Those of you who spend all their free time keeping tabs on my Internet presence (all one of you) probably know that I have more than a few issues with trying to play Dota. Mostly, I just have the wrong attitude to actually play it well myself. I don't know how much of it is subconscious being wired in the wrong way to be good at the game and how much is just inexperience, but after finding out about my conscious attitude problem indirectly from being told about something completely different, I decided to write this guide to help anyone else who just started playing the game and is having problems that I did, and to some degree still do. I've broken it up into three sections: one general one, and two for whether Dota is your first game of the type (for strict MOBA, not MOBA/something else like Super MNC) or you played another one (probably League of Legends) first. I came over from LoL, so all my tips for 'converts' are based on it.
If you aren't a noob, but you want to correct or add to anything I said, feel free to say so. I'm still pretty new myself.
-Deal with lag, if you get it
While you can't get away with blaming losses on it, you may still have to deal with lag issues, especially if you don't live in Australia or none of your friends play on a server close to you. You can check lag during the game by opening the chat box with the Enter key and typing in '-ping' without the quotation marks. In the top right corner, you'll be told your latency (lag) and packet loss (I don't know what this means). If you can't be bothered doing that, start figuring out what the delay is between giving a command and it being followed, and lead your attacks at least that far in advance. This might make it difficult to attack things, but that's what the attack-move command is for.
-Know the heroes
If you don't know who all 10 heroes are in a match just from their portraits, followed by who to watch out for (and I'm not expecting you to), you should at least know your own. Before you intend to play a hero (note that you should stick with all-pick until you improve), go to their page in the 'Learn' tab and look at them. Perhaps you could also set up a private lobby or a bot game to properly see how their abilities work. Don't look at any hero-specific guides, or if you do, don't try to follow them exactly. Dota is a highly situational game - there is no 'silver bullet', and reading guides too early will probably get you thinking there is one.
-Pushing
While having a nice kill/death ratio might look nice, it doesn't count for much if you can't push a lane. Pushing is what allows you to destroy enemy structures and reach their Ancient. Needless to say, it's how you win the game. Here's the thing, though: don't just push because you have to. Pushing too early might lead to your opponents taking advantage of your proximity to their tower and the distance from your own, and could easily get you killed. That's never a good thing - you lose gold when you die, and you can't gain gold or experience while dead.
-Items
You can probably infer from the previous statement that losing gold is a bad thing, that gold is useful. But what is it used for? Simple - to buy items from the shops. When you get some gold, which stacks up over time or is gained when you kill a creep or an enemy hero, you can spend it to get items. These can be used to restore HP or mana, or increase your stats. Don't just buy items randomly, though - try to figure out what best compliments your hero, and your situation. The 'recommended items' list is a good starting point, but once again, it's highly situaitonal - even the stuff listed as 'core items' can be skipped or put off in cases.
-The jungle
The jungle serves two purposes: quickly travelling between lanes, and fighting neutral creeps. The latter can be a way to gain more gold since you don't have to share the creeps with anyone, but it's also dangerous, as the neutrals are often much stronger than the lane creeps and they're all focused on you. As I said, it can also be used to get between lanes or escape an attack in your own. There are even a few items and abilities that can be used to destroy trees, creating even more jungle routes. Learn to make good use of it.
While you can't get away with blaming losses on it, you may still have to deal with lag issues, especially if you don't live in Australia or none of your friends play on a server close to you. You can check lag during the game by opening the chat box with the Enter key and typing in '-ping' without the quotation marks. In the top right corner, you'll be told your latency (lag) and packet loss (I don't know what this means). If you can't be bothered doing that, start figuring out what the delay is between giving a command and it being followed, and lead your attacks at least that far in advance. This might make it difficult to attack things, but that's what the attack-move command is for.
-Know the heroes
If you don't know who all 10 heroes are in a match just from their portraits, followed by who to watch out for (and I'm not expecting you to), you should at least know your own. Before you intend to play a hero (note that you should stick with all-pick until you improve), go to their page in the 'Learn' tab and look at them. Perhaps you could also set up a private lobby or a bot game to properly see how their abilities work. Don't look at any hero-specific guides, or if you do, don't try to follow them exactly. Dota is a highly situational game - there is no 'silver bullet', and reading guides too early will probably get you thinking there is one.
