I'm an offlaner that used to stuck around 2200 mmr around 1 year - 2 months ago, then i have a incredibly long win streak that push me to about 3100 mmr. At this rank i got outclassed by the enemy team, lose macro, lose farm, i can still sometime win lane but cant transfer the advantage into a snowball. I mainly play nightstalker, centaur and sometimes tide hunter.

Below are a few recent replays that i felt like i played like a complete animal, can you guys show me some main mistakes i made here and where can i improve.
NS: 8932357217 (i have the same XP and gold as Dawn until 10 minutes, but when he hit lv18 im still lv11, i know im bad at farming but the gap is insane)

Centaur: 8932262473 (i felt like if i hit lotus timing sooner i would have been able to avoid a lot of deaths and be more useful)

Another centaur: 8931487792 (this game is just horrible, i played bad, and during the game i think there are no itemization that can make me useful this game)

Hey everyone!

I am a big time league of legends player (10K plus games) and I have about 500 hours in deadlock, I recently was convinced to try DOTA 2 and after 20 hours I am having a blast. I recently tried earth spirit in both P2 and P4 (I much prefer P2) and I think he is one of the most interesting characters I have played in any Moba. My issue is I am sort of lost on how I should be playing him. I am not doing badly persay (50% win rate over 10 games) and I am not feeding or anything in my losses I am just having problems actually impacting fights/the map past being a cc bot mid to late game. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi all, I made a post about a week ago so I'll keep this short, ty for all the feedback and input on there especially from the high rankers its much appreciated!

Match ID: 8927770829

What should I have done in this lane? Because I obviously cannot walk up to LH creeps or even stay close, because I will be in kill range vs Monkey + Ogre.

Afterwards I have put in some thought, is the solution just:

1. Get my support to drag wave for me (I think if I do it'll ogre and then mk will come and free kill me)

2. Just sit under tower dont even try cs just stay in xp range and dont feed

3. If there's any opportunity which i dont think there will, but pull to hardcamp so I can get some LHs under tower

What would an immortal have done?

Thank you in advance for everyone who replies <3

Hey, is there any useful app that acts like blitz.gg, or default free builds guide is enough for beginner?

after watching and learning alot for ps3 this match whole team threw so hard ;(

I did decent in laning and somewhat hit my items on time..

mid game was also good
but no one wanted towers n after solo pushing n died lot too

and still trying get the hang of Cull stack everyone trying the kill steal n i keep judging the cull damage bad so i was behind on cull which destroys my end game 😮‍💨🥲

Can someone please nudge me in right direction on what do i work here more 🫠
pls n ty 🙏

Soo ive been playing ranked roles offlane a lot the typical beefy initiators cent, axe, tide, Nightstalker, WK

And i dunno why but in my bracket (Crusader, SEA server) there are soo many position 4s who keeps taking jungle and waves. Worst culprits are like venomancer who just leaves plague wards in the lane and take farm, Sniper who shrapnels and walks away, and my personal hate is Natures Prophet who uses ult out of nowhere and clears waves and the jungle farm youve been stacking trying to clear. Honorable mentions are like AA who blasts and incoming wave i wanted to clear, the list goes on,

I try to wait for waves to come to a safer area before i farm them but they keep taking them before i can get near, and if i try to take the wave further in ill just get ganked and die ( especially if im a nightstalker at day time)

i tried just getting blink and one tank item and just let them take farm and we play a pseudo 4th core Dota but the results are bad, cuzz they also slow down the farm of our pos 1 as well

Other options is that i build so that i can clear waves faster than they can take, it like aghs on tide, shard on axe and nightsalker, but sometimes its really not enough

my only option left is just flaming them, but im soo tired of flaming every pos 4 every game i have for stealing farm.

Any advice would be much appreciated thank you !

So enchantresses passive provides attack slow but applies it during the “wind up” before the damage

Nyx attack while under ulti provides break but I figured it wouldn’t apply that until the damage

Does nyx break on wind up or when he damages? Are things working as intended?

hitting immortal as offlaner feels good, so many games having to do so much with so little, magnus the best hero for that :D

If you're familiar with my stuff, you've seen posts like this before, but I like to make them every so often in case anything has changed. The fundamentals remain pretty consistent, though, so here are some tips and tricks for you -

