Beginners Guide to Dota 2: The Basics.

My goal for this guide is to hopefully make it easier for new players to learn the game! I'm going to try my best to run you through the Basics of Dota, and what you need to know to start playing! Feel free to comment with questions or suggestions! Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Game Settings.

Key Bindings.

The option to customize settings are a important part of any game. In this section of the guide I'm going to talk a little about what some of the settings do, where to find them, and things you'll probably want to change.

The settings menu can be accessed from the main menu by clicking the gear in the top left corner, after you do that, it should bring you to this menu.

From this menu you can customize your controls and hotkeys. By default, abilities 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and U will be bound to the keys Q, W, E, D, F, and R. These controls can be changed by clicking on 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5,U and then clicking the key on your keyboard that you want to bind it too. I recommend leaving these settings on their defaults for now.





Next, on the Hotkey tab click the area that says "Phrases", once there I would suggest binding the "missing" phrases to keys that are easily accessable. If your lane is missing, simply press the button that the phrase is bound too, and easily warn your teammates about possible gank attempts. Once you bind them, return to the previous page.






The next hotkey section is accessed by clicking the "To Advanced Hotkeys" area at the bottom of the first settings tab. It should bring you to this screen.
This section gives you more customization options. All of these options will have a discription of what it does when you hover over it, so I won't go into to much detail on what everything does. The only thing I would recommend changing is the "Learn Ability" and "Upgrade Stats" keys to something that is nearby one of your fingers, it will help you quickly level an ability in fights instead of fumbling around to click the level up button with your mouse.

Game Options.

If you click on the options tab at the top of the settings page, it should bring you this area.

The first thing I would change on this page is the auto attack, by default it's set to "Always", change it to "Standard". When set to "Always", your hero will auto attack any enemy unit within range of your hero. The reason we change it to "Standard" is because if you're constantly attacking units units in lane, the lane is going to push towards your enemies tower, allowing them to farm without fear of being ganked or harassed. So by not auto attacking at every chance you get, you'll keep your lane from getting pushed in. All the other options here can be changed based on personal preference.



The "Advanced Options" area on the Options tab has some game, and personal setting you can change based on personal preference. I wouldn't worry about it too much early on.


The other two tabs in the settings are for Video & Audio which you can change if you feel inclined to do so.

Hero Types and Positions.

Hero Attributes.

Hero types are made up of three different categories based off of their primary attribute.

• Strength.
  
• Agility.
  
• Intelligence.

Each hero has all three of these attributes, but their primary will raise the heroes base attack damage when increased, and a bonus based on attribute affiliation. Down below I've added a picture of all the current heroes, their positions/ roles can accessed by clicking on the little tabs on the bottom of the page.

Hero Positions.

Each category has a wide range of positions that can be played by each of the heroes.
The positions include

• Hard-Carry.
  
• Ganker, Solo/Mid-Laner, Semi-Carry.
  
• Roaming Support/Jungler.
  
• Off-Laner.
  
• Hard Support.

I'll briefly go over what each of these positions are, and where they are played.

• Hard-Carry. The Hard-Carry is usually a teams main source of damage. They're meant to farm a lot of gold to get items, survive in team fights, and and take out the threats on the enemy team. The Hard-Carry is played in the safe lane, which is the bottom lane for the Radiant, and the top lane for Dire side.
  
  
• Ganker, Solo/Mid-Laner, Semi-Carry. The Mid-Laner is somewhat self explanatory, they are played in the middle lane. Most Mid-Laners are Semi-Carries, which means they can be played as a carry, but they don't require as much farm or items to be as effective as a Hard-Carry. Semi-Carries mostly depend on levels to make a difference in games early on.
  
  
• Roaming Support/Jungler. Most games you play earlier on probably won't have either of these positions. The Roaming Support roams around the map helping laners get kills and start snowballing. They're usually behind in levels due to their roaming which is why it can be a risky position to play. The Jungler is essentially the same as a laner, but instead he farms neutral creep camps in the jungle to get experience and gold. The jungler can easily assist the closest lane with ganks when the opposing lane is pushed up, but they should mainly focus on farm until the laning phase is over.
  
  
• Offlaner. The Offlaner is played in the Offlane, the Offlaner usually solo lane against the enemy Hard-Carry and their Support. Most times the Offlaner will not be able to farm because of this, so they have to abandon farming gold and just stay within experience range so they can still get levels. They also try their best to keep the enemy supports occupied with helping their hardcarry, this provides space to your team and keeps the enemy supports from roaming and ganking your other lanes.
  
