[Guide] Coming to Dota 2 from LoL

[GAMEchief]

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN KNOW TO JUMP STRAIGHT IN:

Ingame guides. This section of the article explains how to use the in-game guides. If you select one of these, it'll highlight what skills you should level up each level and tell you what items to build as well as give you more info about the hero/ability/item.

SECOND MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN KNOW

If you ever find yourself not in control of your hero, press the key to select your hero, default F1. Double pressing this will take the camera to your hero.

Team compositions and recommended heroes:

In professional and high level games, team compositions are described using a farming priority number system, where each hero has a number from 1-5 assigned to them, with the 1 being the carry and the 5 being the ward bitch. In low level games/entry level, this doesn't matter as much as co-ordination is that much lower. Usually, the two side lanes will have 2 heroes in each, 1 to farm and the other to support, while the mid lane will have 1 hero in. Mid will be a ganking hero about half of the time and the rest of the time it'll be a farming hero, so don't expect ganks from mid but don't be too surprised if they do.

Some heroes in Dota are capable of jungling, but you won't always have one. In lower levels, people will usually go to the jungle and AFK farm for 20 minutes due to people not wanting to go and gank the enemy jungle. Similar to mid, if you have someone in the jungle, ganks are a possibility, but don't expect them.

As far as what heroes to pick, start out by playing mainly Limited Heroes mode. This restricts all players to 20 heroes, and the more straightforward ones at that. As far as roles go, here is a vague breakdown of where they go:

Supports: Lich, Lion, Omniknight, Sand King, Vengeful Spirit, Warlock and Witch Doctor.

Mid: Death Prophet, Dragon Knight, Razor, Viper and Zeus.

Carries: Drow Ranger, Juggernaut, Sniper, Sven and Wraith King.

Bounty Hunter, Tidehunter and Windranger are quite flexible as to what they can do.

Even when you venture into All Pick from Limited Heroes, keep those 20 in mind as straightforward heroes to play.

Basics on the differences in items in Dota compared to LoL:

First thing, stats. In Dota, there are three attributes (Strength, Agility and Intelligence) that determine a lot of your heroes stats. Strength gives you more HP and HP regen, Agility gives attack speed and armour and Intelligence gives mana and mana regen. In addition, all heroes have one of these three as their primary attribute. Each point in that stat will give that hero an extra point of damage. In addition to the 3 attributes, items can give more HP, HP regen, Attack speed, Armour, Mana, Mana regen and Damage separately from the attributes. There are also items that give additional movespeed, magic resistance, evasion and lifesteal . There are NO items that provide cooldown reduction (though 1 very expensive item resets your cooldowns instantly), penetration (though some items reduce armour and magic resistance) or spell vamp. Some items give critical strike, but that isn't dealt with as a stat.

In LoL, items become more gold efficient for the stats that they give as they become more expensive, with a few exceptions that have very good unique actives and/or passives. In Dota, the more expensive the item, the LESS efficient for stats compared to gold, however carries are more restricted by item slots than gold. Sure, you can buy 6 cheap items, but the overall power given to you by the 6 of them is much less than that of a 4000 gold item. This allows gold starved supports to still get some amount of items, while carries need trk harder to be able to get the late game items.

Another thing to pay attention to is that item actives in Dota are really good compared to LoL. For example, Eul's Sceptre of Divinity has an active similar to Zhonya's Hourglass, except it has a 23 second cooldown and can target either you or an enemy unit, however the stats are more utility based, giving you mana regen and movement speed rather than AP and armour. 1 item (blink dagger) provides no stats at all, instead it has an active that is like a longer ranged, shorter cooldown flash that can't be used immediately after being damaged. In general, you don't buy items for the stats they give, with the exception of a few DPS items and a few cheap items to increase HP pool.

Also to be mentioned, is the courier. You can't "B" in Dota, though you can use the courier and also buy items away from base. The animal courier can be bought and THEN USE IT from you inventory to create a courier. It has 6 item slots, though can't use them (usually). Anyone on your team can control it and put items on it. Here is the bottom right corner of the Dota 2 UI. Clicking on the Donkey face button will select the courier. WHEN YOU'RE FINISHED LOOKING AT THE COURIER, PRESS F1 TO RESELECT YOUR HERO. Clicking the button to the right of it will get the courier to collect items you have bought and deliver them to you. The courier can be upgraded to the flying courier by purchasing the flying courier shop. If you have a walking courier, this will upgrade it automatically.

