Dota guide draft (just putting it here as a draft)
0
Have you ever been lost in a lane? Don't know what to do? Getting harassed like a Japanese school girl on the morning train:shock:?
KYAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
Yes? Well, welcome to my guide! The purpose of my guide is to help helpless little girls find their way on a lane without getting abused by huge burly men. I will list all possible tips tricks and things to take note to when having yourself a GOOOOOOOOOOOOD TIME:
[URL="http://img202.imageshack.us/i/omgbeethovenfapfapfap.jpg/"]
[/URL]
Ah yes a good time... on the lane. Feel free to skip any topics that you already know about as this guide will also list the basics to laning.
Ok lets get started!!
Minimap with creep camps labeled:
[URL="http://img52.imageshack.us/i/minimapp.png/"]
[/URL]
1. The lanes a description of the advantages of being in each lane
Top lane for Scourge/ Bottom lane for Sentinel:
This is what I like to consider the easiest lane to be at early game for various reasons. First of all, these lanes allow the player to pull creeps from creep camp 5, 4 for sentinel, and 7, 8, 10 for scourge (I will go into creep pulling later) very easily. Secondly, if you notice what happens when both sides of the creeps are unblocked (I will go into blocking later), the creeps end up closer to your tower (I will explain why it is more of an advantage to have creeps closer to tower in the blocking section). Thirdly, you will find the first tower trees in these lanes more suitable for juking (will be explained later) without the help of tangos or quelling blade. There are some other minor advantages as well depending on the situation; such as an ally who is farming neutral creeps can easily come to your aid when called on. There is only one significant disadvantage to being in this lane; if your team does not have dominance (I will also explain this later on) over the lane, you will not have any access to the side shop.
Middle lane
This lane has equal advantages on both sides for the most part. It is true that there are very slight advantages for both sides. The advantage of being in this lane is that it is hard for ganks or rushes very early on as you are always fairly close to your tower due to the distance between the sentinel and scourge tower. This lane is also unique because to the river between the two sides. The river is on lower ground which means that if you are positioned in the river without any creeps on the higher terrain, you will not be able to see what is on the other side because there will be fog of war (will explain later on) on higher terrain. Being on lower terrain also gives the disadvantage for ranged heroes to miss 25% of their attacks on targets on higher terrain. This lane also grants access to the runes on both sides (top and bottom) which is also one of the most advantages traits for this lane. The sentinel mid laner has the slight advantage of having access to creep spawn 1, allowing him to farm the weak neutral creeps very quickly if his creeps push too far. The scourge laner has a slightly higher advantage when it comes to getting the bottom rune.
[URL="http://img135.imageshack.us/i/sentbtmrune.png/"]
[/URL]
You might have noticed that on the sentinel side, running to the rune on the higher terrain path takes much longer than the river path. While the scourge has a faster higher terrain path. The reason that this is an advantage is that if you were to take the river path and your opponent will then be able to see you heading towards the rune. They could then stun slow disable you, while most of the time you cannot do the same (unless with aoe skills) due to the lack of vision, they may also use any movement increase effect skills (surge, blink, leap, etc.) to reach the rune before you do. In situations without wards (wards are awesome buy them), going down the river path and returning without a rune tells the enemy that the rune is on the opposite side. I would like to add that there is actually another advantage to the sentinel side, but this is an extremely minor case; if creep spawn 2 happens to be trolls, it is possible to pull the middle creeps over, although this is quite hard to achieve (I often fail this as well; its best to pull 1 sec after your creeps spawn) and I don't think there would be very many scenarios that would require this.
