Updated:Dota 2 Control set-up guide (Console, Keybindings and Game Settings)

For new players there's so many different aspects of the game that you have to learn. I feel that having a good keybind set-up from the start will improve your learning experience and prevent bad habits from developing. This guide will help you set up all the keybinds that you need and explain what each bind does in detail. It includes my full in-game keybind set up (screenshots), how to set Top and Bottom rune keybinds as well as some more detail behind the game settings that affect your control.

Intro

The default keybindings choices aren’t optimal in my opinion, so I would like to share my keybind and console set up so that your first playing experiences are more enjoyable and you’re learning experience is most productive. Sorry for the long walls of text, but I hope I give you something to think about when it comes to having the best control set up for Dota 2.

There are two stages to setting up your Dota 2 controls to your optimum set up:

1) Console Set up
2) In-game Control set up menu

Setting up the console

Firstly you need to enable your console. To do this you need to open your steam client > click on the library tab found at the top > right click Dota 2 on the left panel > click properties.

A pop out screen will open. Select the General tab at the top > Click “Set Launch Options”
Another pop out screen will open.

Type in “-console” and press ok. If you’re getting tired of the freaky video at the start of the game type “-console – novid” and hit ok.

Now you have your console enabled!

Setting up your Autoexec.cfg

The auto execute file executes console commands every time you start Dota 2, which means that you only need to set it up once to have the set up you want.
Firstly you need to locate the cfg folder. Using windows explorer head to the following directory:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\dota 2 beta\dota\cfg
Create a new text document and open it. Copy and paste the following and then click file>save as> change “save as type” to “all files” and name the file as “autoexec.cfg” and then hit save.

Con_enable “1” //==Dota 2 in offline mode. Type “offline0” to start game with bots offline. Change number to increase difficulty==//
alias “offline0” “sv_cheats 1;sv_lan 1;dota_start_ai_game 1;dota_bot_set_difficulty 0;map dota.bsp;”
alias “offline1” “sv_cheats 1;sv_lan 1;dota_start_ai_game 1;dota_bot_set_difficulty 1;map dota.bsp;”
alias “offline2” “sv_cheats 1;sv_lan 1;dota_start_ai_game 1;dota_bot_set_difficulty 2;map dota.bsp;”
alias “offline3” “sv_cheats 1;sv_lan 1;dota_start_ai_game 1;dota_bot_set_difficulty 3;map dota.bsp;”
alias “offline4” “sv_cheats 1;sv_lan 1;dota_start_ai_game 1;dota_bot_set_difficulty 4;map dota.bsp;”
cl_cmdrate “60” //Amount of updates sent to server per second
cl_updaterate “60” //Amount of updates received from server per second
rate “80000” //Total amount of bandwith dota may use
cl_interp “0” //More network stuff below…
cl_interp_ratio “1”
cl_smooth “1”
cl_smoothtime “0.01”
cl_lagcompensation “1”
cl_pred_optimize “2”
dota_force_right_click_attack 1 // Enables Right click deny! This disables right click follow. Use M + Click to follow
dota_camera_disable_zoom “1” //Can’t zoom camera in. Remove this line if you want to be able to zoom.
Dota_disable_range_finder 0 //Shows spells are within casting range of targeted area/target
dota_minimap_hero_size 1100 //Changes the size of heroes on the minimap. This is slightly larger than the default
dota_minimap_misclick_time “0” //Removes delay before allowing input on minimap
dota_health_hurt_decay_time_max “0” //Fade time on DMG done/received reduced to instant
dota_health_hurt_decay_time_min “0”
dota_health_hurt_delay “0”
dota_pain_decay “0”
dota_pain_factor “0”
dota_pain_multiplier “0”
dota_pain_fade_rate “0”
dota_sf_game_end_delay “0”
net_graphheight “40” //Netgraph settings. Type net_graph 1 in the console during a game to enable. Change this height if it is too high or low on the screen.
Net_graphinsetbottom “437”
net_graphinsetleft “0”
net_graphinsetright “-83”
net_graphpos “1”
net_graphproportionalfont “0”
net_graphtext “1
bind "F1" "dota_camera_set_lookatpos -2273.898682 1832.745483"
bind "F2" "dota_camera_set_lookatpos 3035.773438 -2472.680176"

Explanation of Autoexec.cfg content

Credits to Arteezy’s autoexec file for the majority of the content.