-Pushing
While having a nice kill/death ratio might look nice, it doesn't count for much if you can't push a lane. Pushing is what allows you to destroy enemy structures and reach their Ancient. Needless to say, it's how you win the game. Here's the thing, though: don't just push because you have to. Pushing too early might lead to your opponents taking advantage of your proximity to their tower and the distance from your own, and could easily get you killed. That's never a good thing - you lose gold when you die, and you can't gain gold or experience while dead.
-Items
You can probably infer from the previous statement that losing gold is a bad thing, that gold is useful. But what is it used for? Simple - to buy items from the shops. When you get some gold, which stacks up over time or is gained when you kill a creep or an enemy hero, you can spend it to get items. These can be used to restore HP or mana, or increase your stats. Don't just buy items randomly, though - try to figure out what best compliments your hero, and your situation. The 'recommended items' list is a good starting point, but once again, it's highly situaitonal - even the stuff listed as 'core items' can be skipped or put off in cases.
-The jungle
The jungle serves two purposes: quickly travelling between lanes, and fighting neutral creeps. The latter can be a way to gain more gold since you don't have to share the creeps with anyone, but it's also dangerous, as the neutrals are often much stronger than the lane creeps and they're all focused on you. As I said, it can also be used to get between lanes or escape an attack in your own. There are even a few items and abilities that can be used to destroy trees, creating even more jungle routes. Learn to make good use of it.
I'm assuming that you're already decent at League of Legends, and understand concepts like map awareness, last hitting, team composition, jungling/roaming, etc. If you didn't understand any or all of those terms, try the other box.
-Deal with lag (specifically on autoattacks)
Defense of the Ancients: Allstars wasn't made with a metagame in mind; the metagame came about later. Included in that was last hitting. The idea of hitting creeps only once to ensure getting the gold was something the players came up with on their own. It wasn't designed that way, so a lot of heroes have a long wind-up animation. The solution? Work out how long the windup is and try to factor it in to your last hit timing. Which, I shouldn't need to tell you this, but it's pretty different to the timing in LoL. If you want to set up a lobby for learning how much health the creeps should have left before you click them, Sniper (ranged) and Anti-Mage (melee) both have very short windups. In an actual game, though, both of them are hard carries, so don't try to use them seriously until you have the basic last hit timing worked out.
-Learn the map
The map itself is pretty different to Summoner's Rift, though they look similar on the surface. I'll cover the important differences. First, the jungle is destructible - some items and abilities can destroy trees, making additional routes. Second, the side lanes are different - some heroes are better suited to the 'safe' lane (bottom of Radiant, top of Dire) and some to the 'hard' lane (vice-versa.) Third, there is only one legendary monster, Roshan. He spawns at the start of the game, and the killing team lets one person pick up the 'Aegis of the Immortal', basically an extra life. Finally, there are two 'rune' spawn points in the river. The runes confer a temporary bonus on whoever picks them up, and the 'bottle' item can be used to store them. There's only ever one rune at a time, they spawn at every 2:00 interval if the last was picked up, and it's always in one of the same two spots - keep them warded. Speaking of which:
-Items and the courier
The item shop works differently enough to be worth mentioning. First things first, though: to purchase an item, right click. Or you can just double-click, which I'm sure most League players do anyway. Recipes are filled by automatically combining the items when you have all the necessary items in either your inventory or your stash. The stash is filled when you buy items while away from the fountain, or just if all your slots are full - while in lane, you can use a 'courier' (the donkey) to take items over to you. It's important that somebody picks it up early on - if nobody else does, modify your starting build to use 150 gold to get it. Oh yeah, and don't let it die. You lose it for a few minutes, and the killer gets a very large gold bonus. One last thing: In the later stages of the game (30:00 and later as a general estimate) don't spend all your gold on a recipe; you'll want to keep some around for buyback.
-The numbers, Mason! What do they mean?
Each hero has three 'attributes': strength, agility and intelligence. These are used to increase your stats a small amount. Each hero also uses one as their 'primary' attribute, which determines damage. Items can increase either attributes or specific stats. Attack speed is a straight number that calculates the delay between each attack, shown when you mouse over the sword icon - the number shown next to 's' is the delay, not the number of attacks per second. Finally, abilities that don't scale off stats or attributes are the exception, not the rule. Get used to them not doing as much damage as you think they should do.
