Dota 2 is a highly team-orientated game that pits players together in a deadly 5 v 5 battle of strategy, skill and wit, to destroy their opposition’s Ancient. The game, like most team games, requires players to adopt certain positions to maximize the synergy to their team and to avoid internal clashes in prioritization. This is where the five roles in Dota 2 come from; The Hard Support, Soft Support, Offlaner, Mid-Laner and Hard Carry. All roles have their own priorities and strengths.
Of course there is a lot more to each role and some cross-functionality between certain positions. The most important thing to understand in order to play Dota 2 like a pro is to understand the basic principles of these roles and how you can use each role to their greatest capability. This will help you maximize your impact and increase your chances of adding some extra points to your Matchmaking Ranking (MMR)!
Position 5- Hard Support
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Responsibilities:
The Hard Support is appropriately named position 5, not in the way that they have the least impact in the game. Instead, the position actually denotes the farming priority of the hero and how much the hero relies on items to be effective. As a result, the Hard Support usually has the least farming priority, meaning that if the Hard Support and Soft Support are in a free lane together, the Position 4 player will usually be the one going for the last hits as they have a higher priority for the gold as they may use the gold more reliably on their hero.
Players usually believe that Hard Support heroes are the weakest and have the least impact in the game. This is far from the truth. Professional position 5 player’s are usually the reason why their team is able to dominate the early game which naturally leads into a successful mid then late game. As such, they are usually the ones responsible for sowing the seeds of victory in a Dota 2 game.
How to play Hard Support like a Pro:
As the Hard Support player usually does not depend on gold, their spells are usually one of the strongest in the early game, allowing them to do well in the safelane and securing a safe space for their carry player to farm. Therefore, the Hard Support is mostly responsible for assisting the Position 1 player in the laning stage in harassing and zoning out the enemy offlane and their support.
Controlling lane equilibrium during the laning stage. This can be done by stacking and pulling neutral camps into your lane creeps to draw aggro. This pulls the lane equilibrium back to a position in the lane where your safelaner feels more comfortable and the least contested.
Due to their low gold priority and low dependency on items the Position 5 player is largely responsible for the purchase of observer and sentry wards. They do not need to focus on last hitting and can spend a reasonable portion of their time denying enemy ward vision and setting up locations for their team’s vision.
The Hard Support is usually weaker and squishier the longer the game goes on for. This means that position 5 players require careful positioning and effective spell usage in engagements and team fights. They need to know when to expose themselves, when to disengage and how to engage as they are usually prime targets for the enemy to prey on.
As a position 5 player, even though you do not generally need farm and gold, having some support items such as a glimmer cape and force staff can sometimes be the difference between you dying and surviving an engagement. As such, wherever possible, if there are some free creeps lying around the map, you should definitely prioritize last hitting them well as they are rare to come by.
Have as little idle time as possible. When the lanes have stabilized and you find yourself just sitting at a tower, go stack a camp instead or deward some enemy observers. There is always something to do and always some sort of value you could be offering your team!
For some advanced tutorial tips, take a look at Gameleap’s take on position 5 Hard Support and some must know habits that can change the way you play the position for the most impactful effectiveness:
Pick Position 5- Hard Support if:
You like to focus less on farming and more on harassing enemies in lane
You enjoy being proactive and maximizing the utility of your spells
Positioning and map awareness are your fortes and you are an excellent decision maker
Like practicing heroes that boost the strength of your team
Like heroes that provide damage boosts, disables, healing and saving abilities
You like selfless plays and taking a bullet for your team mates
You enjoy using strong spells at the laning stage of the game to destroy your opponents
You enjoy going around the map, denying enemy vision and being rewarded for your efforts
Players to Check out who are professionals of Hard Supporting:
The Soft Support is Dota 2’s position 4 hero. The position 4’s responsibility is rather flexible in that they can be played as an aggressive laner that focuses on destroying the offlane so that the opponent’s hard carry doesn’t have a good game, or they can be built to have strong roaming patterns that can readily assist other lanes that come under threat. The former is focused more on substantial harassment tools that control the lane while the later is focused on stronger long down abilities that usually secures a kill for greedier position 1 or 2 allied cores.