  
• Hard Support. The Hard Support lanes with the teams Hard-Carry. They support them in lane by harassing the enemy laners with abilities and auto attacks. They provide vision for their team by buying wards, and de-ward by removing the enemy teams wards. They can help the teams carry by pulling friendly lane creeps out of lane using neutral creeps so the carry can safely farm under tower (it also allows for the carry and the support to get solo xp). Supports can also stack jungle camps for carries so they can get gold faster and more efficiently, camps can be stacked by pulling neutral creeps away from the camp around the :52-54 second mark of every minute so that both the support and the creeps are out of sight of the camp. Most supports will have CC (Crowd Control) abilities that aid their team, most of the abilities being stuns, disables, hexes, and debuffs.

Game Modes and Hero Select.

Game Modes, and Finding a Match.

To start playing the game, click the "Play Dota" button in the bottom right corner. From here you'll be able to choose from a variety of gamemodes (Hovering over each one will give a brief description of the gamemode variation). I would suggest starting with All Pick, it usually has the fastest queue times. After a match is found, all players are prompted to "Accept" the match, failing to do so can result in having to wait a short period of time before being able to queue again. If you leave a match after having already accepting it, you'll be issued an abandon. Abandoning a game will result in a loss for you, and issues a waiting time before you can play another match. Abandon enough games and you'll be placed in the low priority queue when searching for a match, meaning longer queue wait times and being placed with other low-prio players.

Hero Select.

After a (Hopefully) short waiting time in a loading screen, you'll be brought to the hero selection screen. Here you can either choose a hero, or random one by clicking the lock in random hero button that is right above the mini-map in the lower left corner. The benefit from "Randoming" a hero gives you bonus starting items when starting a match.

Basic Team Setups.

This is where you'll be picking your hero. Now, I'm going to go over basic team position setup.

1.

1. Hard-Carry
   
2. Mid
   
3. Offlaner
   
4. Safelane Support
   
5. Offlane Support

2.

1. Hard-Carry
   
2. Mid
   
3. Offlaner
   
4. Jungler
   
5. Hard-Carry Support

3.

1. Hard-Carry
   
2. Mid
   
3. Offlaner
   
4. Hard-Carry Support
   
5. Roaming Support

These three are probably the most common team setups when playing in a public match.
Some gamemodes have a ban system (Banning a hero means they can no longer be picked). After you've picked your hero, you'll have to wait for everyone else to pick one, once everyone has picked a hero the game can get started!

Hero Guides, Item Shops, and the Courier.

Once in a match, the hero guide area can be found by opening the shop and clicking on the text that says "Browse All Guides".

Here you can choose through many different guides that provide information on what items to buy, and what to level, be sure to click select on the guide you want to use.

The Item Shop.

Now I'm going to talk a little about the item shop, and a few items you should get acquainted with!

The item shop can be accessed by the clicking the gold button that says "Shop", this is where you will be buying all your items. The shop has two areas, the basic items area and the upgrades area, you can swap between the two by clicking their buttons in the upper right corner while the shop is open.

Items can be placed in the quick buy area by holding in the shift key and left clicking the item you to place there (The quick buy area is located just above the shop button).

One of the most useful items in the game is the Town Portal Scroll[dota2.gamepedia.com], (TP Scroll for short) this item allows the hero to teleport to any friendly tower or building in the game, it has a cooldown time of 80 seconds and only costs 50 gold, at the start of the game every hero is given a scroll.

Secret, and Side Shops.

There are some items that cannot be bought at base shop, they must be bought at the Secret Shop. Each team has their own Secret Shop on their side of the map (The shops are not exclusive to either team).

The Bottom and Top lanes on each team also have Side Shop next to the lanes, heroes are offered a small selection of items in these shops.

The Courier.

If you buy items when not in a shop, those items will be placed in your item stash. You can either go back to base and grab the items from your stash, or you can just have the courier bring them to you with the click of a button! The courier's soul purpose in the game is to bring you items! It can retrieve, carry, or deliver items. The courier is a shared unit, meaning your entire team is able to use it. Be sure to be polite when using it, make sure nobody else is already using it before you have it deliver your items. Remember, it's a team game, so you don't want your teammates to be mad at you for stealing the courier, be courteous!

Abilities, Items, and Basic Controls.

Basic Controls.

As previously stated in the "Game Settings" section, the default keys for abilties are Q,W,E,R.
You can move your hero by using the right mouse button, and select other units with the left mouse button.

The camara can be moved via edge-panning, which is done by moving the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen.

Abilities.

Whenever you level up, you're given an ability point which you can use to level up one of your abilities. Every hero has an ability known as an "Ultimate", each hero ultimate is unique to it's own hero. Ultimates can only be leveled a maximum of 3 times, it can be upgraded at levels 6,11, and 16 (Some heroes have different level requirements).

There are three different types of abilities.

• Active. Active abilities must be pressed in order for it's effect to be used.
  