Bottom lane for Scourge/ Top lane for Sentinel
This lane is often known as the danger lane; the reason being that this is the most disadvantagous lane. Basically, every advantage I have described for the top lane for scourge and bottom lane of sentinel is a disadvantage for this lane. First of all, this lane has trees used for juking is much more unsuitable compared to the other lanes, at least, without the help of tangos or quelling blade. Secondly, when the creeps are unblocked, they end up much farther from your tower; making you an easy target for early rushes. Thirdly, creep pulling for the other team often forces you to stay closer to the enemy tower. Although these are some pretty huge disadvantages, there is also 2 advantages of being in this lane. The first advantage is that you are closer to the rune closer to your lane, therefore you will have more access to that rune. The other advantage is that because your creeps are constantly closer to enemy tower you have more access to the side shop regardless of lane dominance, although if you do not have dominance of the lane the other side will also have access to the shop.
Creep Blocking:
[URL="http://img190.imageshack.us/i/blocke.png/"]
[/URL]
Now why would we be pushing these creeps like these japanese school girls pushing their breasts onto eachother? Many people creep block without the knowledge of why they do it. The answer had to do with your distance with the friendly tower. We can all agree that being by your tower is an advantage over the enemy. Firstly, because it give distance for you to rush or gank the enemy. Secondly, it doesn't give your enemy the benefit of doing the same to you. Creep blocking a much more effective strategy for the danger lane, because it shortens the distance of the gap between where the creeps would end up and the tower. Because this gap is quite huge you can never block too much. For the easy lane, there is barely a gap between the place your creeps end up and the ally tower. This makes it seem like blocking is almost meaningless, but don't be misled because the reason you would block creeps is to counter the enemies creeps block and still shorten the distance between creeps and tower. The easy lane should also beware to not overblock, as this leads to the ally tower taking a little damage. I understand the loss is very minor, but why have any loss at all? There is less of a point for a block at the middle lane; as the towers are fairly close to each other. This is often why some mid laners might choose to wait at the rune spawn area rather than creep block. The benifits to blocking at middle lane has to do with the terrain elevation. Blocking creeps and having them on higher ground forces a ranged enemy hero to miss 25% of their attacks if you can keep them from climbing up the slope. This gives you an advantage in last hitting and denying creeps! This guide will not explain how to creep block as there are many other guides to teach that, but I believe it is much better to learn yourself!
Lane DOMINANCE!!:
Who's your daddy?! Huh, you BITCH!!?
The most detrimental element of laning is dominance over the lane. Lane dominance is defined by whos the daddy(s) and whos the lil bitch(es). If you are the daddy, don't be afraid to let the bitch know whos boss! If you're the lil bitch be ready to take whatever spanking the daddy gives you! (yea I just had to say that..)
Dominance is all about having control of the lane, forcing your enemies to fear you, this is achieved through harrassment, which is attacking the enemy hero during laning phase to lower their health, for 2 main purposes; one, to make it easier to rush and take the kill, and two, to make it make them afraid of you, as being attacked brings you closer to death. Your roles are again determined by various factors; heros, items, play style, and player skill. Heros are probably the most important variable; most of the time player skill cannot overcome the roles of heros, for example (a very extreme case) starting level 1 meepo and sa laning agaist huskar and lion, it's quite clear to most players in this situation meepo and sa are the bitches, unless the skill level difference between the 2 teams are to an absolute extreme. This is the case due to the various skills of heros and their attack range. Most of the time, heros with longer range will have the advantage early game against heros with shorter range. This is due to creep mechanics; creeps will change targets and attack any unit of hero that attacks their ally hero, and will change their targets again if that unit or hero stops attacking. Having more range means that the time it takes for the creeps to walk towards and attack you is longer, meaning you can make more attacks the enemy hero and recieve less attacks from the creeps. Hero abilities come into play as well; for example all nukes can be used as harrassment, active orb effects (dr, bf, od, sil, ench, sw, vip) can be casted like a spell to prevent creeps from attacking you, anti harrassment skills such as evasion, miss, higher hp regeneration, or armor can help from being harrassed. Having dominance over the lane grants many benefits; farming and denying is made much easier, giving you more gold and exp, and it often makes the enemy unable to pull creeps.
