So you’ve been playing DotA for a while, managed to get the basics down, but it seems like

no matter what you try, you can’t seem to get any better? Here are some suggestions that can
help take your game to the next level.

Disclaimer: Most of these are obvious suggestions that are natural for higher skilled players,
but reinforcing them for mid skilled players can possibly help them improve. These
suggestions are made with the intention of these mid skilled players playing either on teams
or in IHL’s.

Have the Right Attitude

In a lower-skilled game you feel confident that you can dominate the game and win at will.
Try to have that same demeanor towards games with higher-level players; believe that you
can make a difference and play at their level. Don’t be cocky and arrogant, but rather
confident and calm. One of the biggest keys to improving yourself in DotA is to take the
games seriously and give every game your best shot.

Don't Pick Dumb Heroes

Ask your team which heroes they would like and make a logical pick. Games are easily lost
as a result of poor picks. There are a number of questionable heroes that are rarely used in
higher-level play. You want to be able to play the accepted pool of upper tier heroes with
some proficiency before you waste time playing generally useless heroes.

Get Chicken, Wards, and Crow ASAP

Don't buy items so quickly at the beginning of the game that you don't have money for
chicken and wards. I have seen this a lot: support heroes (i.e. Twin-headed Dragon, Lich,
Lion, Dazzle, etc.) buying their items and going to a random lane without buying a chicken or
wards (to stop creep pulls and get early vision in the river). After all five heroes are picked,
pause the game so that you can decide lanes, determine who buys chicken, and decide who
gets wards for the pull spot. In league games a pause will be acceptable but in lower level
play step up and buy chicken or wards if you don’t see anybody else doing it. By doing this
you will make it less of a commotion and will earn respect from your teammates. Leadership
is very important, and you can lead through your actions as long as you know they are right.

If you don't get wards for the pull spot, that lane is almost guaranteed to lose. It doesn’t
matter how strong of a lane you have; you will be severely under-leveled and under-farmed.
Even if you’re a melee hero and the person who you are laning with bought the chicken, you
should go buy the wards and stop the pulls. DotA is a team game and if you are required to
sacrifice 200 gold early, then so be it. If you don’t do this, you will regret it.

Get a crow ASAP. Crows move faster and die less than chickens. Having a crow allows for
bottle crow usage if your mid solo needs it due to aggressive rune checking by opponents.
Make sure you rebind your crow hotkey.
Improve Your Laning Abilities

2v2 Dual Lanes

Play the lane according to the match-up and look for opportunities to react. If, for example,
you see a hero tanking creeps to harass you, stun him. This way he will not only take damage
from your stun, nukes, and right-click, but the damage from creeps as well.

If you or your teammate is getting harassed, hit them back rather than just running away. For
example, Warlock is babysitting a Spectre and is playing aggressively. He is harassing your
melee or ranged heroes. Don’t just sit there and tank damage; hit the warlock back with your
own attack. Make him pay for attacking you!

Keep spacing in lane. Letting an NA, SK, or other line stunner hit a stun on two heroes
because of poor spacing is inexcusable. Make an effort to stay separated in lane. One person
should stay to the left of the lane and the other to the right. This way, you can assist each
other without both being stunned at once. If an SK stuns one of you, try to stun, or silence,
the 2nd enemy hero to stop the combo.

In a lane, sometimes people will initiate on a hero. In this situation, if you're not the person
being focused, don’t just run. Use your mana and right click the enemy heroes to damage
them. This could possibly turn the fight around and make them wary of diving into a tower or
past creeps. Try to get a better feel for when you should run and when it would be more
beneficial to fight.

Keep an eye on middle lane. When your solo is approaching level 6 and you're about level 3-
5, depending on what happened in your lane, go and gank the mid lane. This gives your solo
a huge advantage over the enemy.

Check runes. If your solo is going to check the top rune, you go to check the bottom one, and
vice-versa.

Make use of animation canceling and attack-moving, not only with orb heroes, but all heroes,
even melee. It maximizes the usefulness of the time between attacks by moving/taking
ground/getting position on your opponent.

The ranged hero should ALWAYS harass the enemy melee hero as much as possible. Lane
domination is measured in hit points. Damaging your opponent before the next fight in the
lane may be the difference between dying and getting away with a little bit of hp. Every hit
point counts.

In between spells, for example: if you're Lina, and you only use your stun/Slave combo, you
will do 420 damage (before spell resistance). If, however, you hit with your regular attack
before stun, again during stun, and again after Slave you will have dealt an additional 120
damage.

Go from behind and trick your opponent. If you pretend you're leaving lane to go pull
neutrals/get rune/etc. and then go from behind, you will be granted some extra hits while your
opponent is backing up, especially if you maximize your number of attacks by attack-
moving.

Eating a tango before a fight is essentially an extra 90 hit points early on; if you have a tango
available eat it, and you will regenerate hit points during the fight.

DotA is all about numbers: timing, economics, and damage should all come into account
during a game.