Offline Bot mode: Currently you can’t play solo vs bots without being connected to steam under the default settings. If you leave dota 2 open before you lose internet access you will be able to play vs bots and practice/learn through the use of the console with the addition of the first set of lines in my autoexec above. Once in-game open the console using the keybind and type “offline0” this will start a game. Increase the number from 0 to 4 to increase bot difficulty.

Right click deny is enabled – Denying is when you attack friendly units once they are under 50%,10% and 25% hp for creeps, towers and heroes(heroes only denyable under the effects of the damage over time of Doom, Venomous Gale – venomancer, Shadowstrike – Queen of Pain). Right click deny means that you do not have to a click to deny which is awesome. By default right clicking on friendly units makes you follow that unit. This command disables that so you will have to Move command (M) and click to follow (works on all types of units)

Continuous FPS and Ping display:
To enable a continuous view of your fps and ping in a convenient location type “net_graph 1” into the console. You will only need to do this once. Ideally you want it to be positioned as it is in the screenshot below (on the top right of your screen). If the vertical positioning needs adjusting change the value of “netgraph_height” in the autoexec.


Camera location keybinds:
The last two lines of the autoexec bind F1 and F2 to move your camera instantly to the top and bottom rune. Runes spawn at both locations (since 6.82) at 0:00 and at 2:00 intervals after this. After 6.82 and 6.83 changes one of the rune spots will always be a bounty rune and new runes will always spawn at the 2 minute interval.

In-game Control Set up (1)

Shift Queueing: Holding down shift enables you to issue a chain of commands. For example if your playing naga siren you can select your illusions and then a click one neutral camp and then hold shift and a click another neutral camp or creep wave. This works with items and abilities as well, use it when needed!

Attack Move (A): attacks every enemy/neutral unit in your path until you get to the point you clicked to.

Stop (s): This is SOOOOO IMPORTANT. If you play with auto attack on you can use the stop key to help you last hit. By pressing stop you will cancel any previously issued movement or attack or ability commands and begin attacking the nearest enemy unit. The autoattack always targets the CLOSEST ENEMY UNIT, so if you position yourself closest to the creep that is going to die next and then hit s you can last hit without having to even right click the creep.

Stop (s) can also be used to cancel attack animations. This can spammed to prevent auto attacks from going off. This is useful against certain abilities such as blademail or nyx assasins spiked carapace.

Thirdly Stop can be used to cancel spell casting spells that have a cast time (that aren’t channeled). Most spells have cast times, but this is not explicitly stated by the tooltips, if there is a delay during which your character starts animating after you use a spell before it actually happens it is cancellable with stop. This is really good for throwing off your opponent to bait defensive moves. The cooldown won’t trigger if you cancel a spell before it finishes casting and the mana cost will not incur.

Control groups:

1 – selects your hero. Double tap to centre the camera back to your hero.
§ or ~, the button to the left of 1 is what I bind my courier to. Its extremely close to your hero keybind so it makes switching between the two and microing it easy.
I use 2-5 for control groups. You might say that these binds should be for items, but seriously these binds are much more comfortable to play with once you have an illusion rune and or play multi unit heros such as chen, naga lycan invoker etc. I set 2 to select all other units and 3-5 are customizable control groups.
So for example when playing meepo with blink I just have to press 2, tab spam poof onto my main hero and then press 1 and use my blink hotkey. When playing luna, gyro or any other helm of the dominator builder you can easily stack ancients using 2. Once you have a manta style or pick up an illusion rune however if you still want to stack ancients I’d recommend setting the control group for your dominated creep to 4 and set your manta illusions to 3 to prevent you from accidently selecting both your illusions and your dominated creep when selecting all other units. When playing Chen, or Meepo you can have more than one type of unit when you select all other units with usable spells. To rotate between the units while staying in the same control group use tab.