You do not nessassarily have to be stronger in actual combat with your enemy to achieve dominance of the lane. I will refer to lane dominance in two types, true dominance and psychological dominance. True dominance is simple, it means that you are overpowering the opposing team and you have proved it to them. Psychological dominance is more complicated. It is often a mental effect that is created by the dominator to confuse the enemy. For example, lets say zeus and tinker are on sentinel, ursa and rk are on the scourge in the same lane. Lets say that they are all around level 4, and sentinel has dominance over the lane. It could be true that theoretically, rk and ursa might be able to rush zeus and tinker and possibly score a kill. But because zeus and tinker have painted this illusion that they are overpowering them, the scourge would hessitate to attack. It is true that none of these scenarios are absolute; zeus and tinker might have farmed, and denied so well that by the time they were level 4 with much supperior items, rk and ursa are only level 2 with barely any gold. At this point it would be near impossible for rk and ursa to defeat them with a rush. The scenario earlier that I explained is based on the fact that somehow ursa and sven were also able to farm and deny creeps at a level somewhat close to zeus and tinker. At this point it might be possible for them to rush ahead and get a kill. For the sake of arguement, we will assume that they are able to kill at least one of the sentinel heros if the rush was executed flawlessly. This is where psychological dominance comes to play; it works as a defense against rushes, as hessitation not only destroys teamwork, but also disrupts accurate timing, for it is very hard to charge into battle feeling unconfident. Psychological domination can be overcome by acurate calculation abilities and experience. Being able to calculate all the variables; your active and passive skills, the enemies active and passive skills, armor, damage, attack speed, health, mana, movement speed, and items, are the only way to figuring out if the opponent is actually dominating you or if it's all just a lie. As we are not computers, we cannot calculate to an exact; experienced players who have been in hero vs hero situations thousands of times are able to make much more accurate calculations.
Even true dominance has some psychological aspects as dominance is based on your or your opponents the fear of death. Dominance is not achieved until proven, if you have the ability to control the lane and not show it to the enemy, you do not have dominance of the lane. Lets take for example the huskar, lion vs. sa, meepo scenario: huskar and lion are ranged and sa and meepo are melee. It is clear that early on sa and meepo have no possible way of beating lion and huskar head on, based on the assumption that they are players of somewhat equal skill. Not only does huskar and lion have the ability to defeat sa and meepo head on, they also have the skills (orb, disables) and the supirior range to harrass sa and meepo. If huskar and lion choose to not attack sa and meepo at all and the 4 of them just farm creeps, then noone has dominance of the lane, even if lion and sw are stronger than their opponents.
There is another type of dominance that I would like name as sordid or cheap dominance, it is a type of true dominance in which the opponent is able to defeat you in battle but is unable to catch you. Take for example, nw vs. ursa, it's quite clear that if ursa and weaver were to stand toe to toe and fight it off ursa would surely win. But ursa is unable to lay a finger on weaver due to the fact that weaver has supirior range and has the skill to escape any rushes. True dominance is maintained as long as your enemies are unable to kill you or disallow you to keep dominating them.
True dominance and psychological dominance are both based off the basis of fear, the difference between the two is determined by their ability to either fend off their opponents if they were to be counterattacked. Dominance is often broken when the dominated kill the dominator, although this is not always the case. As scoring a kill on a the enemy hero who kept you from farming a single creep all game would not fully compensate for your lack of gold and exp, and when he returns he may keep dominating you. Lane dominance is only one advantage when it comes to laning, it is not the most important thing as dominance may change from time to time. The most important thing in laning phase is to get as much gold and exp and keep your opponent from doing the same, whether it would be farming, denying, or killing heros. You should not be discouraged if you cannot obtain lane dominance, sometimes you may farm better than your opponents even when they have dominance of the lane! Remember is your a bitch and you can take whatever spanking the daddies give you, then you're a good bitch!
Creep Pulling:
[URL="http://img602.imageshack.us/i/1ddfab6017e2f2f2581a0e7.jpg/"]
[/URL]
C'mon doggy! Yes, thats a good doggy!!
KYAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
Yes? Well, welcome to my guide! The purpose of my guide is to help helpless little girls find their way on a lane without getting abused by huge burly men. I will list all possible tips tricks and things to take note to when having yourself a GOOOOOOOOOOOOD TIME:
[URL="http://img202.imageshack.us/i/omgbeethovenfapfapfap.jpg/"]
[/URL]Ah yes a good time... on the lane. Feel free to skip any topics that you already know about as this guide will also list the basics to laning.
Ok lets get started!!
Minimap with creep camps labeled:
[URL="http://img52.imageshack.us/i/minimapp.png/"]
[/URL]1. The lanes a description of the advantages of being in each lane
Top lane for Scourge/ Bottom lane for Sentinel:
This is what I like to consider the easiest lane to be at early game for various reasons. First of all, these lanes allow the player to pull creeps from creep camp 5, 4 for sentinel, and 7, 8, 10 for scourge (I will go into creep pulling later) very easily. Secondly, if you notice what happens when both sides of the creeps are unblocked (I will go into blocking later), the creeps end up closer to your tower (I will explain why it is more of an advantage to have creeps closer to tower in the blocking section). Thirdly, you will find the first tower trees in these lanes more suitable for juking (will be explained later) without the help of tangos or quelling blade. There are some other minor advantages as well depending on the situation; such as an ally who is farming neutral creeps can easily come to your aid when called on. There is only one significant disadvantage to being in this lane; if your team does not have dominance (I will also explain this later on) over the lane, you will not have any access to the side shop.
Middle lane
This lane has equal advantages on both sides for the most part. It is true that there are very slight advantages for both sides. The advantage of being in this lane is that it is hard for ganks or rushes very early on as you are always fairly close to your tower due to the distance between the sentinel and scourge tower. This lane is also unique because to the river between the two sides. The river is on lower ground which means that if you are positioned in the river without any creeps on the higher terrain, you will not be able to see what is on the other side because there will be fog of war (will explain later on) on higher terrain. Being on lower terrain also gives the disadvantage for ranged heroes to miss 25% of their attacks on targets on higher terrain. This lane also grants access to the runes on both sides (top and bottom) which is also one of the most advantages traits for this lane. The sentinel mid laner has the slight advantage of having access to creep spawn 1, allowing him to farm the weak neutral creeps very quickly if his creeps push too far. The scourge laner has a slightly higher advantage when it comes to getting the bottom rune.
[URL="http://img135.imageshack.us/i/sentbtmrune.png/"]
[/URL]You might have noticed that on the sentinel side, running to the rune on the higher terrain path takes much longer than the river path. While the scourge has a faster higher terrain path. The reason that this is an advantage is that if you were to take the river path and your opponent will then be able to see you heading towards the rune. They could then stun slow disable you, while most of the time you cannot do the same (unless with aoe skills) due to the lack of vision, they may also use any movement increase effect skills (surge, blink, leap, etc.) to reach the rune before you do. In situations without wards (wards are awesome buy them), going down the river path and returning without a rune tells the enemy that the rune is on the opposite side. I would like to add that there is actually another advantage to the sentinel side, but this is an extremely minor case; if creep spawn 2 happens to be trolls, it is possible to pull the middle creeps over, although this is quite hard to achieve (I often fail this as well; its best to pull 1 sec after your creeps spawn) and I don't think there would be very many scenarios that would require this.
Bottom lane for Scourge/ Top lane for Sentinel
This lane is often known as the danger lane; the reason being that this is the most disadvantagous lane. Basically, every advantage I have described for the top lane for scourge and bottom lane of sentinel is a disadvantage for this lane. First of all, this lane has trees used for juking is much more unsuitable compared to the other lanes, at least, without the help of tangos or quelling blade. Secondly, when the creeps are unblocked, they end up much farther from your tower; making you an easy target for early rushes. Thirdly, creep pulling for the other team often forces you to stay closer to the enemy tower. Although these are some pretty huge disadvantages, there is also 2 advantages of being in this lane. The first advantage is that you are closer to the rune closer to your lane, therefore you will have more access to that rune. The other advantage is that because your creeps are constantly closer to enemy tower you have more access to the side shop regardless of lane dominance, although if you do not have dominance of the lane the other side will also have access to the shop.