-Don't compare champions to heroes
Here are all the things that Drow Ranger has in common with Ashe:
-The same Q
Here are some things that are different:
-Ashe scales better
-Drow has no steroids (well, no blindingly obvious ones)
-Drow needs a lot more farm
-Drow's passive is able to affect every ranged unit on the team
-Ashe is actually appropriate for first-timers
-etc, etc.
You'll get very similar results if you go into any kind of depth comparing a certain champion to a certain hero. Save yourself the trouble and don't do it at all.
-Deal with lag (specifically on autoattacks)
Defense of the Ancients: Allstars wasn't made with a metagame in mind; the metagame came about later. Included in that was last hitting. The idea of hitting creeps only once to ensure getting the gold was something the players came up with on their own. It wasn't designed that way, so a lot of heroes have a long wind-up animation. The solution? Work out how long the windup is and try to factor it in to your last hit timing. Which, I shouldn't need to tell you this, but it's pretty different to the timing in LoL. If you want to set up a lobby for learning how much health the creeps should have left before you click them, Sniper (ranged) and Anti-Mage (melee) both have very short windups. In an actual game, though, both of them are hard carries, so don't try to use them seriously until you have the basic last hit timing worked out.
-Learn the map
The map itself is pretty different to Summoner's Rift, though they look similar on the surface. I'll cover the important differences. First, the jungle is destructible - some items and abilities can destroy trees, making additional routes. Second, the side lanes are different - some heroes are better suited to the 'safe' lane (bottom of Radiant, top of Dire) and some to the 'hard' lane (vice-versa.) Third, there is only one legendary monster, Roshan. He spawns at the start of the game, and the killing team lets one person pick up the 'Aegis of the Immortal', basically an extra life. Finally, there are two 'rune' spawn points in the river. The runes confer a temporary bonus on whoever picks them up, and the 'bottle' item can be used to store them. There's only ever one rune at a time, they spawn at every 2:00 interval if the last was picked up, and it's always in one of the same two spots - keep them warded. Speaking of which:
-Items and the courier
The item shop works differently enough to be worth mentioning. First things first, though: to purchase an item, right click. Or you can just double-click, which I'm sure most League players do anyway. Recipes are filled by automatically combining the items when you have all the necessary items in either your inventory or your stash. The stash is filled when you buy items while away from the fountain, or just if all your slots are full - while in lane, you can use a 'courier' (the donkey) to take items over to you. It's important that somebody picks it up early on - if nobody else does, modify your starting build to use 150 gold to get it. Oh yeah, and don't let it die. You lose it for a few minutes, and the killer gets a very large gold bonus. One last thing: In the later stages of the game (30:00 and later as a general estimate) don't spend all your gold on a recipe; you'll want to keep some around for buyback.
-The numbers, Mason! What do they mean?
Each hero has three 'attributes': strength, agility and intelligence. These are used to increase your stats a small amount. Each hero also uses one as their 'primary' attribute, which determines damage. Items can increase either attributes or specific stats. Attack speed is a straight number that calculates the delay between each attack, shown when you mouse over the sword icon - the number shown next to 's' is the delay, not the number of attacks per second. Finally, abilities that don't scale off stats or attributes are the exception, not the rule. Get used to them not doing as much damage as you think they should do.
-Don't compare champions to heroes
Here are all the things that Drow Ranger has in common with Ashe:
-The same Q
Here are some things that are different:
-Ashe scales better
-Drow has no steroids (well, no blindingly obvious ones)
-Drow needs a lot more farm
-Drow's passive is able to affect every ranged unit on the team
-Ashe is actually appropriate for first-timers
-etc, etc.
You'll get very similar results if you go into any kind of depth comparing a certain champion to a certain hero. Save yourself the trouble and don't do it at all.
-Real-time strategy basis (LoS and micromanagement)
Since Dota 2 is basically DotA: Allstars with a fresh coat of paint, it has a lot of elements of more 'regular' real time strategy games. The two big ones are how line-of-sight works, and having to handle multiple units at once. Firstly, the greyed-out area is fog of war - outside your entire team's sight range: yourself, the other heroes and your creeps and other units. It's also impossible to see around corners and up hills - but you can look down hills. It's also impossible to target anyone inside fog of war, so either use attack-move or a 'point target' ability. As for those other units, a lot of heroes have an ability that places more units under your control, and a few items can as well. This ranges from Venomancer's ability to directly control all the plague wards summoned by his E, to Meepo having three clones that can separately gain gold, experience - and deaths. The first is easy enough to handle. The second requires either a lot of practice or experience with games like Command and Conquer and Starcraft. Most of the micro-heavy heroes should be avoided when you're new to the game.