Juggernaut Healing Ward, Tusk Frozen Sigil, Elder Titan Spirit When playing these heroes I usually bind 2 to one of the empty control groups. For some reason they won't be selected under select all other units. Do remember to do this rebind after you have selected the hero on the pick screen. I've lost too many healing wards from forgetting to do this. If you are comfortable with using 1 and 3 for these heroes you can do that instead of rebinding 2.

Hold (Caps Lock). If you decide that you want to play with auto attack off you probably don’t need this bind. If you do play with autoattack on it is quite important. The Hold position command tells your hero to stay in one spot and attack anything that comes within your attack range. It does the same thing as the stop command except using the stop command while in range of enemy units will cause you to move towards the unit to attack it. This is really important when trying to hide in trees or play a support because auto attack forces you to move towards creeps even if they are outside your attack range, thus revealing and losing your position. If you instead spam hold you will stay in one spot without attacking allowing you to set up your perfect gank or escape.

Courier speed burst: Once you have a flying courier (220g upgrade) you can use use the courier speed boost keybind to increase the movement speed of the courier by 50% every 40 seconds. The cooldown for the speedboost is shown on the bottom right of your screen. This bind is good when you don’t want to have to select your courier when boosting.
Courier deliver items (Z): you bought some items at the shop and want it to be delivered without having to click the deliver icon? Then use this keybind. Please don’t be selfish however, always check where the courier is and what items are on it. If it isnt empty is is likely that it is mid delivery to another player. You should nearly always wait for their item to be delivered before using this hotkey, or they may rage at you since this hotkey overrides previously issued commands with the courier.

Further control with the courier: When you have games where your courier is going to have to go through risky pathing select the courier and shift queue its movement pathing to a safer one and then shift queue courier deliver items or go to secret shop (w) or return to base (q). You really don’t want to feed your courier, you feed 750g(ground) 875g(flying) in total to your enemy team whenever it dies, as well as lose access to any items it was carrying for 3 minutes.

In-Game Control Set-up (2)

Autocast ability (Alt + ability keybind): This is for abilities like drow rangers Q, huskar’s searing arrows, lich’s w. If you use this your hero will automatically use the auto attack modifier without you having to spam the ability hotkey.

Quickcast ability 1-ultimate: For most heroes I leave this off. What this does is allow you to cast a spell using your mouse cursor to determine the location of where you cast point targetted spells and the unit you use unit targetted spells. This means that you don’t have to click again. You should change quick cast ability to qwedfr to the needed quickcast ability. There are certain heroes were you must put on quick cast for certain spells, such as meepo. If you bind w to quick cast ability 2 when playing meepo you can tab poof so fast. You may want to experiement with quickcast on abilities like pudges meat hook once you are used to its cast ranges.

Leveling your abilities using keybinds. I’ve seen way too many streams were people click on the spells they want to level. Please don’t be a clicker, use keybinds. If you want to level stats press alt a (Ability Learn) and then alt s (Upgrade Stats). If you want to level qwerdf use control and the keybind for the ability you want to level.


Item binds: G, X, C, V, T, Space

If you buy an item that you are going to be using a lot move it to slot 6, where the bind is space. Your left hand thumb does ♥♥♥♥ all ususally so give it something to do. This is an awesome bind for armlet toggling or for blink daggers, and shadowblades.

Mouse binds: I use a 5 button mouse. If you don’t have a mouse with atleast 5 buttons you should think about investing in one. A three button mouse in a game where scroll is unbindable is really not comparable to a 5 button mouse where your right thumb can do some work. I have my mouse button 5 as shop and alt-MB5 as take items from stash.

Puchase sticky (7) : This buys you a tp. If you are in range of the side shop and you have inventory space itll automatically go into your inventory. If away from sideshop itll go into your stash and you just have to deliver it or go there and take from stash (Alt+ Mouse 5).