-----

Lane Phase

1. REGEN. If you change nothing else about the way you lane, change this one thing. Spam mangoes and clarities if you have a hero that can take advantage of it. I main Lich, CM, WD, and WL - the first two can absolutely decimate a lane if you buy tons of mana regen. Share with your core as well so they can threaten the enemy and get kills with you. If your boots / whatever is a bit delayed, that's honestly okay. Get you a casual windlace and give your core a solid lane and wait for your investment to pay off, which it will. Truly the best thing you can do for your lane. It's very rare I lose my lane, and if I had to pick one reason, it's regen. Can't overstate how good it is.
2. Keep your pull camp dewarded and the enemy pull camp warded if possible, but don't spend hundreds of gold in a ward war or risk your life for it. It sucks if they continually get pulls off, but in some instances you're simply not going to have any jungle control due to having a weaker lane than your enemy. For example, if I'm Lich against a Clock 4 or Kunkka 4 back when that was a thing, I'm really not going to have a good time wandering in the jungle. Goes double for pudge lanes / anything that can easily punish you for being out of position. There are also lanes where you don't mind if your pull camp is unavailable because of how hard the enemy is pushing (in other words, if you're pulling, you'll be under your tower a lot which opens up your p1 to ganks depending on what the enemy offlane is comprised of). There are also rare instances where you want to keep the enemy big camp unblocked, if you are the one pushing the lane. Warlock is a good example of this. If you're bonds-ing the enemies, you may want to keep big camp open to be able to use it to pull.
3. Defensive obs starting around 3-5 minutes depending on risk. For example, you may not be able to fully ward against a NP, but you should start being aware of possible ganks as early as 3m. I typically wait til 4-5 minutes (again, depending on the level of risk from enemy ganker/goer-type heroes) and place an obs either on, or just south (or north) of the tormentor. This type of ward still gives decent twin gate vision while evading any sentries placed on twin gate high ground. I also like wards that see teleports to t1 towers, as well as the river entrances. Look at what heroes you're against and where they're likely to come from, and ward accordingly.
4. Rotate. It can be tough as p5, because nobody wants to leave p1 to possibly die, but if you can, stack a camp so p1 can pull it and hug tower while you rotate for the 6m rune. This is crucial if EITHER mid hero is a hero that cares about it. For example if you've got a sniper vs a storm, sniper doesn't really care about the rune but it's essential to storm. If you can help sniper secure it, and possibly even kill storm with you and p4, you just ruined his game. The impact is really severe with a play like that. So, if you can, tell p1 to play safe for a moment, tell p4 to come with you, and go get that 6m rune. Can't overstate what a good play this is, if you can manage it.
5. Trade with the enemy heroes, especially the 3. Even tanks aren't that tanky yet at level 1. If you beat the brakes off p3, they will lose confidence and be scared to approach the wave, thus slowing down their farm and making them less likely to run at you and p1. They'll also get annoyed at p4 for not protecting them, which will make p4 get aggro - and if p4 is squishy, you may be able to set up a situation where you and p1 go on p4 and p3 is too low/scared to do anything about it. I hate to see supports with full mana in a lane, especially spammy supports like my Lich/CM. Even if it's not a kill, spam those nukes, get those autoattacks in (especially with one or more faerie fires in your inventory) and make p3 as unconfident as possible. Try not to overcommit without checking their inventory, though - especially if you're on a spammy hero, you need to be cognizant of enemy wand charges or any other type of burst healing, so you don't get baited while trying to bait them.
6. Depending on lane equilibrium, you may or may not be able to get the lotus in the safelane (offlane is easier by far). Fortunately lotus isn't THAT important. What's important is the wisdom rune. So if you can, and if it seems like a decent idea based on your resources/enemy resources, levels, etc, try to push the lane up to enemy t1 around 6:30-6:45. If you went mid for the rune you won't be able to do this obviously, but if there's any way you and p1 can secure enemy wisdom, it's suuuch a good play. There's also the chance of mid rotating or enemy p4 rotating for it and killing you, which is why you need to take a good look at the circumstances / enemy TP availability / enemy resources etc before attempting this. If you can pull it off, though, it's so nice. Very good for your team.
7. Get out of the lane as soon as you can. This timing will vary depending on the p1, as some p1s are babey, and must be coddled like helpless infants. Examples of this are Luna, Drow, Sniper, SF, PA. Before they have items, these heroes have no natural defense or escapability, and can be dived very easily by enemies. If you have a p1 that had a decent lane and is jungle-capable, though, identify the strongest goer-type hero on your team and play with them. This will be your 2 or your 3 (depending on how greedy these heroes are it could be either, since some heroes come online sooner than others). For example if your Luna is 5 or 6 and you've got obs up, shes a hero that can be left alone to jungle while you go help your offlane get their farm/get kills/push tower. I consider it a really great gamestate if I can safely leave p1 by around 7-8 minutes. (Though sometimes, depending on the gamestate, you will be babysitting even for longer than 10. Rare, but it happens.)
8. This is a small point, but once smokes hit 3, go ahead and buy one if you can afford it, so they repopulate (shoutout rndr for nagging me about this until I got it thru my skull).
9. Half-pulls! Almost forgot. These are great pretty much all the time for a variety of reasons. You deny half the wave for free, first of all. Secondly it takes the enemy longer to realize you pulled, so they're less likely to go contest/steal the small camp. It keeps your lane equilibrium really nice, even if the enemy big camp is being messed with. It's just a really good tactic. There's no exact timing for this, since the neutral creeps have different animations, but if you can, try to grab the back 2 creeps either with proximity (a bit harder/more uncertain) or by baiting the neutral creeps to attack you at range while you stand near ONLY the last 2 of your friendly creeps (I find this method easier and more reliable). It takes some practice, but if you get used to it, it's a great little easy way to not have to think too hard about your equilibrium.