The position 4 usually has some utility that they can bring to the table whether that is through stronger lockdown abilities or burst damage. They require a little more farm than their position 5 counterpart as they usually have a little more “free-time.” The position 4 can usually roam a lot earlier and leave the lane as the Offlaner is usually built to be able to be self-sufficient by level 6 and sometimes earlier. This makes it so that the soft support player is able to make space on other parts of the map and secure kills much earlier than the position 5 player.
How to play Soft Support like a Pro:
Soft support heroes are generally strong laners that have some sort of utility that they provide for their team. This can be in the form of high damage, harassment abilities, crowd control or ganking potential.
Depending on the hero you choose, use that hero to its fullest potential in lane. If they are strong at harassment, push that advantage and maximize the amount of harassment you can do in the lane. If the hero has strong burst damage but has longer cooldowns, wait for the right moment before coordinating with your lane partner to execute the kill!
Like the Hard Support, the position 4 player needs to learn strong lane equilibrium skills. This comes in the form of pulling neutral camps, stacking camps where appropriate and contesting enemy pulls. Your job as the Soft Support is to make it as easy and safe for your offlaner as possible. This means, getting the lane equilibrium as close to your offlane tower as possible.
During the very early laning stage, you and your Offlaner must try to prioritize last hitting the enemy ranged creep. Failing to do so can quickly snowball into a disadvantageous lane.
If your lane partner is doing well in lane and does not need you to babysit in the lane, it is more than appropriate to stack and pull creeps as well as contest river runes starting at the 4 minute mark. This can help in a multitude of ways. It can:
Boost your core’s farming potential when they farm your stacked camps
Push the level advantage of your offlaner as you are not in lane to share the experience
Deny your enemy’s rune
Steal extra bounty runes for your team
Potentially seize an opportunity to rotate and kill the enemy mid-laner with your support.
As the Soft Support, your positioning still needs to be impeccable in team fights as you do not usually have the items to place yourself luxuriously in the cross hairs of the enemy cores. Try to stay away from the enemies field of vision as soon as you have casted your appropriate spells. More often than not, your right clicks are redundant and doing so simply puts you in harm's way and exposes yourself to the enemy’s line of sight.
If the enemy mid-laner is being ganked or dived under his tower, it is usually the position 4’s job to teleport immediately and assist their semi-carry. This is also the same for if your carry is being ganked. You must always prioritize your core’s safety as opposed to your own unless the situation is absolutely unsalvageable.
A common misconception amongst lower level players is that it is the sole responsibility of the position 5 player to purchase wards. As the position 4, you should still be purchasing observer and sentry wards to assist your Hard Support Player. You must be capable of doing the position 5’s job in the advent that they die too early on in an engagement.
Pick Position 4- Soft Support if:
You like to focus less on farming and more on harassing enemies in lane
You enjoy being proactive and roaming the map, looking for opportunities to abuse your strong early game.
You enjoy setting up kills and supporting kills both in your lane and in others
You have strong map awareness that allows you to look for potential kill opportunities around the map
You enjoy supporting your teammates rather than being at the vanguard of team clashes
You like playing positioning well and maintaining reasonable distances in team fights rather than being at the center of them.
You like selfless plays and taking a bullet for your team mates
You dislike farming too much, though you may now and then hit some creeps for some crucial items such as a Blink Dagger.
Players to Check out who are professionals of Soft Supporting:
Mira - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWF1Ohkp8Do&ab_channel=DotaPersona
Cr1t - https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Cr1t-
ZFreek - https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Zfreek
Position 3- Offlaner
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Responsibilities:
The Offlaner is Dota 2’s position 3 hero. The Offlaner’s role, more often than not is to be an initiator, tank, and utility and vision provider in team fights. The offlaner is usually placed in the lane opposite to the enemy’s Hard Carry meaning that they are usually responsible for pressuring the enemy’s most important farmer.
