DotaStrategy.com - Ghost's Guide to... DotA. 6.63b

Ghost

Chambermaid Posts: 7542 Joined: 01 Jan 2007 gold

Ghost's Guide to... DotA. 6.63b

Posted on Thu Feb 21, 2008 8:40 am

The guide is back. And the other site gets killed (aka project failed)

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

Introduction
Farming
- Auto-Attack
- Last Hit
Denying
- Denying
- Deny Spells
Harassing
- Harassing
- Orb Harassment
Proper use of Spells
- Nukes
- Support
- Disable
- Example (Chain Disable)
- Area of Effect
- Ultimates
- Casting Animation Cancelling
Tit for Tat
- The Experimental Farming Style
Jungle
- Early
- Mid/Late
- Cunning Ploy
Ganking 101
- Introduction
- The musts of ganking
Juking 101
- Introduction and Explanation
Mind Games 101
- Warning
- The Lucky Noob
- Baiting
- Tower Retreats
- Skill Anticipation
- Illusion Baiting
- Special Mention
Creep Blocking
- Introduction
- Method 1
- Method 2
- Special Mention (Earthshaker)
- Special Mention (Prophet)
Mini-map
- How to Use Your Minimap
Items
- Introduction
- Necromicon
- Hand of Midas
Using Multiple Units
- Who can do it?
- Tab
- Hotkeys
- Warning
- Some useful Facts
- Useful Units
Warding
- The Narnians Guide to Warding
Orb Effects
- Malle's Orb Tables
Exterior Programs
- Inventory A+
- DotA Keys
- Warkeys
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 (wee for me being a mod).

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 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.

As you have probably worked out, I am Ghost 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.

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

3. Denying
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)
You can also deny towers below 10% health, at this stage however they become fair game and enemies will attempt to go all out to destroy them for heaps of gold. The easiest way to prevent this is to use the Glyph of Fortification located in your circle of power. This gives you 5 seconds of invulnerable buildings, this time can be used to either land the last hit and deny it or to buy some time to get to your tower and deny it use this only when needed as it has a 5 minute cooldown and when used by 1 player on the team all other players use the ability to use it.

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.

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 either 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 Cancelling:
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.

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 (in DotA, as a prison survival method I will take no credit)
Fundamentally it could be considered a mind game, but this one is 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.

This 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 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 levelled and cost a lot 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 levelled. 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.

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 signalling the enemy to make a break for it.

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.
More on Juking to come in a huge picture… probably

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 hero’s 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 behaviour 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.

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. – This is banned in 99% of leagues.

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.

Correct as of 6.59d

14. Controlling Multiple Units
There will be a very few times where you will find yourself controlling multiple units they are: when using Chen, Enchantress, Beast Master 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 twice to quickly centre 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) (it is easier to reach the number 1 than F1)

Avoid feeding summons such as Necro'lic's revenants, Furion's Treants, 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 experience.

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:

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

15. Warding

Caspian's Guide to Wards – Slightly outdated, but fundamentally correct

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+
All it does is re-route some keyboard commands (makes it think you are pressing something else)
Basically.
` = toggle heath bars (it is like a permanent alt)
Alt + q/w/a/s/z/x = activate inventory slot 7/8/4/5/1/2
That’s 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)

The WarKeys addon Auto WarKey can facilitate all of this making it somewhat redundant.

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.

WarKeys
This is what I am currently using, for an easy set up, check out >>this<< guide.

18. Special Thanks .
Having finished writing this I would like to thank Caspian for his guide to warding, yukino_silvermaine for the link to orb effect tables, Shimrra_3 for adding things to the list of things to write.

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 is bound to be some similarities.
_________________

Immortality is fun until your sun decides to supernova.

Last edited by Ghost on Thu Sep 24, 2009 3:41 am; edited 19 times in total