-Commitment necessary
While League of Legends gets a lot of hate from the Dota community for being 'dumbed down', what it was going for and arguably achieved was 'accessible'. It's also possible to pick up and play, to some degree. Dota is not like that. If you ever want to stop being completely useless, you will need to play this game a lot. Heck, you can even play it a lot and still not actually be a useful team member, if you have a bad attitude or you're having a bad day, or you're new and don't really know what's going on. Here's something that someone once told me - at low levels, everybody comes into the game knowing one trick. Watch your own replays. Besides making a mental note of what you did wrong and what to improve on (which isn't as hard as it seems), try and figure out what if any of the enemy team's tricks screwed you over and use them yourself. And even if you lose, if you do well enough, your matchmaking rating (MMR) will go up, so you start getting better teammates as well as better opponents. Most importantly, though, try not to get too discouraged by your early failure. Pretty much everyone started at the same point you did.
P.S. Here's a list of heroes that you should not, under any circumstances, pick for your first game:
-Invoker (ridiculously complicated abilities)
-Rubick (requires knowledge of every active skill in the game)
-Meepo (insane micro required; once you start feeding, you won't stop)
-Chen (insane micro and jungle knowledge required, as well as watching all your units' and teammates' HP for ult)
-Enchantress (like Chen, but slightly easier. Very slightly)
-Anti-Mage (requires a completely stupid amount of farm)
-Enigma (jungle (but not to Chen's degree), lots of micro) (EDIT: You can just select all eidolons and right click whatever you want dead, but his ultimate really messes with teamfights on both teams. Thanks for clearing this up, SomeLameStuff.)
-In fact, pretty much anyone labelled as a 'jungle' hero (a few of them work in lane, but not many)
-Wisp (requires excellent teamwork, which you're not likely to get in pubs at all, let alone on your first game)
-Clockwerk (clunky, so hard to initiate with)
-Faceless Void (if you don't place your ult properly, it'll do more harm than good)
-Phantom Lancer (playing him really well requires micro. A lot of it)
-Alchemist (at least one skill requires a lot of focus)
-Visage (micro: you don't want to lose your familiars since they're worth a lot of gold)
-Tinker (needs mid and roam - a difficult combination)
-Spectre (global ultimate that requires micro. Two of a newbie's least favourite things)
-Ancient Apparition (slow skillshots and abilities that both benefit and harm their targets, requiring you to really know what you're doing with them, like FV's ultimate)
-If you don't have any experience with other MOBAs or you're still having trouble last hitting even when not under pressure from enemy laners, you should probably also avoid most heroes labelled as 'carry'. While picking, the 'carry' icon is a white star on a blue background - anyone with it should be left until later.
P.P.S. Here's some items that you'll probably want to know about:
-Tango: 3 charges. Click the item, then click on a nearby tree to eat it and gain 116 health. The tree takes a while to respawn, and you can walk through where it was in the meantime.
-Town Portal Scroll: Teleport to any friendly building. This is turrets or your base, but the building has to still be alive.
-Observer Ward: 2 charges. Click somewhere to place an invisible ward that gives sight of the surrounding area for 6 minutes. It might not seem like much, but sight wins games. Use them. (Note: After you buy two packs, you have to wait about 5 minutes for a 'restock'.)
-Black King Bar: If you're playing as a carry, you'll definitely want one of these. It'll give you magic immunity for a short time - AoE and targeted, though some spells (usually ultimates) can still break through it. Every time you use it, the duration and cooldown get shorter, to a point. Also, you can't sell it or break it.
-Dust of Appearance: If you know you're playing against a hero who has a stealth ability, this item will reveal all invisible units within a certain radius. Use it if someone just disappeared in front of you using an ability or item, or at the start of a teamfight to reveal the Bounty Hunter moving in to attack, for instance.
