Dota 2 Coaching for Beginners

The center for kids who can't play Dota good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too

Coaching and You...and also those other 5 people.

The International 2019 Battlepass introduced the Coach's Challenge and matchmaking for coaching. You can queue to coach a team of lower MMR players. You must have a minimum of 8000 behavior score and at least 1000 MMR to be eligible for coach matchmaking.

At the end of a coached match, players on your team can give you positive ratings which will increase your coaching score, for the purposes of Bronze, Silver and Gold tier achievements.

There are nine total achievements and each achievement tier awards 500, 1500 and 3000 battlepoints respectively, for a total of 15,000 battlepoints or 15 battlepass levels.

Battle Guide: Coach 5 Matches
Special Advisor: Coach 20 Matches
Mentor of War: Coach 40 Matches
Perfect Guide: Win a match as a coach, and receive 5 positive votes from teammates
Perfect Advisor: Win 5 matches as a coach, and receive 5 positive votes from teammates
Perfect Mentor: Win 15 matches as a coach, and receive 5 positive votes from teammates
Bronze Coach: Earn Bronze Tier as coach
Silver Coach: Earn Silver Tier as coach
Gold Coach: Earn Gold Tier as coach

Coaching Tips

As a coach, some areas that you should focus on include team drafting/picks, map awareness/warding, hero itemization, laning/farming efficiency, TP/ganking opportunities and defense/push strategy.

Drafting

Generally speaking, in the drafting stage you want to achieve a balance between pushing/wave clear, teamfighting, supports and crowd control/disables.

In regards to hero picks, counter-picking and bans, there are some websites and apps that you can utilize for suggestions, but avoid trying to just counter-pick every enemy hero. Look at the overall picture and what the enemy team is strongest in.

Your team should pick heroes that play to their strengths and skill. When your team can, they should try to pick heroes that don't have many hard counters and avoid heroes with a lot of hard counters.

For bans, if you want to play a specific hero with a specific hard-counter or want to avoid certain heroes in the top-meta then ban-pick those heroes who you think will give you the most trouble.

Third-party stat-tracking websites such as Dotabuff[www.dotabuff.com] and OpenDota[www.opendota.com] can also provide useful information on hero pick rates, win rates and meta.

Look for opportunities

Keep an eye out for opportunities to TP for ganks, kills and to save a teammate or tower.

Hero itemization & builds

Try to give your team general advice on items and skill builds. In particular, if a specific enemy is giving the team or a player some trouble, suggest an item they can build to lock down, counter or escape them. While most item and skill builds will work just fine, sometimes it can be advantageous to skill something early that you might not typically skill first in the current meta.

Map awareness & warding

Keep an eye on the map. Caution your team and players when enemies aren't visible and they're pushing into areas without vision. Try to keep an eye on enemy team movements and when they disappear into fog. Their last known position and creep lane health can clue you in to where enemy players are.

While cliffs are good ward spots, you shouldn't just drop your wards on every cliff in the game. Ward spots that give broad vision of both sides of the river, the large jungle and sidelanes where enemy ganks are likely are often more useful than cliff warding. If you have an advantage, look for opportunities to ward offensively into the enemy jungle so you can shut down their farm.

Keep an eye on ward timers. Watch for when your team loses vision unexpectedly, this means the enemy team has vision there. Ping enemy has vision when you notice this. If the enemy has vision on your jungle/side jungle then this is a likely spot for an enemy gank/teamfight.

Always be doing something

Your team should always be doing something, pushing, defending, farming/jungling, stacking camp, ganking, runes, de/warding, etc. If your team has an advantage, push it. You can always fall back and farm, use full or partial teamwipes to take towers, enemy jungle or kill the survivors.

Balance teamfighting, pushing/splitpushing and ganking. If teamfighting isn't working for your team, then try splitpushing or ganking. Look for opportunities for kills or tower/rax kills that can put the enemy team on the defensive.

If you can, try to keep an eye on when enemy initiators use key ult abilities. This is a potential opportunity to get kills while their critical abilities are on cooldown. Identify who the critical players are on the enemy team. If your team can focus these heroes down and take them out of fights early then they will be more likely to win. If your team is winning then that's great, just make sure that you don't get too cocky.

♥♥♥♥ happens

Mistakes are going to happen. That's okay. If the player knows what they did wrong then there's no need to tell them. If the make the same mistake twice, tell them what they did wrong and how they can avoid that in the future. Try to warn your team if a player is walking into a potential gank or being focused with specific abilities.

Try to encourage your team. When a player or the team makes a great play, give them some words of encouragement. Maybe have a little fun and say something like, "...and his name is John Ceeeeeeena!"

Again, if one thing isn't working, then look at what your team can do that will work. If it looks like you're going to lose no matter what, look for "hail mary" opportunities, such as a hard, fast push to the enemy's Ancient.

Don't let your team fall into the blame game, flaming each other and arguing about who is to blame for what. Remember, focus on the game, not the flame. You have 5 enemies in every game, don't make 4 more. If all else fails and you still lose, don't get angry. After all, it's not your MMR. Tell your team what they did well and maybe what they can improve on in the future but avoid being overly-critical or singling out players.

Don't overshare

While coaching your team, try not to overinundate them with advice. Find a balance of giving them advice when they need it and when they ask for it, and just letting them play the game and make a few mistakes and learn on their own. Offer help when it's needed but you don't need to be talking the entire game.

If a player indicates that they don't want or need advice then let them do their thing. As long as you maintain a positive attitude, make suggestions (not demands), don't insult your teammates and provide information and advice as needed then you will likely be upvoted. If a player(s) doesn't speak your language, you can still provide chatwheel commands and pings.

This won't guarantee you never get downvoted but if you follow these guidelines, you will probably be upvoted the majority of the time.

ProTips

Coaching Tips for Coaches:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4am4b1/coaching_tips_for_coaches/

The Coaches of Dota 2:
https://www.joindota.com/en/news/76563-the-coaches-of-dota-2

Beginner's Guide to Drafting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/7xxblz/a_guide_to_drafting_for_beginners/

Drafting & Counterpicks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc0vk6pNapM

Cookie's Coach Challenge livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S699co75bMM

Drafting & Counterpick Tools:

http://dotapicker.com/counterpick
https://dota2.becomethegamer.com/

Note: Remember, these websites/apps can provide automated suggestions based on hero picks but game experience and mechanical knowledge will outweigh them.

Additional Resources

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=630339657

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1737398594

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1208627755

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=423565666

[yee]

RAT