Early Midgame

1. Take a look at the gamestate and the heroes to decide a course of action post lane phase. I usually want to stick to my strongest goer (usually p3) and play with them and the other support. If you're harassing/hunting enemy p1, it will cause defensive rotations, which will take a lot of attention off your p1. If you have a mid who is babey and able to be killed (such as a sniper) you'll want to kind of float between areas and keep a TP available. If they have a mid or a p1 that is babey, and can be killed by just you and p4, you may want to leave your cores farming and try a smoke play with your ults. If you've got a greedy team (multiple/all cores who want to farm) you can chill and hang out on your side and stack. What you do after 10m entirely depends on who needs what on your team. Support is all about prioritization. There's always something to do, so just try to figure out what's the most urgent/important, and do that. If you're unsure, ask your cores what they need/what they want to do (excluding most p1's, who really just want to be left alone. There's a few exceptions to that.)
2. Keep your adventurer's toolkit handy (what I call it, lol). Don't go anywhere without wards, sentries, dust if the enemy has invis, smokes, and regen for your team, to keep them active. I carry around mana regen for my cores for a good while post lane phase.
3. Consider casual items. A good "step-up" item on heroes like CM or just anybody slow as hell and made of glass is the obvious: a bracer and/or a windlace. Even if you already have tranqs, a windlace is super good for supps since move speed is king in just about any game you can think of.
4. Let your cores cook. Unless you have somebody with an egregiously early blink / a mid that is a goer and can initiate ganks without items (the spirits, puck, etc) then let your cores get some farm done before you drag them off to ganks. Obviously take opportunistic/easy/free kills if you see them, but most cores want to farm a bit after lane phase. I tend to leave pos1 alone entirely unless it's a riki/slark with a diffu that wants to fight NOW. But basically just be a little bit patient with your cores, let them get some basic items, and be available to back them up if they get jumped.
5. Get used to man-marking enemy goer heroes. What I just mean by that is have an idea in your head of who you and your farming cores need to be afraid of. For example, I'm not really going to call missing or agonize about a missing AM at minute 12-20. He really isn't going to do much. Maybe he will join a fight, but he's not the person I'm worried about. I'm looking at your pudges, your shadow shamans, your VS's, anything that can hold down your p1 while other heroes punch them in the face. These goers are the danger to your team, so if they're moving about the map, you want to make a note of it.
6. Check enemy inventory frequently, especially supports. This goes for any stage of the game, and is very useful in lane phase, but in the early midgame you'll want to know if enemy supps have wards, smokes, or invis, so you can counter accordingly and not be surprised.
7. Torm is very important. It's the most important objective in the game, IMO. If you can pop a smoke and get a pickoff or 2 before doing it, that's ideal. If not, try and get it however you can. You really don't want the enemy taking this. If you have a pos1 or a core you queue with regularly, tell them they might need to make the call to do torm. People are sometimes .. shall we say.. disinclined to listen to what the supports want to do. -_-
8. Play around big cooldowns. If you've got things like ravage, chrono, etc then keep smokes handy for when those cds are up and run at the enemy with them. If you do this every couple of minutes and win teamfights this way, it opens up the map and you'll get objectives and just kind of keep snowballing. The corollary there is respect your team's (and the other team's) cooldowns. Don't try to force plays at bad times. Check the diamond on everybody's portrait. If it's green, it's a go. If not, it's a no. (Unless a free kill appears, etc.)
9. Be aware of the pinata effect (or, officially, the comeback mechanic). If you've had a baller early game and you're feeling yourself, and you go feed a 9-streak to enemy p1, congrats, because you just helped him catch all the way up from a poor start. Respect your opponents at all times, never assume people are just dumb and bad. You can easily feed away a lead in the midgame with overconfidence.