Creep Blocking:
[URL="http://img190.imageshack.us/i/blocke.png/"]
[/URL]Now why would we be pushing these creeps like these japanese school girls pushing their breasts onto eachother? Many people creep block without the knowledge of why they do it. The answer had to do with your distance with the friendly tower. We can all agree that being by your tower is an advantage over the enemy. Firstly, because it give distance for you to rush or gank the enemy. Secondly, it doesn't give your enemy the benefit of doing the same to you. Creep blocking a much more effective strategy for the danger lane, because it shortens the distance of the gap between where the creeps would end up and the tower. Because this gap is quite huge you can never block too much. For the easy lane, there is barely a gap between the place your creeps end up and the ally tower. This makes it seem like blocking is almost meaningless, but don't be misled because the reason you would block creeps is to counter the enemies creeps block and still shorten the distance between creeps and tower. The easy lane should also beware to not overblock, as this leads to the ally tower taking a little damage. I understand the loss is very minor, but why have any loss at all? There is less of a point for a block at the middle lane; as the towers are fairly close to each other. This is often why some mid laners might choose to wait at the rune spawn area rather than creep block. The benifits to blocking at middle lane has to do with the terrain elevation. Blocking creeps and having them on higher ground forces a ranged enemy hero to miss 25% of their attacks if you can keep them from climbing up the slope. This gives you an advantage in last hitting and denying creeps! This guide will not explain how to creep block as there are many other guides to teach that, but I believe it is much better to learn yourself!
Lane DOMINANCE!!:
Who's your daddy?! Huh, you BITCH!!?
The most detrimental element of laning is dominance over the lane. Lane dominance is defined by whos the daddy(s) and whos the lil bitch(es). If you are the daddy, don't be afraid to let the bitch know whos boss! If you're the lil bitch be ready to take whatever spanking the daddy gives you! (yea I just had to say that..)
Dominance is all about having control of the lane, forcing your enemies to fear you, this is achieved through harrassment, which is attacking the enemy hero during laning phase to lower their health, for 2 main purposes; one, to make it easier to rush and take the kill, and two, to make it make them afraid of you, as being attacked brings you closer to death. Your roles are again determined by various factors; heros, items, play style, and player skill. Heros are probably the most important variable; most of the time player skill cannot overcome the roles of heros, for example (a very extreme case) starting level 1 meepo and sa laning agaist huskar and lion, it's quite clear to most players in this situation meepo and sa are the bitches, unless the skill level difference between the 2 teams are to an absolute extreme. This is the case due to the various skills of heros and their attack range. Most of the time, heros with longer range will have the advantage early game against heros with shorter range. This is due to creep mechanics; creeps will change targets and attack any unit of hero that attacks their ally hero, and will change their targets again if that unit or hero stops attacking. Having more range means that the time it takes for the creeps to walk towards and attack you is longer, meaning you can make more attacks the enemy hero and recieve less attacks from the creeps. Hero abilities come into play as well; for example all nukes can be used as harrassment, active orb effects (dr, bf, od, sil, ench, sw, vip) can be casted like a spell to prevent creeps from attacking you, anti harrassment skills such as evasion, miss, higher hp regeneration, or armor can help from being harrassed. Having dominance over the lane grants many benefits; farming and denying is made much easier, giving you more gold and exp, and it often makes the enemy unable to pull creeps.
