I imagine a lot of you have read Purge's guide to playing Dota 2. It was definitely a solid read when it came out. However the game changes and much like basic human decency, it's pretty much obsolete now. Theres a new meta and so, thank you for reading my guide: Welcome to Dota, Everyone Else Sucks.

The important thing to remember is that Dota is a game of teamwork and communication. So I would advise anyone who plays on the US servers to take the time to learn Russian. If you don't want to do that, you should at least know that "Cyka" means a certain word that rhymes with witch. And you should call all Russian players a cyka as much as you can, as its probably the only word you know that they'll understand.

Since this game is about team work it's important to let your team know when they are doing something wrong. Otherwise how can they learn, and if they don't learn, you can't win. When you do this make sure to be loud and assertive, otherwise they might think you're unsure of yourself and they won't be inclined to listen. Using a good amount of profanity is a good idea as well. Always offer constructive criticism though. Ive offered some samples of what Ive seen in various games:

"What the ♥♥♥♥, you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ noob, Nature's Prophet isn't supposed to jungle, it's all your fault I died!"

"You stupid syphilis infected ♥♥♥♥, how dare you steal my CS!"

"Why the hell did you pick Broodmother! Broodmother sucks ♥♥♥♥! I've played with bags of rotten fish more competent then you!"

Since this is a team game you will sometimes lose a game or two, it's important to know how to handle this kind of situation. It is always your teammates fault that you lost and make sure you remind them of that. Directing the blame away from you makes you look more like a pro and lets you feel better about yourself. If your teammates did manage to do better then you, and you were the faulty lightbulb that burned down the house that is your team, then you have two choices: blame it on the lag, or blame it on Icefraud's decision to make all the enemy heroes unbearably OP. Chastise your enemy for picking such cheap, broken, newb heroes like Visage, Earth Spirit, and Chen.

In the game of Dota there are multiple heroes and they all play different and have different jobs. There are really only two roles in the game of Dota: Carry and Not-A-Carry.

A carry hero is usually a good right clicking hero, they are really powerful and so it only makes sense to have 5 of them on your team. When you carry the team, you're allowed to yell at everyone else for screwing up, it's their job to support you after all. When you win it's because you were a badass and killed everyone, when you lose its because everyone else fed and didn't let you farm.

Not-A-Carry heroes are generally tiny baby men who don't get kills and glory. Don't pick this kind of hero ever.

If you're unfamiliar with which hero you should pick, I'll lay down the truth on some of the best most overpowered heroes in the game.



Definitely broken. He never gets played professionally because they have a code of honor and believe he's too unfair to use against the enemy. He deals over 9000 (yes I just referenced DBZ, sue me) dps when he hits you in the back, and he's permanently invisible starting at lvl 6. Whats not to love? The permanent invisibility is so great, he can even use items while invisible. So you can ninja dagon the bejeezus out of everyone, or radiance burn them to death for lulz. They can't do anything about it cause he's too broken. Icefrog needs to add some kind of 900 gold item that let's you see invisible things, or a 200 gold item you can put in the ground to see invisible things. Maybe some kind of dust you can scatter that reveals invisible heroes. Until something like that gets added, Riki will be massively broken.



Another massively broken hero. This hero can silence you if you're a wizardy not-a-carry. Or he can buff his own auto attacks and punch your balls up through your throat. He runs at about twice the speed of sound, and I've gotten a rampage by killing the enemy team with the sonic boom created when I started running. He's like Edward Cullen, if Edward wasn't a gigantic wuss who only eats animals. And he doesn't sparkle like a little ♥♥♥♥♥, so pretty much nothing like Edward. He drinks the blood of anything to heal himself. Even freaking skeletons, he will drink the blood of a bloodless creature. His ultimate really shines, although it does have a simple counter, which I'll teach you. When you get ruptured, run like you're in some kind of running competition (I think those are a thing). Run to your base as soon as you can, just don't stop because he's coming to kill you.



Viper is the best at scoring last hits. If you lane against him, he will last hit and deny every single creep in the lane. His passive gives him bonus damage to things that are almost dead. Low health creeps? Check. Enemy fleeing to safety after being ganked? Check. Your pokémon after leaving Mt. Moon? Check. He really is the Gary Oak of Dota. When you're at your weakest, just fought the Elite Four, you're heading back to the fountain. That's when Gary Viper pops out and challenges you. And there's no running from a trainer battle, Viper has an orb and an ulti that'll slow you to a crawl. And if you manage to hurt him, he poisons you as revenge. Damage over time spells are the worst, Ancient Apparition hates Viper. If Viper gets ulti'd by AA, AA loses like half of his health. Pick Viper if you think that murdering the entire enemy team is fun.