The offlaner is usually the one to spearhead engagements, often carrying large aura items such as a Crimson Guard or Vladmir’s offering to boost their team’s strength in engagements. The Offlaner needs to work closely with the rest of the strengths of the team and understand their timings. As they are usually the ones that participate in most team battles, they need to know if their team is ready for a battle, strong enough to push objectives, or require a little space to be made for the allied Hard Carry. They are the backbone of the team and are crucial to preventing enemies from running over the rest of your team in the early and mid game.
How to play the Offlane like a Pro:
During the pick phase choose heroes that compliment your team’s composition. If you already have some tanky supports and carries that like to enter fights first, consider playing more damage dealing or strong disabling offlaners such as Pangolier, Beastmaster and Sandking.
If the team already has a few lockdown options, you may like to serve as the shield that absorbs most of your enemies abilities and provides vision for your team in battle. Heroes such as Bristleback, Underlord and Centaur Warrunner come to mind in this case.
During the laning stage, prioritize items that allow you to keep fighting to pressure the enemy Hard Carry. This usually means getting strong stat items such as double Bracer’s, a Magic Wand and a Ring of Health. This of course depends on what offlaner you have chosen, but regardless you want to be as strong as you can by the 10-15 minute mark to push towers and reduce the enemy’s map presence.
As the Offlaner, you must try to maintain creep equilibrium and negate the enemy carry’s farm. This can mean using defensive aggro strategies. BSJ cover’s this in much detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNnuL-ltQBM&ab_channel=BananaSlamJamma
In team fights, do what your hero is meant to do. As the tank, run in fearlessly and provide vision for the rest of your team. Once the enemy’s have used their artillery of abilities on you, your team will be able to quickly swoop in.
Push objectives and create space for your other cores. If you and your team are strong, consider grouping up with your supports and push towers. This will force rotations away from your Hard Carry, enabling them to farm in peace and get stronger while you take the enemy’s attention away.
If your team is weak and the enemy is running over you, it is usually your job as the Offlaner to be the wall that prevents the enemy from doing so. Leave the farming to your cores to catch up and group up with your supports to defend key objectives. Build cheaper but more useful items such as a Mekansm or Drum of Endurance to give you the extra edge in engagements. Sometimes, this is the difference between getting completely rolled over and turning a team fight around.
Know your team’s tempo. If your team is weak early and you are strong, don’t push your teammates to push too early. This can sometimes spell disaster and ruin your team’s macro plan. Instead, farm safely in the offlane and pressure defensively.
Pick Position 3- Offlane if:
You like being a tank and being extremely hard to kill
You’re a fearless player that loves initiating fights and being at the center of an engagement.
You have a good understanding of lane equilibrium and when to be aggressive/defensive.
You know item priorities and what the best items are to pick up for your team in each game
You enjoy having a bit of gold that you can utilize to push your advantage.
You love to fight. You love large team clashes and like to be involved in most fights.
You don’t mind being the sacrificial lamb, giving your life to bait most of your enemy’s spells so that your team can clean up and win the team fight.
You like pushing objectives and have a good idea about your team’s strengths, timings and strategies.
You are flexible in your hero picks, able to play unique micro heroes such as Visage, Beastmaster and Brewmaster.
Players to Check out who are professionals of the Offlane:
Dota’s Position 2 is the Mid-laner. This role allows for the benefit of having a lane to yourself.As such, it is usually a battle of skill in the Mid-lane as you have only your skills in laning to define the outcome of the first few minutes of the game. As such, the Mid-lane can sometimes be unforgiving as a snowballing enemy position 2 player can sometimes single handedly win the game for their team due to their farm and level advantage in comparison to the rest of the players in the game.
The Mid-laner is usually the ganker and strongest hero in the game for the majority of a match. They are mostly responsible for rotating into different lanes depending on their timings, and dictating the tempo of the game. The Mid-laner rarely gets to sit back and farm depending on their hero choice, and usually have strong flash farming capabilities that allow them to both push out creeps as well as deal damage.
Even for greedier mid-lane picks such as an Alchemist or Templar Assassin, the player is expected to use that extra time in farming to start making plays by the 15-20 minute mark. Any inactivity after that usually spells defeat for the rest of your team if the enemy team is smart enough to capitalize on it.