Purchase quickbuy (6): When you are using the shop if you SHIFT + Click on an item it will put it into your quickbuy. Once you have the gold for the item or any of its components you can hit the keybind and you will be able to buy it without having to open the shop again. This is awesome for buying before you lose gold on death, plan your quickbuy when nothing is happening so that you are prepared for when action occurs.

In-Game Control Set-Up (3)

Please use pause. You can pause in Dota 2 and it is bound to F9 by default. We all live actual lives and sometimes theres ♥♥♥♥ that has to be done. Ask politely for a pause, and go sort it out. That being said, don’t queue if you know you have to afk for more than 5 minutes within the next hour. If you suddenly have to leave for more than 5 minutes always abandon(click on options on the top left and hit disconnect then leave game), this way your passive gold and any gold you earn will be instantly usable by your team, and they have the option of selling your items or leaving the game safely.

Often people will disconnect due to connection issues. If the disconnecter is on your team and you feel that it isn’t a rage quit then please pause. Most of the time its not their fault that they disconnected, and you are ruining the game experience for them and everyone else in the game by not pausing. If the disconnecter is on the opposing team pause here as well and wait for a couple minutes, if there are no signs of a return you can discuss continuing with the other players. Don’t be a win ♥♥♥♥♥, this is what creates a toxic community. If you don’t want to pause you belong with bots. Im sure everyone knows how to alt tab, just do something else till you hear the unpause sound ticking.

In-game Control Set-up - Chat phrases, Chat wheel and Voice Chat

Dota 2 is a team game, and communication can be very important. The chat phrases can be used even while muted.

Calling missing: When someone in your lane has dissapeared from your lane for more than 5-10 seconds while at decent hp and mana it means that they are, 1. Checking/securing a rune, 2. Warding, 3. Ganking, 4. Stacking neutral camps, 5. Standing under tower to stay safe from a gank. Whenever this happens you should say missing in chat to tell your team mates that there is potential gank threat, or wards going up. You should ideally never have to rely on missings yourself, you should use the minimap and your own situational awareness to know when people are trying to gank you or are setting up wards, but you shouldn’t expect everyone to do the same so you should say missing or your likely to get flamed. If you forget to do so saying sorry is polite. Instead of hitting enter and typing missing and hitting enter again and missing 1 last hit in the process you should use the keybinds F5, F6, and F7 to notify when someone is missing in the repsective lane.

The only other keybind that I have space to bind here is “Get Back”(F4) which will save your team on many from unnecessary deaths.

PINGING. If you hold alt and left click on the minimap or on your screen you will ping. This causes a sound and visual flashing icon on the minimap and the location of your ping. Use pings to direct team movement and alert allies of incoming enemies or enemy positioning as well as alert allies about which hero to kill first and when to push towers. If you hold ctrl + alt + left click you will do a "danger ping" which signals your team to be careful/defensive.

If you use alt and click on an ability it will tell your allies that it is available, on cooldown or you have insufficient mana to cast it.

This can also be used on items to remind your team that you have completed a certain item, and to tell them that it is available, on cooldown, or whether you have insufficient mana to use it.

If an enemy hero has completed an item and your team may not know about it, you can select the enemy hero and alt click on their item and this will inform your team about it, this saves you having to type it in chat.

I use alt + Mouse 4 to “Show recent event”. What this does is centre your camera on the last ping issued. If your playing treant protector, just ask your team to ping when they need a heal and you can heal much faster. Whats even better is that pings only visually last on the screen for a few seconds, with this bind if you miss a ping you can locate it.

Specific Hero Missing: If you hold alt and click on an enemy heroes icon on the top of the screen it will say that specific hero is missing. If you then press alt + ctrl and click on the hero icon itll say that specific hero has returned.

Please consider investing in a headset. Dota 2 allows in-game voice chat and unlike many other games, people actually use this. Please use push to talk if you don’t have a quiet background. I bind this to my mouse button 4 as it is really important and this allows me to be able to still have full control of everything else while holding it.

