Dota 2 Guide for Beginners

Do you want to learn how to play Dota 2 but don’t know where to start? This ultimate guide will walk you through the basics of this amazing game and prepare you for the challenges that beginners usually face.

Understanding the Basics of Dota 2

But before we start, we'd better make sure you understand the features and objectives of the game. Let’s briefly review the most important elements of Dota 2.

What is Dota 2?

Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) released by Valve in 2013. The game is based on the custom map Defense of the Ancients, developed by IceFrog for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Over 700k gamers log into Dota 2 every day, making it one of the most popular games on Steam.

Key Objectives

A typical Dota match has ten players divided into two teams — the Radiant and the Dire. The main objective of the game is to destroy the Ancient of the opposing side (also known as the “Throne”). Over the course of the game, players try to kill their opponents’ heroes and farm creeps to earn XP and gold, which in turn allows them to purchase game-changing artifacts.

Map Design

To be successful at Dota, you must know the map like the back of your hand, especially the critical locations like Outposts and Lotus Pools. We’ve included a handy map in our Dota 2 guide for you to never waste the all-too-important couple of minutes finding the nearby Secret Shop, Roshan’s Pit, or Ancient Creep Camp in your Jungle:

Heroes in Dota 2

You can’t really say you know how to play Dota before you get acquainted with every hero in the game’s roster. At the time of writing, Dota 2 boasts 126 playable characters with unique skills and surprisingly fleshed-out lore. We suggest you try to complete the game’s All-Hero Challenge, which requires you to win at least one match with every single available hero.

Hero Roles Explained

And if you want to start winning your games, you have to stick to a certain role in your team. Technically, each hero can fill any role, but some are more equipped to handle certain duties. The roles are:

1. Carry: This is the core hero of your team, and their main objective is to cause as much damage as possible. Carry usually starts the game on the Safe Lane. As a rule, carry heroes are weak at the beginning of the match, but become stronger as the game progresses. Sometimes, a well-fed carry can even wipe out an entire team on its own.
2. Midlaner: This is the “second man” of your team, a powerful hero who starts the match on the Mid Lane. Considering that they play solo for a good chunk of the game, Midlanes usually have a level advantage over the rest of the team. After reaching level six, a Midlaner should start ganking, i.e., travel to the top or bottom lanes to support their teammates and kill unsuspecting enemies.
3. Offlaner: Offlaner starts their journey in the Hard Lane with a Sisyphean task of preventing the enemy Carry from farming. This role requires a lot of health points and armor, as it often involves taking significant damage during team fights.
4. Roamer/Support: Usually a hero with the highest mobility, Roamer starts the match on the same lane as the offlaner. However, as soon as an opportunity arises, they go to Mid or Safe Lane to gank (ambush and kill) the opponents. When the game enters the Mid phase, Roamers help their team during fights by scouting and neutralizing enemy supports.
5. Hard Support: Last but not least, Hard Support is typically a hero with powerful supportive abilities who doesn’t depend on expensive artifacts to be useful. Ideally, a Hard Support must have one or more saving abilities. Besides their main task, Hard Supports also ward the map, stack creeps in the Jungle, and take care of the team’s Carry at the beginning of the match.

Types of Heroes

Our Dota 2 How to Play guide surely wouldn’t be complete without a review of the four core hero types. Almost all characters in the game have one core attribute, which defines their role and playstyle:

1. Strength: This type includes 35 characters able to withstand a lot of damage due to their above-average health pool, high regeneration, high armor, or a mix of the three. They mainly rely on physical damage, and their skills don’t require a lot of mana.
2. Agility: 34 heroes from this category have extremely high attack speed, which, if paired with a good source of damage, can give them an edge in assaults. Also, many Agility characters have escape abilities, which protect them from enemy ambushes.
3. Intelligence: Putting it simply, there are 34 wizards in the game. Despite a low health pool and negligible physical damage, they have a lot of mana and powerful spells that can easily turn the tide in a teamfight. Welcome to Hogwarts, friends.
4. Universal: Finally, there are 23 Jacks of all trades, whose strength, agility, and intelligence progress at the same rate. These heroes can adapt to various roles and strategies, making them highly useful in almost any game. However, playing Universal characters isn’t recommended for beginners due to their high difficulty.

Choosing Your First Hero

So, which hero should you choose after reading our Dota 2 tutorial for beginners? Of course, you can (and should!) choose the one that appeals to you, but we strongly recommend starting with the characters that don’t require micro control or using complex mechanics:

1. Sniper: This is one of the most powerful ranged heroes, and learning his skills will take you less than 10 minutes. Also, Sniper is one of the best Midlaners in the game.

1. Crystal Maiden: If you want to start your journey as a Support, you won’t find a hero more suitable than this beautiful wizard. With effective yet easy-to-learn abilities, Crystal Maiden will help you master the basics of supporting your team while also being powerful in her own right.

1. Dragon Knight: Many old-school players started their Dota 2 careers by learning to play this character. Davion has a large health pool, skills that allow him to farm any creep camp in the Jungle, and a splashy ultimate ability.

Core Gameplay Mechanics

In this part of our Dota 2 beginner guide, we’ll talk about the key mechanics of the game, which you should keep in mind every time you press “PLAY DOTA”. Moreover, it may even be a good idea to practice them with bots first.

Last Hitting and Denying

Let's start with the two most essential Dota 2 basics. Mastering them will help you earn more gold and experience while slowing your enemy's progress:

1. Last Hitting: Learn to deliver the final blow to the enemy and neutral creeps to get gold and experience.
2. Denying: This slightly immoral mechanic requires you to kill allied creeps before an enemy can last hit them. Yeah, it may feel like a betrayal, but it prevents your opponents from getting stronger and killing your hero.