How to play the Mid-lane like a Pro:
During the pick phase choose heroes that compliment your team’s strategy. If your team is lacking lockdown abilities, consider heroes such as Leshrac, Ember Spirit and Void Spirit. If your team has ample crowd control and needs more damage, think of heroes such as Shadowfiend, Zeus and Queen of Pain.
During the laning phase, last hitting is extremely important. Any deny and last hit can potentially add up leading to earlier dominance or faster item timings. Learning the mechanics of creep aggro is extremely important. Ranged creep prioritization is of special importance to the Mid-laner.
When laning, try to place an observer ward somewhere that is hard to deward as well as provide vision for you to see up the enemy’s cliff. If you notice that the enemy has vision of your side of the river, do not hesitate to spend 50 gold on a sentry to deward their observer. This not only gives you extra gold and experience, but denies your opponent of valuable intelligence.
If the laning stage is going poorly and the opponent is out skilling you, consider pushing out the wave as fast as you can, either through using your abilities or consistently right clicking the enemy creeps down. Then, rotate to your easy jungle camp to gain some extra needed gold and experience to catch up. If this is not an option, look to other lanes where you can go for a gank to improve your team’s power in their other core roles.
As the Mid-laner, you are mostly in charge of choosing fights that you want to happen. This can include rotating to other lanes to assert your early level difference to garner easy kills, or asking for a rotation from your position 4 support player to secure a kill for you in the mid-lane.
Being the Mid-laner, you need to be as proactive as possible once you have reached your specific power spike which is hero and item dependent.
For example, rotating off as a Huskar before he obtains his Armlet is usually an ill choice. Zeus usually doesn’t need to rotate too much and looks for where he can utilize the extra damage from his ultimate to secure kills. Puck can rotate off as early on as he is level six, as his reliable ultimate gives him the ability to easily secure kills.
Mid-laners should prioritize targets when they go for a gank. Usually, they would want to punish the enemy Hard-Carry as this, more often than not, hinders the enemy’s growth into the mid and late game the most.
Usually, Mid-laners have great wave clearing abilities. Use this to split push lanes wherever possible throughout the game to both delay enemy pushes as well as boost your farming speed.
As much as you are the Semi-carry, do not let the name confuse you. The Semi-carry is farm dependent, but also should not prioritize that over favorable engagements. Your job at the end of the day is to make it so your Position 1 is able to farm as uncontested as possible as the enemy’s focus is too busy dealing with you. It is the Position 1’s job to close out the game.
Check out the following guide for some professional tips for Mid-lane mechanics:
Pick Position 2- Mid-lane Semi Carry if:
You have a reasonable grasp of the game and understand all heroes strengths, weaknesses and specific timings. You know when to fight and when not to fight.
You’re an excellent laner and can use your abilities efficiently and effectively. This can mean using your abilities as both a harassment tool as well as a way to maneuver your hero to easily obtain creep kills.
There is a way to defeat the opponent even at the picking stage through cheesy hero picks such as Broodmother, Huskar and Outworld Devourer. Sometimes, the enemy has no answer to these heroes and choosing them when they have not been counterpicked can usually spell out an auto-defeat for the enemy team.
You enjoy participating in ganks and thrive in battle.
You have a talent for decision making and understanding which priority targets to initiate upon.
You enjoy being the strongest and highest level hero in the game for the majority of the match.
You have a very deep concept of most heroes in the game and what they are capable of. This allows you to push your skill to the limit.
You enjoy being a reasonable damage dealer for your team.
You enjoy heroes that usually have low-cooldowns and hence low times of downtime.
You are a proactive player.
Players to Check out who are professionals of the Mid-Lane:
The final position we have on the list but certainly not the least is the position 1 Hard Carry. The role of the Hard Carry is fairly simple, to farm up as much gold in the early game as possible, and when they reach their timings, push objectives, win team fights and end the game. The Hard Carry is notorious for being one of the weakest heroes of the early game, but with enough farm and space, can dominate the late game with their superior items and scalable abilities.