You do not nessassarily have to be stronger in actual combat with your enemy to achieve dominance of the lane. I will refer to lane dominance in two types, true dominance and psychological dominance. True dominance is simple, it means that you are overpowering the opposing team and you have proved it to them. Psychological dominance is more complicated. It is often a mental effect that is created by the dominator to confuse the enemy. For example, lets say zeus and tinker are on sentinel, ursa and rk are on the scourge in the same lane. Lets say that they are all around level 4, and sentinel has dominance over the lane. It could be true that theoretically, rk and ursa might be able to rush zeus and tinker and possibly score a kill. But because zeus and tinker have painted this illusion that they are overpowering them, the scourge would hessitate to attack. It is true that none of these scenarios are absolute; zeus and tinker might have farmed, and denied so well that by the time they were level 4 with much supperior items, rk and ursa are only level 2 with barely any gold. At this point it would be near impossible for rk and ursa to defeat them with a rush. The scenario earlier that I explained is based on the fact that somehow ursa and sven were also able to farm and deny creeps at a level somewhat close to zeus and tinker. At this point it might be possible for them to rush ahead and get a kill. For the sake of arguement, we will assume that they are able to kill at least one of the sentinel heros if the rush was executed flawlessly. This is where psychological dominance comes to play; it works as a defense against rushes, as hessitation not only destroys teamwork, but also disrupts accurate timing, for it is very hard to charge into battle feeling unconfident. Psychological domination can be overcome by acurate calculation abilities and experience. Being able to calculate all the variables; your active and passive skills, the enemies active and passive skills, armor, damage, attack speed, health, mana, movement speed, and items, are the only way to figuring out if the opponent is actually dominating you or if it's all just a lie. As we are not computers, we cannot calculate to an exact; experienced players who have been in hero vs hero situations thousands of times are able to make much more accurate calculations.
Even true dominance has some psychological aspects as dominance is based on your or your opponents the fear of death. Dominance is not achieved until proven, if you have the ability to control the lane and not show it to the enemy, you do not have dominance of the lane. Lets take for example the huskar, lion vs. sa, meepo scenario: huskar and lion are ranged and sa and meepo are melee. It is clear that early on sa and meepo have no possible way of beating lion and huskar head on, based on the assumption that they are players of somewhat equal skill. Not only does huskar and lion have the ability to defeat sa and meepo head on, they also have the skills (orb, disables) and the supirior range to harrass sa and meepo. If huskar and lion choose to not attack sa and meepo at all and the 4 of them just farm creeps, then noone has dominance of the lane, even if lion and sw are stronger than their opponents.
There is another type of dominance that I would like name as sordid or cheap dominance, it is a type of true dominance in which the opponent is able to defeat you in battle but is unable to catch you. Take for example, nw vs. ursa, it's quite clear that if ursa and weaver were to stand toe to toe and fight it off ursa would surely win. But ursa is unable to lay a finger on weaver due to the fact that weaver has supirior range and has the skill to escape any rushes. True dominance is maintained as long as your enemies are unable to kill you or disallow you to keep dominating them.
True dominance and psychological dominance are both based off the basis of fear, the difference between the two is determined by their ability to either fend off their opponents if they were to be counterattacked. Dominance is often broken when the dominated kill the dominator, although this is not always the case. As scoring a kill on a the enemy hero who kept you from farming a single creep all game would not fully compensate for your lack of gold and exp, and when he returns he may keep dominating you. Lane dominance is only one advantage when it comes to laning, it is not the most important thing as dominance may change from time to time. The most important thing in laning phase is to get as much gold and exp and keep your opponent from doing the same, whether it would be farming, denying, or killing heros. You should not be discouraged if you cannot obtain lane dominance, sometimes you may farm better than your opponents even when they have dominance of the lane! Remember is your a bitch and you can take whatever spanking the daddies give you, then you're a good bitch!
Creep Pulling:
[URL="http://img602.imageshack.us/i/1ddfab6017e2f2f2581a0e7.jpg/"]
[/URL]C'mon doggy! Yes, thats a good doggy!!