The chat wheel (Y). This is my chat wheel set up (below), I’ve considered all the options and these chat phrases and positions are the best in my opinion. Theres too many keybinds in Dota 2 for you to be able to bind every single chat function and be able to use them efficiently so the chat wheel is quite awesome. You hold down the keybind (Y) and move your mouse in the direction of the chat phrase needed. Please avoid spamming them, some people get really cheesed.

General Game Settings

Double tap to self cast: If you double tap items or abilities that can be used on yourself it will cast it on yourself.

Unified unit orders: When playing lone druid or controlling illusions or meepos you might find it easier to use unified unit orders. If you hold control and move or attack move every unit will move to that location. Unfortunately unified unit orders cannot be used to cast spells as control + qwerdf is used to level abilities (sad Meepo).

Shop Always uses hotkeys Personal preference, not recommended for beginners. It allows you to buy items from the shops using keybindings in addition to the usual method of right click purchasing them. I mostly use this to buy things like PMS, stout shield, qb from the side shop without missing last hits.

Expose Public Match Data: By default this is off. If you want to be able to analyse your performance on dotabuff turn this on. It does mean that other players can also view your dota 2 profile and check your scores, builds and last hits in previous games however.

Hide Dota & Steam Profile Turn this off if you want your friends to be able to see how you are doing.


Draw Minimap on Right: If you’re too used to LoL’s default map location you may want to put the minimap on the right hand side. Personally I’m too used to having the minimap of the left hand side from SC2. It’s actually better to have it on the right as you won’t misclick the top right of the minimap when running back to your base in clutch situations as radiant, or as dire when on the offensive you might accidently walk back by misclicking on the top right of the minimap when you want to head closer to the radiant.

Draw Hero Icons in Minimap: with the increased minimap icon size, this option becomes even better, by holding alt the minimap icons change from colours to hero icons. If you want to always have icons on also tick "Names/Icons Always in Minimap".

Done: TLDR + Additional reading

Thanks for reading my guide. Please let me know if I have made any mistakes and what you think.

TLDR: look at the images and consider the set up that I have. Please comment with your opinions.

Additional Reading

Purge's Welcome to Dota Guide[www.purgegamers.com]

Mathematics of Last Hitting under towers[www.teamliquid.net]


Full Dota 2 Map in detail with EVERY Juke spot and neutral camp boxes[critwhale.com]

Tsunami's hero tips and counters

Current Hero Win Rates[www.dotabuff.com]

Dota 2 global activity throughout the day[gfycat.com]

Stat Manipulation Guide[www.teamliquid.net]

Advanced Mid-Lane Guide[chaqdota.wordpress.com]

[LlurK]

Any chance for a 2016 updated version? thanks!

[Mineirovsky]

Thanks mate, helped a lot.

[(TZ) Trevor]

how to quickcast tuskar snowball??

[从今天开始认真上小学]

ConVarRef dota_workshoptools_limited_ui doesn't point to an existing ConVar
[SteamDatagramClient] Loaded cached network config file. Loaded revision 12 OK
m_mapGameModeDetails contains 0 items
[SteamDatagramClient] Got network config from CDN. Data contains revision 12, not newer than current revision 12; ignoring.


Failed to load default word filter list: resource/word_filter_default_1.txt
GetUGCDetails failed? (UGC=0A010AEC912E9CC9 nFileSizeInBytes=0).
**WARNING** Item schema mismatch after update!
GC told us to expect 6A8659C8, we got 521271ED




how can I solve it？

[Shoban]

@Chefs, do you have F1 or F2 bound to anything else ingame? make sure to check in the phrase bindings as well and unbind them and then it should work.

[Chef's^^]

nice guide ty for it, i just installed it but i only cant get the F1 and F2 keys to work with the rune spots, how can that be?

[Duke]

im using windows xp what should be the shorcut key on this OS for Browser?

[Glutes]

Pretty awesome, gonna have to learn this new setup

[76561198094515594]

Help me rate my invoker QE Guide!! thanks very much

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=259386184

[RAID TO 7K MMR]

amerikosi sosut