DotA Intermediate Concepts
Hero Killing
In order to assist your assent to the enemy ancient, killing enemy heroes is advisable. However to do so, careful planning and making use of the current circumstance is required. Usually using a hero’s abilities to your advantage will help in hero killing. Certain abilities have certain affects on the enemy as listed below.
Ability Effects
There a dozens of abilities, both passive and active, that have secondary effects that in some way disable an opponent.
Stuns – Stuns are the ultimate form of disabling in DotA. A stunned player cannot cast spells or move, they are completely disabled.
Slows – A slowed player will have reduced effectiveness in a physical fight. Most slow spells effect only move speed but a few effect attack speed as well.
Maim – Maim is the effect given by the items Sange and Sange & Yasha. It will severely slow an opponent’s move and attack speed.
Freeze – Similar to stun only used by Rylai the Crystal Maiden. Frozen units cannot move or attack but can cast spells.
Ensnare - Naga Siren’s ability that will only disable movement. Heroes can still attack and cast from inside the net.
Cool Down
Cool downs are the waiting period between casting of your spells. The bulk of spell cool downs are fairly low with the exceptions of ultimates which are nearly always two to three minutes long. Cool downs can be reset with the use of a Refresher Orb or Bousch the Tinker’s ultimate Rearm. There are also ‘bugged’ cool down resets such as using Stone Giant’s ultimate Grow or Morphling’s Adapt. Note that Aghanim’s Scepter also lowers the cool downs of most of the heroes it is available for.
Farming
Farming is the process of killing enemy or neutral creeps for an extended period of time to bulk up your income of gold. Each creep gives between 30 - 60 gold and a varying amount of experience based on what level they are, which is determined by the game time. The most common time to farm in the majority of games is early game from levels 1 - 9. After this point you will find it harder to gather gold by sitting in a lane as most heroes will begin searching out lone heroes and killing them in groups. If this is becoming a problem and you are in need of gold don’t be afraid to switch over and farm the neutral creeps on your respective side of the map. You can also purchase a Hand of Midas for easier farming though it is not a requirement for a steady gold income.
If you find your gold income not supplying enough gold for the items you desire you can add neutral creeping on top of your regular lane farming. There are four sets of neutral creeps for each side of the map, three on the top lane and one in the middle for Scourge and three on the bottom plus one in the middle for Sentinel. In addtion to the normal neutral creeps there are two groups of ancients, or big neutrals as they are more commonly named. The big neutrals are much stronger and should only be attempted by a long player if you are at or around level 11. Between creep waves or after pushing up to a tower you can shift your focus to the neutrals. Note that you will take many hits which will shave of large amounts of damage unless you have a form of life steal or a heal. Also, be careful of enemy heroes wondering around the map looking for stray heroes as they will eventually catch on to your farming habits and kill you with their buddies. Below is a diagram of the neutral creep locations and their common farming paterns.