Experience and Leveling

Every time your hero reaches a new level, their attributes grow, and you get a chance to improve one of their abilities (or unlock new talents). The maximum level is 30, which can be achieved by accumulating experience points (XP). Those points are divided equally between the ally heroes within the 1500-radius area when an enemy hero or non-hero unit dies. Plus, you can get experience by claiming it from the Wisdom Shrines.

Gold Farming and Item Purchasing

Farming tips are an integral part of any Dota 2 beginners guide, as your gold flow determines when you’ll be able to assemble all the artifacts you need for your build. You can obtain money by:

1. Killing enemy heroes and non-hero units.
2. Destroying enemy buildings.
3. Claiming Bounty Runes.
4. Stacking creeps (allowing your allies to get gold faster).

Players can use gold to purchase various items in the Base Shop or the Secret Shop. Additionally, they can spend money to activate Buyback, which immediately respawns their heroes.

Towers, Barracks, and the Ancient

On every lane, you can find three towers of progressively higher tier (T1, T2, T3) and a pair of barracks (for ranged and melee creeps). Also, the Ancient is guarded by a pair of even more powerful towers (T4). You must destroy these buildings one by one, as each is invulnerable to damage until the previous one is destroyed. Also, when heroes attack towers with no creeps or enemies nearby, the buildings take reduced damage and quickly regenerate health. Plus, players can protect their buildings by using the Glyph of Fortification, making them invulnerable for 7 seconds. As you can probably guess, destroying buildings is hard.

Essential Items for Beginners

If you’re serious about learning how to play Dota, you should review all the available game items and get at least a basic understanding of how they work. Yeah, that’s a lot of reading to be done. In this part of our guide, we’ll briefly review the key artifacts for each role and the starting utilities that can help you at the beginning of the match.

Starting Items

Here is a list of items that can help you stay alive once the game starts. Don’t hesitate to invest in them:

Item Icon	Item Name	Short Description
	Tango	Gives 7 health regeneration for 16 seconds, requires consuming a tree (don’t worry, there are plenty of those on each lane).
	Clarity	Provides 6 mana regeneration for 25 seconds.
	Healing Salve	Grants 30 health regeneration for 13 seconds.

Core Items for Each Role

While there are simply too many artifacts in Dota 2 for beginners to keep track of, there are items central to each role. Here’s a list of these items and their associated roles.

Teamwork and Communication

So, now you know how to start playing Dota 2, but what about winning? We’ve covered roles, farming, and even items, but all of those won’t help you if you don’t have good team coordination. To win, you need to master communication and tracking targets on the map. Let’s have a closer look at these integral elements of the game.

Importance of Map Awareness

The single most important tip our Dota guide can offer you is to always keep an eye on the minimap. This way, you’ll make it way harder for the enemy carry/support to ambush you, while also improving your own chances of pulling a surprise attack. We strongly recommend enabling the “Use Extra Large Minimap” option in the Settings to make your minimap easier to read.

Using Pings and Chat Effectively

Using pings and chat wheels is the basics of playing Dota. With these helpful tools, you can get your teammate’s attention or inform them about something without using voice or text chat. By default, you can ping by holding Alt and pressing left- or right-click. If you hold Alt + left-click for a bit longer, a Chat Wheel will appear. It allows you to quickly communicate more specific things, like the presence of an enemy ward in the area.

Working with Your Team to Win

If you’d try to win a match as a solo player, there is a 90% chance you won’t succeed (and we’re being generous here). On the other hand, if you keep things friendly with your teammates and work together, you can pull off all sorts of crazy plays while also getting a better experience overall.

Game Phases Explained

Sometimes, even experienced players overlook one important aspect of the basics of playing Dota 2 — understanding the game phases. In any case, you should try to keep the phases in mind to avoid mistakes and ensure the proper progress of your hero.

Early Game

The Early Game phase starts at the beginning of the match and lasts until its 15th minute. This is the time you should focus on farming, dominating your lane, and purchasing the first powerful items for the Mid Game.

Mid Game

The time from the 15th to the 45th minute is called Mid Game (try not to confuse it with the Mid Lane, as those are unrelated). During this period, players begin to focus on completing objectives, such as destroying towers and killing Roshan. This usually leads to frequent team fights.

Late Game

Everything from the 45th minute till the end of the match is considered Late Game. This is the period when your heroes must reach the peak of their power and assemble the items that will help them break through the enemy defenses and destroy their Ancient.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

And here we come to one of the more important parts of our Dota beginner guide. In the following section, we’ll review the common mistakes made by new players and how to avoid them.

Playing Without Vision

Wards can help you win even against better players. Never hesitate to ask for support to place Observers and Sentries (or do it yourself) to reduce the fog of war on the map. This way, it’ll be easier to predict enemy movements and plan your actions.

Rushing Expensive Items Too Early

In most cases, rushing expensive items is a mistake. You simply won’t be able to stand against the enemies who have purchased cheap yet efficient artifacts designed for early advantage. This critical mistake will make you lose gold and experience during the Early Game, significantly weakening your position in the later game stages.

Mastering Too Many Heroes at Once

Trying to master the abilities of all the heroes in the game can be overwhelming (and is likely impossible). It’s better to select around 5 characters you like and focus on them. Learn how their skills work, pay attention to their talents, and experiment with various builds. Before long, you’ll start “feeling” your hero, freeing your brain to focus on more advanced stuff like team tactics.

Conclusion

And now it’s time to launch the game and put the tips from our Dota beginners’ guide into practice. Keep playing and exploring the game, and eventually, you’ll evolve from a newbie into a true pro. Good luck!