Sniper is great, his whole schtick is that he can kill you while standing 5km away (gotta use metric, everyone reading this is probably Russian). He's got two great passives which let him screw everybody over before they can close the distance to stab him in the face. He doesn't have any slow or stun, but his mini-bash is like being cold snapped all the time when he's shooting you. His shrapnel is crap, don't bother taking a level of it, but his ulti is awesome. He uses voodoo magic to make one of his bullets do a lot more damage, which doesn't make sense. Why can't he do it every time he fires? But I digress. It's a great ability, the range is roughly half of the entire map, so no one will ever escape from you.



Drow is basically Sniper if Sniper had blue skin and giant boobs. Just read the above section, although she can only deal damage from like 3 km away. It's worth it cause she has items that make her look like a kitty cat.

When you buy starting items at the starting of your game it's a good idea to buy boots. Buy a pair now and then buy another pair in lane, that way you have one on each foot and can run really fast. Upgrade them both to a Boots of Travel and you're perma-hasted with +200 move speed. Don't worry about buying regen at the start, you'll run so fast that you'll avoid taking any damage.



Don't even bother. Wards don't do anything, who cares about being able to see some trees, amirite? Of course I am, thats why Im the author of this guide. If I wanted to look at trees I'd go outside, I'd rather just kill creeps. Also going outside is kinda hard since I've developed an intolerance for natural light. Anyways, wards are a huge waste of gold, they don't even shoot lasers or anything. When they make a sentry ward that acts like a sentry gun, then you might consider buying some. Until then save money for your divine. An observer ward costs 150, if you save that money towards a divine, thats about 7.25 damage per ward. Definitely not worth buying one so you can watch Roshan pick his nose.



All the pros carry a TP scroll with them wherever they go, so if you want to be a good player, or at least look like you're a good player (which is just as good) then carry a TP scroll with you wherever you go. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of strategic benefits to it, but mostly it's just so you get mad respect.



Most cost efficient and space efficient damage in the game. Need I say more? I will anyways. It's basically core on any carry, which you should exclusively play. And it's a good buy on anyone if you're winning hard and just screwing around. You're pro enough you won't drop it and throw the game. Stack 4 of them with your boots and win.

The objective in Dota is to push the lanes, destroy the towers, the barracks, more towers and eventually the Ancient. So it really should be called "Attack on the Ancients" or "Kill the Big Glowy things". Since you can win without actually defending as long as you attack the enemy. So since the point is to push lanes, you should be attacking creeps from the get go. Many people say you should play passively and just last hit creeps, but that won't push your lane hard enough. You gotta get in there and kick the ♥♥♥♥ out of the creeps so that your creeps can kick the crap out of the enemy tower.

It's also a good idea to gank the other lanes some, it'll help them brutally murder the enemy creeps if the enemy heroes are dead. So when you go to gank, it's always important to be stealthy about it. Don't warn your team you're coming, they can't be trusted with that information and might alert the enemy by their change in behavior. It's much better to show up unannounced and go for a gank. That way everybody is unprepared. Another good strategy is stacking your stuns, if your teammate stuns the enemy, immediately cast all of your stuns on that enemy. The game will add your combined stun time, this way you don't have to worry about waiting and then stunning them when they come off their stun, they might be able to stun you if you wait. So just use all the stuns at once.

If anyone asks, this is your smurf account and your main has 5k mmr. Thats all there is to know about it.

In conclusion, that's all there is to know about Dota. If you follow my guide and do everything I said, you'll fit right in with the rest of the Dota players you encounter.


In the true spirit of Dota, I should take all the credit and not thank anyone. But I'm not that mean (also this way there's more people for disgruntled people to yell at). Thanks to Abraham Lincoln's Dead Ghost, Nathan Cash, Sup4tiger and Gills for helping proofread and giving feedback stuff.


Also thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read this. As of this addition, Im approaching 1000 views, which is about 999 more then I had expected to get. So as of right now, this guide is about:
Holy cow, or as they say in India, cow. I can't believe there's like 9000 34000 more views since I wrote that up there. Rather then edit this, you can do some mental math and multiply the below values by 10 35.

• 1/20 as popular as a Lion and Queen of Pain porno
  
• .003% as popular as Pewdiepie
  
• Almost 1% as popular as the guide that this guide is named after (according to Steam hits, he has a lot more on his site, Im sure)
  
• About 10x more popular then League of Legends (I forgot to touch on this in my guide, you have to trash LoL whenever you can)