• Autocast. Some heroes have autocast abilities that are able to be toggled on and off. Most autocast abilities apply special on-hit effects when attacking, and some provide buffs to friendly units.
  
• Passive. Once leveled, passives are abilities that are often permanently turned on, and usually apply buffs to either the hero or allied units.

Abilities also have different targeting types.

• Target Unit. The ability is used on the targeted unit. Target unit spells can also have area effects.
  
• Target Area. The ability can be cast on any target area.
  
• No Target/Toggle. Usually abilities that are casted on self.

Items.

Items are, well, items! they provide bonus abilities, and stats.
Each hero has six inventory slots, a item will take up one slot. If you buy an item when your inventory is full, it will be placed in your stash at base. If your stash is full, it will be dropped on the ground in your teams fountain. You also have three backpack slots that are located just below your main six slots, these slots can hold items but those items will be inactive until you put them into your main item slots.
Basic items can be used to build better items. Most of these better items require an item called a "recipe". Recipe's are sort of like blueprints that allow you to make the item, when a recipe is combined with the basic items that are required to build an item, it will automatically be crafted and placed in your inventory. Basic and upgraded items can also have active and passive abilities! Along with different targeting types.

The Laning Phase.

What is the Laning Phase?

The laning phase is the time between the start of a match until usually the 10-15 minute mark (Timing can vary with each game). This is the time where both teams heroes are in their own lanes . The laning phase will usually end when either side pushes down the others tier 1 tower, the laning phase can also end when either teams heroes start roaming into other lanes.

What do I do during the Laning Phase?

During the laning phase you should be doing a few different things depending on the position you're playing.

• If you're a Carry. Focus on last hitting[dota2.gamepedia.com] (killing lane creeps for gold). Call missing if your lane opponent is gone from lane. Use map awareness (watching for enemies that roam from other lanes).
  
  
• If you're a Support. Stack jungle camps. Pull creep waves (if needed). Provide wards for your team. Call missing for your lane (and possibly others). Deny[dota2.gamepedia.com] friendly creeps ("A" click friendly creep when it's a low hp, this proves and small percentage of xp). Harass lane opponents with auto attacks and spells. Support your carry with kills or escapes. Secure the Rune[dota2.gamepedia.com] if it hasn't already been taken by either mid laner. Or help other lanes if they're struggling.
  
  
• If you're a Mid laner. Focus on last hitting and getting experience. Pick up Runes in the river (if possible). Roam to other lanes for ganks (again, if possible). Call missing for your lane (calling mia for mid lane is very important!) and gank other lanes when able.

(Laning Phase Example)

The laning phase will differ each game. In this clip from a game I played, it ended around the 7:30 mark. Heroes from both teams moved into the top lane where the first teamfight of the match occurs. This video also gives an example of what to do during the laning phase, last hitting, denying, map awareness, harassing, etc. After the laning phase is over (depending on the circumstances) you should try to stick with your team, or split-push if it's safe to do so.

(Pulling Example)

(Stacking Example)

Closing.

I hope this guide has been helpful to you! Again, if you have any suggestions on how I can make this guide better, just let me know in the comments!

[Kneppy]

I updated text and pictures for the guide, hoping on adding more content to it when I can find the time!

[FiXeD]

There should be a test based on this guide before somebody is allowed to play ranked

[Rambling Old Fish]

Emm
Timing can very with each game

I believe its vary.

[crow-e]

Needs an update, but still pretty solid guide.

[Mario]

cool guide!

[.]

Its fine :)

[Atha]

And in my opinion, beginners should never do HARD supports, but only SEMI supports, because I'm sure the carry will make many mistakes and you will be only stressed if you do hard supports but the carry still fail miserably. Beginners carry tend to ask wards without seeing the stock, this make me angry so much so that whenever I play as a support, I will also farm only a little (1 creep wave or neutral camp), and tend to not roaming much because for beginner, the gameplay is more like farmville, so never stressed yourself too much with roaming and help only if needed, like buying and placing wards at the right spot and stuns when ganking or help carry to run if he is chased... DON'T follow a carry too much and try to farm only a LITTLE when you think the carry is safe enough.

[Atha]

Just FYI, although offlane is indeed suicide lane, but the purpose of the offlaner is to give pressure for the enemy supports to aid only their carry and guarantee that the carry will cant farm if there is no supports so the supports cant roam, creating space, even without items and little experience, this is why offlaner is often supposedly to have strong basic body and skills.
E.g. Omniknight, BB, Slardar, Clockwerk, Undying, Axe, Abbadon, etc.

[swiftslash]

Thanken

[Kneppy]

I'm hoping to update this sometime soon, I work fulltime so finding a spare moment can be a little difficult. If you have anything you'd like me to add to the guide, feel free to drop it in the comments.