If you’re in a lane where the enemy has higher base damage or better animation, harass them
instead of trying to compete with them for creep kills. Every time they are approaching the
creep wave to kill a creep, hit them a few times using attack moving/animation canceling to
maximize damage. Hits add up, and when a hero on your team comes to gank, that kill will
happen that much quicker.

Fogging people when you're running around or in the lane is a highly effective way to take
less damage and avoid getting spammed with nukes. This will make them run as much as
possible, causing them to miss creep kills and lose out on early farm. Most spells have
animations, so if you're cutting corners and running through fog spots, it will increase your
chances of escaping.

Mid Lane Solo

Get a Bottle and Boots to help when you check runes. It is very frustrating to see mid solos
get stupid items like Perseverance over a Bottle and Boots. Runes and ganking win games. It
doesn't matter what hero you are; you should always check runes. If you're Troll or Drow,
you don’t need the bottle, but get boots ASAP and check runes. This will at the very least
ensure that the enemy doesn’t get it. An illusion rune can act like observer wards for a
minute, guarding you against ganks, helping you kill creeps, or harassing your enemy. You
might even get a double damage rune, and if you have early Boots, you are faster than the
lower level enemies who don’t have them. This can let you pick up a few kills and/or give an
advantage to your teammates.

1v2 Lanes

Ask for a lane swap if it’s a logical swap. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, but
rather a sign of your intelligence and ability to understand your situation and react to it. Some
dual lanes are going to crush any solo hero almost regardless of skill.

Learn to play in the fog. Try to use the fog to your advantage to duck out of range of stuns
and slows. Play careful in 1v2 lanes. Any death will automatically put you way behind and
increase chances of getting killed over and over. Even if you don’t creep well as long as you
live you can gain experience and save up your gold to get Boots, Bottle, and a Teleport Scroll
to gank another lane. If the enemies are constantly in lane TRYING to kill you, but they can't
because you play back (at the expense of lost exp), your team should be doing something
with that one-man advantage.

Ask for ganks. Tell your team, “I need a gank.” Rather than staying quiet and letting your
opponents overpower you in the lane, ask for a gank ASAP and try to survive until it comes.
Leave your lane once you’re level 6 and gank the side lanes to relieve the pressure on your
teammates so that they can roam and gank your lane as well. Ganking is contagious.
Carry TP scrolls at all times so that you can TP to help a teammate or ninja gank. Lanes are
always called and runes are warded in higher level play, so if you teleport (rather than walk)
to the lane you can probably get a successful gank off due to the element of surprise.

Look at the mini-map. If you don't see anyone, back up. If your “spidey sense” is saying you
might die, then you're probably going to die.

How to Ward

Mid- and late-game, you need to consider your team’s makeup. Is it a "turtle until your late-
game is farmed" team or is it a "must gank and push to win" sort of lineup? In either case,
ward accordingly.

Offensive Warding: for a "gank and push" team, ward aggressively on the other team's side
and move together. Put wards on their side of the map and ward the lanes so you know where
the enemy is moving.

Defensive Warding: for a "turtle" team, ward the close spot to your base on the ledges. Ward
the lane your carry hero is farming so that he can see any ganks that are coming at him
through the lane. Everyone knows about wards at runes, so the majority of ganks come
through the lane. Put a ward in the lane. A lot of games are won or lost at the middle lane;
place a ward so you can see the enemy’s hill. This allows you to farm safely up to your river
and back up when you push out too far.

Don't get picked off. Too many times the warder will wander off to go place a ward and will
get picked off and cause a tower or barracks to not be defended, or even the game to end. Be
very careful; use your crow to scout ahead and then go place wards once you see it’s safe.
Give your blink heroes the wards if that is what is needed to get them placed.

Bring a buddy to help you ward. A lot of times a support hero like Warlock will die to a gank
while he’s warding. Support your heroes when they place wards so that doesn’t happen.

Warding behind towers to gain vision of any enemy TP on a tower, whether it’s tier 1 or tier
2 tower, is very helpful. A lot of ganks can be avoided or countered by a simple ward by the
enemies’ tower/choke spots. These wards also help when pushing towers to gain vision of
initiator heroes like Earthshaker.

Importance of Roshan

Keep a ward at Roshan. Also keep track of the enemy's items, heroes, and levels so that you
know when a team is capable of doing Roshan.

Again, don't get picked off. The majority of Roshan kills happen after a massacre. Many of
these massacres happen because a hero was picked off. The same applies to towers and
barracks.
Be a Ninja

In fights and ganks you might get initiated on, and with some team assistance you manage to
survive. Instead of teleporting to base or running around, stay around the fight in the fog and
wait for a chance to do something. If you see a good chance to run in and make a move to
help your team, do it, then run back into fog or go heal if you have no other way you can help
team.

Look at enemies’ mana and hit points and call it out on Vent or in chat. In mid game
skirmishes if you yell out, “Ravage down” or “Tide has no mana,” your teammates might be
able to turn around and kill the enemy.