Since Dota 2 is basically DotA: Allstars with a fresh coat of paint, it has a lot of elements of more 'regular' real time strategy games. The two big ones are how line-of-sight works, and having to handle multiple units at once. Firstly, the greyed-out area is fog of war - outside your entire team's sight range: yourself, the other heroes and your creeps and other units. It's also impossible to see around corners and up hills - but you can look down hills. It's also impossible to target anyone inside fog of war, so either use attack-move or a 'point target' ability. As for those other units, a lot of heroes have an ability that places more units under your control, and a few items can as well. This ranges from Venomancer's ability to directly control all the plague wards summoned by his E, to Meepo having three clones that can separately gain gold, experience - and deaths. The first is easy enough to handle. The second requires either a lot of practice or experience with games like Command and Conquer and Starcraft. Most of the micro-heavy heroes should be avoided when you're new to the game.
-Commitment necessary
While League of Legends gets a lot of hate from the Dota community for being 'dumbed down', what it was going for and arguably achieved was 'accessible'. It's also possible to pick up and play, to some degree. Dota is not like that. If you ever want to stop being completely useless, you will need to play this game a lot. Heck, you can even play it a lot and still not actually be a useful team member, if you have a bad attitude or you're having a bad day, or you're new and don't really know what's going on. Here's something that someone once told me - at low levels, everybody comes into the game knowing one trick. Watch your own replays. Besides making a mental note of what you did wrong and what to improve on (which isn't as hard as it seems), try and figure out what if any of the enemy team's tricks screwed you over and use them yourself. And even if you lose, if you do well enough, your matchmaking rating (MMR) will go up, so you start getting better teammates as well as better opponents. Most importantly, though, try not to get too discouraged by your early failure. Pretty much everyone started at the same point you did.
P.S. Here's a list of heroes that you should not, under any circumstances, pick for your first game:
-Invoker (ridiculously complicated abilities)
-Rubick (requires knowledge of every active skill in the game)
-Meepo (insane micro required; once you start feeding, you won't stop)
-Chen (insane micro and jungle knowledge required, as well as watching all your units' and teammates' HP for ult)
-Enchantress (like Chen, but slightly easier. Very slightly)
-Anti-Mage (requires a completely stupid amount of farm)
-Enigma (jungle (but not to Chen's degree), lots of micro) (EDIT: You can just select all eidolons and right click whatever you want dead, but his ultimate really messes with teamfights on both teams. Thanks for clearing this up, SomeLameStuff.)
-In fact, pretty much anyone labelled as a 'jungle' hero (a few of them work in lane, but not many)
-Wisp (requires excellent teamwork, which you're not likely to get in pubs at all, let alone on your first game)
-Clockwerk (clunky, so hard to initiate with)
-Faceless Void (if you don't place your ult properly, it'll do more harm than good)
-Phantom Lancer (playing him really well requires micro. A lot of it)
-Alchemist (at least one skill requires a lot of focus)
-Visage (micro: you don't want to lose your familiars since they're worth a lot of gold)
-Tinker (needs mid and roam - a difficult combination)
-Spectre (global ultimate that requires micro. Two of a newbie's least favourite things)
-Ancient Apparition (slow skillshots and abilities that both benefit and harm their targets, requiring you to really know what you're doing with them, like FV's ultimate)
-If you don't have any experience with other MOBAs or you're still having trouble last hitting even when not under pressure from enemy laners, you should probably also avoid most heroes labelled as 'carry'. While picking, the 'carry' icon is a white star on a blue background - anyone with it should be left until later.
P.P.S. Here's some items that you'll probably want to know about:
-Tango: 3 charges. Click the item, then click on a nearby tree to eat it and gain 116 health. The tree takes a while to respawn, and you can walk through where it was in the meantime.
-Town Portal Scroll: Teleport to any friendly building. This is turrets or your base, but the building has to still be alive.
-Observer Ward: 2 charges. Click somewhere to place an invisible ward that gives sight of the surrounding area for 6 minutes. It might not seem like much, but sight wins games. Use them. (Note: After you buy two packs, you have to wait about 5 minutes for a 'restock'.)
-Black King Bar: If you're playing as a carry, you'll definitely want one of these. It'll give you magic immunity for a short time - AoE and targeted, though some spells (usually ultimates) can still break through it. Every time you use it, the duration and cooldown get shorter, to a point. Also, you can't sell it or break it.
-Dust of Appearance: If you know you're playing against a hero who has a stealth ability, this item will reveal all invisible units within a certain radius. Use it if someone just disappeared in front of you using an ability or item, or at the start of a teamfight to reveal the Bounty Hunter moving in to attack, for instance.
If you aren't a noob, but you want to correct or add to anything I said, feel free to say so. I'm still pretty new myself.
