 am

huh? whoops i didn't notice anyone replied.

now i have to work on editing this grumble grumble

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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 10:42 am

hey, just a OT question,

Do you play competitively?
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What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger...

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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:02 am

Really nice,
Its contributers like you who make DS
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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 12:01 pm

off-topic
lol habublu uve changed ur sig but it is still TOO BIG!
@topic
ty for that it rly helps
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thanks markues for my sig
i can almost speak Japanese now, because ore-wa anime omi-mas a bit too much. ore-wa kakkoii-des :p

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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 12:08 pm

@sfsy1

No, I have never played in a tournament. I was in DXD a while ago for a short time and have played a few random publike games with high level aus and ihcs2 players so it got me interested in playing better. Now i just play low level ih and cw with friends cos my cdkey was borrowed from a friend and my garena broke.

I'd also like to think that this kind of knowledge spans all levels of play.

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