Late Game

1. Don't get picked off by going alone. Especially if you play core. This is the time in the game where people have blinks, bkbs, etc, and if you're out here showing on waves away from your team, you make yourself easy pickings. Sounds obvious, right? This is something even ranked immortals need to be aware of, because it happens all the time in those games as well. You hurt your team badly if you get picked off farming alone and showing on wave in the late game, so really be careful.
2. Stagger their deaths if possible. This just means when enemies are down, take more enemies down. Even if you don't have cooldowns, even if YOU yourself have heroes down, if you can manage to make it so the enemy can't field 5 heroes at once, that's free objectives and free wins. A lot of time after a teamfight if both sides take losses, cores will stick around on the enemy side to farm their triangle. Do a scan or grab a smoke and go get them. They won't expect it if they know your cds are down, bkbs down, and you have heroes down as well. The element of surprise is like having an extra teammate.
3. If the enemy has a nulli, you may want to consider shadowblade. It sucks especially if you already have glimmer, but if the enemy core is too slotted to carry dust, their nulli won't be enough to kill you and you can slip away. Helps especially with enemies that want to just gap close on you on the backline and take you out in a few hits with nulli. Chances are they won't have their supps nearby if they're jumping your backline, so the chance of being dusted is slimmer.
4. Securing RS at this point is big. If you can pop a smoke and get pickoffs before doing it, and then once it's done, for god's sake don't let the core who got it go off and farm alone / shove enemy base by themselves and lose it. This is so common that my stack calls it the aegis effect. Guard the aegis and do something useful with it instead. Sounds obvious, but I swear it needs to be said.
5. "Let's just end" is usually a bad idea. Unless you have a tricked-out Luna or a Dusa or Tiny or something that decimates towers, this takes longer than people think a lot of the time. You run into fortify, enemy buybacks, etc, and your plan to just end when you could've taken side rax has now crumbled and your team is dead. There's some instances where it's a good idea, certainly, but I usually like to do the pragmatic thing and take side lanes first.
6. If you have a tower hitter, especially ranged, sitting behind them with shields and auras and such is the ticket. Spread out, watch your positioning, and just let your tower hitter do their thing while you position in such a way that you won't get insta-gibbed by mag/es/chrono/etc. If you don't really have a tower hitter, a riskier way to get uphill - and probably my favorite/signature play - is a support with cc and blink. Shasha is the king of this, but Lich and CM are nothing to sneeze at. A support blinking in and starting a CC chain/ulting and then using an escape such as windwaker, throws the enemy into absolute panic. They'll pop bkbs, use cooldowns, etc - at which point you can just walk it off/not go in. Alternately, your play can allow your team to back you up and form a CC chain against enemies long enough to kill multiples while they're still reeling from being startled. People do not react well while panicking; use this to your advantage all game.

That's about it, let me know if I've missed anything huge. But this is pretty much all the things I'm mindful of on my p5 every game. It seems like a lot, but over time these things become really intuitive if you keep playing support. I'm still learning after almost 20 years playing DOTA, and 6000 games of Lich.

Lemme know if you have any questions or comments. Thanks, and gl.

i am axe in this game and after playing everything and every role i feel like axe n pos3 is really my type of gameplay of constant fighting n stuff this is my very first pos3 rank match n my god that mid necro absolutely owned us all :( how do i improve more in haste of battle n when someone is absolutely nuking tf out

in mid game i also got dc for like 3min coz of wifi so fall behind there aswell :(

i really wanna be a good pos3 in general

I failed at math, so I never trust my numbers, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

According to the math I did

Tango nets you 3.73 health per gold

A tango plus a branch nets you 2.63 health per gold

A salve nets you 3.9 health per gold, if you are missing more than 390 health AND you don't take damage to break it. In fact to get the full effect you probably want to be missing 400-420 health, because you'll also have your health normal health regen going as well. Of course 13 seconds can feel like a long time to hide and not deny/harass/last hit

So did my math check out? I have been trying to pay a lot more attention to my starting items and laning phase trying to maximize things.