The Hard Carry is a hero of fundamentals. Players in the position 1 role need to have good last hitting mechanics, a strong understanding of lane equilibrium, an expert judgment of items and hero strengths and weaknesses, and strong decision making skills. Failure to grasp the aforementioned can spell disaster for the Hard Carry player that when underfarmed and under-skilled, can be one of the least impactful positions of the game.
How to play Hard Carry like a Pro:
During the pick phase, you should generally want to pick last as you want to be as countered as little as possible. As your job is to seal the game, getting countered by one or more heroes generally makes it a lot harder to play the game, making your life as well as your team’s much harder in obtaining victory.
Since you usually have the luxury of last pick, depending on what support heroes your team has chosen, pick heroes that do well in lane as well as compliment your team's choices. If your team has a more aggressive lineup and would like to finish the game off quickly, consider faster paced heroes like Monkey King or Ursa. If your team lacks AOE damage or crowd control, consider hero choices such as Medusa and Faceless void.
During the laning stage, ensure that the lane equilibrium is as close to your tower as possible. Keeping the equilibrium there will help reduce the possibility of you getting dived, ganked or straight out killed if you are too far away from your tower. There is also a nice juking area near your tower for you to play around with in the advent that the enemy dives you under the tower. This helps you stall for time while your allies come to your assistance.
Understand how strong your hero is in the early game. If your hero is a relatively strong laner, such as Juggernaut, Lifestealer and Monkey King, do not be afraid to play aggressively and trade efficiently with the enemy Offlaner.
Help your Hard Support out as much as you can. This means throwing a couple of spells out towards the enemies that your position 5 is trying to harass. This will tip the scales in the lane. However, make sure not to forsake too many last hits for the sake of bullying the enemy heroes out of the lane.
Every auto attack of yours matters. Use this free resource to continually control lane equilibrium by right clicking allied creeps as they get below 50% hp as well as punish the offlaner for getting too close.
If the lane gets too difficult, rotate to your position 3’s lane and farm there. This usually means farming near your tower in the Offlane, then rotating off to the triangle to farm the neutrals there.
Always keep an eye out on team fights that break out and seeing if you can provide any value there. Usually, before you reach your power spike, you generally want to participate in as little fights as possible. You want to be maximizing your farming as much as you can to reach that power spike.
For example, as an Anti-mage, you do not want to enter the battlefield until you have at least your Manta Style ready to go. Anytime before then, you will only want to participate if you can guarantee you can easily snag a kill and get back on with farming as soon as that has been accomplished.
In tough games, you need to play as safe as possible in order to reduce the times you die which can significantly hurt your farm. To do so, push the lanes that are away from the enemy team out as quickly as possible before rotating discreetly to the jungle.
Delay enemy pushes with wave clearing abilities by cutting lane creeps and quickly getting out before the enemy can react
In team fights, prioritize squishy targets such as position 4 and 5 supports. This may sometimes mean baiting out a couple of your allies before striking the enemy in the back where they least expect.
Pick Position 1- Safe-lane Hard Carry if:
You have a reasonable grasp of the game and understand all heroes strengths, weaknesses and specific timings. You know when to fight and when not to fight.
You’re an efficient farmer and have reasonable farming patterns. This means, stacking camps as you are farming to reduce the time that you are walking in between camps and not hitting creeps.
You enjoy farming up items and customizing them to the situation. Usually the Black King Bar is non-negotiable on most carries as of patch 7.31d as it severely increases the chances of you surviving engagements.
You have a good concept of lane equilibrium and its mechanics
You have strong hero prioritization in team fights
You enjoy split pushing and splitting the enemy’s attention.
You can farm under pressure and make good decisions when the enemy is ahead.
You enjoy doing huge damage in the mid to late game.
You like being the strongest hero in the game!
Players to Check out who are professionals of Hard Carrying:
Daniel of the Eastern Provinces is a multi-skilled squire. Scribing works for multi-faceted titles, one can usually find this oracle in the eternal struggle of the ancients.
Gamer Since:
2005
Favorite Genre:
MOBA
Currently Playing:
Rust
Top 3 Favorite Games:
DOTA 2, Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void, The Forest