With no, "B" there is also an item as well as the courier to "compensate" for this. This item is called the town portal scroll. It costs 135 gold and after a 3-6 second channel, will teleport you to any friendly building. Like all channels, but different from LoL's "B", damage will not cancel it, but being stunned or hexed will. They are great items to get you back to lane, help people getting ganked/tower dived, and help you escape some ganks from heroes without CC. ALWAYS CARRY A TP.

Final thing on items is to do with vision in Dota. In League, there are often half a dozen wards on the map per team at any given time, and also stealth champions are few and have low uptimes on their stealths. In Dota, you can buy 1 stack of 2 observer wards every 7 minutes PER TEAM. Dota wards do provide a lot more vision, but overall, unless your warding and map sense is insane, you will get ganked. This is aided by a consumable item called Smoke of Deceit. When used, it makes all nearby heroes and hero controlled units invisible until they come close to an enemy hero or tower. It's not used much, but be aware that people can sneak under ward vision really easily. Also, there are several heroes with abilities that let them go invisible, and with very high (>50%) uptimes, as well as there being an item with an active which makes you invisible. They will give you hell unless you buy Sentry Wards or Dust of Appearance. Sentry wards give no vision (small lie, don't worry about it), are invisible and reveal nearby enemy invisible units. They cost 200 gold per stack of 2 and have no cooldown unlike observer wards. Dust of Appearance costs 180 gold and has 2 charges. On use it will apply a debuff to nearby enemy units that will stop them from being invisible. Dust is better for ganking invis heroes, sentries are better for not BEING ganked by invis heroes.

##The Map:

Firstly, here is an interactive map. Secondly, here is a shitty resolution minimap with some numbers on it.

Key:

1: The secret shops. Here you are able to buy the 12 items that you aren't able to buy at the base shop.

2: The side shops. Here you can buy 20 items that you could buy elsewhere. It lets you buy stuff and stay in lane without using the courier.

3,4,5: These are the jungle creep camps. They are the easy, medium and hard camps respectively. There are about 5 different types of creeps that can spawn in each, and the difficulty and bounty increases between the 3. New creeps will spawn in the camp at 00 and XX:00 thereafter if there is no unit within the camp's area.

6: Ancient camp. Very difficult jungle camps, provides lots of gold and exp.

7: At 0:00 and every 2 minutes thereafter, a rune will spawn in on of these 2 locations. More info here.

Weird Skull symbol: Roshan. Boss monster, somewhere between Baron and Dragon in value to the team to kill him.

In Dota, the layout is really, really asymmetrical. The first thing, and one of the most important things, is the sidelanes. The bottom lane for Dire and the top lane for Radiant (the left/right sides) are known as the "offlane" or "suicide lane". At higher level play, this is more relevant, but the thing you need to know/be aware of is that in these lanes, the creeps will naturally fight closer to the enemies tower than yours. In order to get last hits, you need to be in a more dangerous position. As a rule of thumb, in the early game, you want the creeps wave to push TOWARDS your tower, making it safer for you to last hit.

The other things to know about the Dota map before I go into the numbers is about vision. Around the map, there are several ramps and cliffs. If you are on the high ground, you can see down, but on the low ground, you can't see up. Attacking down the cliff will reveal you. If you attack with a ranged hero to one on the high ground, you have a 25% chance for your attack to miss. Secondly, patches of trees usually have points in them where you can hide. Trees can be destroyed. Thirdly, every 4 minutes, the game switches from day to night. Most of the time, all this means is that you lose 56% of your vision, though some heroes are affect less, and some heroes have abilities that work differently based on day/night.

Useful links:

The wiki

Good beginner's guide

TL post

source

[Kingz V]

did you make this so i would stop playing lol?

i played witch doctor for the first time a month or so ago.

went really well, I'm a terrible ward bitch though.

[GAMEchief]

I posted it so more people would stop playing LoL and join the Dota Master Race.