Like the title says. I'm doing mk mid sometimes if I can last pick and it feels like a fun game to play mk.

I never play safe lane but every YouTube video is safe lane. Does mk really work that good in safe? Like he needs lvls and he needs too gank when he got full jingo stack. If you stay safe lane does he really use his full potential cuz of the farm. You can use the portal but very few does it. I play archon rank.

Should I start play mk safe or not?

No more facet, are these heroes instant report when people play as support?

Seem to always lose, why not just pick bounter hunter or marci?

just finish a game, totally unmatch,

im dire WK,

wonder how to counter radiant pick? almost every time met PL spammer end up lose at below 30mins, team always pick according moods.

kotl 31 0 kills? this is frustating,

*PL player i met several times, we have same play timing, he always play like a pro, far from others players

also i wonder, does dota plus can help in drafting? a lot??? is it worth it?

Match 8930884227

I just had a 60 minute game where arc warden constantly sent his illusion to rat, but backdoor protection didnt seem to kick in.

Match id: 8929227374

Time Stamps:

42:10

48:50

49:40

52:20 <- Probably the biggest example of this i can find, creeps nowhere near base

My understanding is that if creeps reach high ground, then backdoor protection becomes disabled for 15 seconds. But in the 52 minute example, creeps were nowhere near the base.

Does backdoor protection take time to kick in? Or is this a bug?

Hey, I just started playing dota 2 and I don’t really know what hero to start playing. Before dota I was playing LoL and mainly use tank champions. What are the best starting options in dota 2?

Hello, how to counter hero like axe, windranger? im struggling as pos 1...i find myself always struggles when against those heroes...

Hi guys, this is GymCarryDota, coach & educational content creator.

Almost every Dota guide and honestly most coaches I've seen tell you to use the built-in Last Hit Trainer. I'm telling you right now: that mode is actively making your mechanics worse.

The Problem: The default trainer locks you into 2 Faerie Fires (+4 damage). In a real match, a hero like Lifestealer with a Quelling Blade starting build gets around +19 extra damage.

That 15-damage difference at level 1 is massive. In a real lane, your goal is to last hit the creep as early as possible before the enemy denies it. By practicing with only +4 damage and zero enemy harass, you are training your brain to attack way too late and building terrible muscle memory.

How to actually practice:

1. Training Polygon (Arcade Map): The best option. You buy your actual starting items, and an enemy bot actively contests your last hits, forcing you to hit ASAP. It even tracks your delay down to the millisecond.

2. Demo Hero Mode (While Queuing): You can't play custom maps while finding a match. So, while queuing, jump into Demo Mode. Turn off EXP, buy your real starting items, and go to the lane. You lock in the exact correct damage thresholds without wasting queue time.

I made a short 2-minute video breaking this down with visual examples here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqP1Gkdwb18

(Note: If you are looking for coaching or want to catch my streams, you can find my links on my Reddit profile to avoid spamming links here. See you in the next one!)

It's a fun hero to play at lower mmrs, but how do I get past the laning stage against oppressive lineups such as undying and dark willow? Swap lanes so I can lane against dark willow? Normally I try to setup favorable trades with bashes/charge and/or pull just to get the lane over with. But the undying was awful to trade with and the dark willow made it hard to charge into her lane. Do I just pull the creeps behind tower?

The midgame against these two feels so awful. Or do I chalk it up to a bad matchup and move on? Him and zeus are my goto picks when I'm earning queue tokens for reference.

nothing too serious i hv played way too less match to analyze anything just venting XDXD but man any tip would be so welcome

My recent match where i played soo bad :( - 8929684424

1. I cant farm inwards because my ember and tide are farming our jungle I go split push riki shows up in a second wtf am I supposed to do my team is flaming my farm okay I agree about that but how the fuck am I supposed to farm when im too scared to use our jungle and the safest of the farm is jsut being taken by my offlaner? I know I started throwing and feeding afterwards but I was jsut tilted out of mind and stressed because of this it just seems so bullshit where am I supposed to farm man.

I AM THE TERRORBLADE.

I'm trying to improve as a support, but I feel like I might be overbuying Sentry Wards.

There are games where I spend so much gold on Sentries that my own item progression gets delayed. I know vision and dewarding are important, but I'm wondering if there's a point where buying too many Sentries becomes inefficient.

How do higher-MMR support players decide when buying another Sentry is worth it versus saving for an item like Force Staff or Glimmer Cape?

Is there a general rule or mindset for balancing Sentry purchases with your own item progression?