Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 6

                      Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 6

                                        

Welcome back part 6 of Entering the world of Dota 2, sorry for the slow entry I was quite tired after exams so I stopped for a few days. In this part I'm going to talk about lane controlling and how to dominate a lane. Last hitting, and denying doesn't help you to win lanes, in some situations you have to harass the enemy hero(es) using either your right click damage, or your skills to bring there hp low so that they would be discourage to come near your creeps or towers. 

I will talk about the three lanes separately because dominating/surviving each lane is different because in each situation your facing different numbers of heroes or your facing either a single melee hero or your facing 2-3 range heroes. The first lane I would like to talk about it the top lane aka the long lane. This lane usually consist of the enemy's carry with 1-2 supports in their neutral camps waiting to strike you in case you went to far into their territory. This lane is the hardest lane to lane control/dominate because there is no way you can win this lane. The best you can do is to get some farm and as much levels,denies as possible. But the main purpose is to get levels and not die. Dying in this lane gives experience/gold to three heroes. Which is not a good thing at all. If you can survive the lane, get a bit of farm (30+ creeps in 10 minutes) and not die at all, you're already giving your team the upper hand.There getting less money, less exp, and almost nothing done if they can't kill you. I'll talk about this lane in more detail later because there're many things you have to consider in a hard lane. Now let's talk about the middle lane. In the middle lane your usually up against a single hero. Heroes who benefit the most from a higher level (ex they can dominate the game with a few level leads) are the best for this lane. Usually heroes who can gank are put into the middle lane. Some examples are, Storm Spirit, Queen of Pain, Pudge, Templar Assasin. 

Some heroes are better than others, some heroes can even counter the enemy's mid lane hero. Thus it is important to get the best 1-1 setup when looking at the middle lane. For me I would say the middle lane is the most important lane out of the three lanes. Because if you lose the middle and following in levels the other team's mid lane can easily grab a rune and go gank the side lanes disrupting your carry's farm or killing off your hard lane hero. Thus this lane requires a lot of skills if your going to come mid lane. You have to be able to grab last hits, denies, harass the enemy's hero, grab runes, and gank. Looks a lot eh? 

Being aggressive in mid lane can totally scare the enemy's hero. If your facing against a melee hero standing on the enemy's range creep can be very intimidating. Forcing them tower hug and not be able to come close to their creeps at all. If your facing this then the best way is to go straight up and start doing right click damage. Do not let the enemy dominate your lane. If you have skills blast them up with a few skills and their force to regenerate or else they might die. The most important thing in a mid lane is to not fear the enemy.

 If all your doing is tower hugging you've already lost your lane. 

There is a thing called crow bottling that is buying a bottle and having your flying courier run it back to your fountain back and forth to refill. While you use it to get hp and mana. This ensures that you would not be dominated and you have enough mana/ hp to continually use it to clear creeps and get last hits. Since your in the mid lane most people are going to be going for runes. Runes are power ups that respawn on one side of the river either the right or the left side every 2 minutes. The first rune respawn at 0.00 of the game. Putting an observer ward on at least one side of the river is highly recommended because you can at least see where the rune respawns so that you can either go grab it or if you think your too slow then let your supports get it, and stick to bottle crowing. Getting runes can change your lane dominance. Getting a double damage rune gives you full control of the lane because no one is gonna be standing there and do a 1-1 right click war when your facing something that deals double your damage. Illusion runes gives you good lane dominance because now you have 2 illusions which can help you to deny, last hit, and harass the enemy hero. Illusions do 35% of your damage thus two illusions deals roughly 70% of your damage which is almost as much as a double damage rune. Which makes it good for lane controlling. Each heroes have their own ways to dominate lanes some heroes use their skills e.g. queen of pain, tinker,Magnus, while other heroes use right click damage, e.g. invoker,sniper, etc. But a combination of both is best. 

Now let's look at the last lane the easy lane. Controlling the lane here is fairly easy. Since most of the time your up against only a single hero. Just have your two supports go aggressive and stand around the bushes waiting to surprise the hard lane hero. A single surprise is enough to make them fear you and force them to stay in their towers. Most hard lane heroes will carry wards with them and ward the creeps camps and the rune. Just de ward them using sentries and they will fear you and only stay near their towers. 

Here a neat little picture about creep pulling that I found from google.

This brings me to the end of part 6 of Entering the world of Dota 2. These are the basics of lane controlling training and practicing will help you a lot more than just reading. Read and put them into practice will make you better. In my next blog I will talk about surviving the hard lane, I'm giving this topic a blog of its own because I myself usually play the hard lane role thus I can give you a lot of tips on how to survive it. Thanks for following my blog and keep it up!