Try to block enemy heroes when they are chasing or running away. If you see an enemy
running away, stay in front of him and block his path; this can give you the vital few extra
hits that let you kill the hero. If you block the enemy, you can save your teammates
sometimes, but be careful to not put yourself in a situation where you and your teammate will
die.

Roaming with gank heroes is very helpful to the other players on your team since you can
take pressure off of them. While ganking, making sure that your team is aware of your
intentions and position at all times will help your ganks succeed.

If you’re a gank hero and you wish to gank a hero that can go invisible, buy dust or wards
and go. It’s a waste of time to gank without dust against invisible heroes.

Learn How to Position Your Hero Based on Your Opponents in 5v5 Fights.

If you are playing your team's main initiation like Earthshaker, don’t get initiated on yourself.
Look for a good opportunity to start the fight. Communicate with your team and let them
know that you’re going in. Not everyone is telepathic (mostly just indigo children like
LightofHeaven). Watch out for abilities that can stop blinks; one mistake Echo or Ravage
because of a global ultimate is an automatic loss of a team fight in higher-level games. Also,
initiating on one hero is fine as long as you successfully kill him quickly and push a tower.
For example, many players will farm a creep wave up to the river, but are cautious to pass it.
If you are an Earthshaker, or similar hero, get a teammate and go jump the one individual
hero farming there; kill him and take the next tower, which likely won’t be defended by the
other team.

If you are a tank hero like Skeleton King or Centaur, go in and tank; if they don’t attack you
and go for your support heroes, you should be right clicking the enemy or towers to force the
enemies to attack you. Keep your support heroes alive so they can support you. Keeping your
disable heroes like Rhasta and Lion is important, whereas a Lich or Warlock who has ulted
and Mek’d isn’t nearly as important.

If you are a support/gank hero, be a ninja: play in the fog and on the outskirts of team fights;
stay within reach of teammates to help them quickly but out of range of the opponents main
DPS heroes. If you’re playing Lion and your initiating hero went in and ulted, you should go
disable, stun, and Finger someone ASAP. Then right click till you sense someone coming for
you, at which point back off til your spells are up. You should not be initiating a fight with
Lina or Lion unless your team is going to bait you out there deliberately and forfeit your hero
for the duration of the fight.

Don’t Be Selfish

If you are doing well as a carry hero and farming up a storm, help your support heroes by
buying a few sets of wards or get some dust or some sentries. By doing this you will increase
your lead in a game and in turn increase your farm. This might also help your support heroes
pop out with useful items like a sheep, Shiva’s, blink, or Boots of Travel, which will assist
your team greatly overall.

If you are about to die, quickly buy a TP scroll for yourself or a set of wards to make use of
some of the gold before you die.

Be Efficient

Look at any replay of the top players: when they get a chance to free farm, they don’t miss
creeps. Regardless of your hero, if you are getting a wave or two without competition, you
shouldn't be missing creeps. Make the most of each opportunity. If you can kill creeps during
free farm effectively and then gank the rest of the time, you will be able to attain the items
you need and still be active in the ganking process.

Know When to Gank

Don’t TP on the tower when it’s in vision of the enemy, giving the enemy warning that
you’re coming. Wait for creeps to go out of range, then TP and go around the side to gank.

Don’t TP when your teammate has just pulled neutrals to the lane and the wave is pushing on
your tower; you will just waste your time. When you pull creeps your wave will also push
hard, and it is generally not a good idea to try and gank through the lane when the enemies
are behind their tower.

If a teammate has Boots of Travel and an enemy is close to you, disable them with a stun or
slow to allow your teammate to teleport in on creeps. This is a great way to gank.

Don’t waste your disables all at once, allowing enemies to teleport out. Obviously, if it’s a
hard hero to kill (like Priestess of the Moon with leap or Queen of Pain with blink), try to
keep them chain stunned and throw your damage ASAP so you can keep them from casting
their escape spells.

Blink Dagger is One of the Best Items in the Game, or At Least the Most Clutch

Blink dagger allows you to initiate and run away from trouble. A quick blink dagger on any
ganking hero will change the game.

Minimize Gold Loss

Buy your item if you 100% know you are going to die, or buy a TP for yourself or wards for
your team to minimize the gold loss. Ask for a TP from a teammate if you don’t have gold to
TP back to lane.

Don’t Waste Time

Avoid running around and doing nothing at all. Wasting time is the leading cause of not
farming and being under leveled, leading to overall failure. Bad players leave the base
without an objective. Listen and observe and you should be able to find something to do. You
can always gank a teammate’s lane or TP to help a teammate that is getting dived. Don’t
wander aimlessly.
So Now That You’ve Seen This, What Next?

No matter where you’re playing, whether it’s an in-house league, scrimmages, or even “just
for fun” TDA and pub games, it’s possible to work on most, if not all, of these skills. Just
because a game is lower skilled doesn’t mean you should scale back your own abilities when
you’re playing them, especially if your goal is to get better. Remember to have the right
attitude and approach each game with the intention of giving it your all so that you can
achieve victory and improve yourself as a player.