50 Best Dota2 Tips That Will Increase Your MMR to over 4500

What Dota 2 Secrets Do the Pros Know That You Don't?

Every skill that we pursue in life, we will always hit a point where we just cannot seem to improve any further. If you’ve reached that plateau in Dota 2, then maybe some of these nifty tricks and useful tips can get you back onto the path of improvement.

• At the beginning of a game, the clock counts down from 1:15 minutes to 00:00. After this, runes spawn and the match ‘starts’. At 4:00 on the timer, the game switches to night time. This means 4 minutes of daytime, 4 minutes of night. The cycle repeats itself as follows;

And so on. In the day most hero's vision is 1800 units. During the night, most heroes vision are reduced by 44% to 800 units. With lesser vision during night time, ganks are easier to execute.  

• Pay attention to your item builds. Following an item guide on Dota 2 is easy, learning how to adapt it to the current game is a bit harder. Think about at what time you want to/need to end the game. Enemy team has a strong late game lineup? Finish before it gets there. Build powerful mid game items to push with. Mechanism, solar crest, vladimir's offering and even some necro books are good ones to go for. You will finish these while they are still building up to their late game items, giving you an advantage when it comes to teamfights and pushing.
• Roshan respawns anywhere between 8-11 minutes. When he is killed, hold down alt and left click on the game clock. This sends a message to your allies with the current game time. Using this, you can keep track of when he might respawn.

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Pinging out the game timer when roshan dies is a good way of keeping track of both Aegis time as well as Rosh respawn time. 

• In a lot of 3k games, Roshan is largely ignored as a game objective. But just in killing him, each member of a team gets 200 gold, equal to a tier 2 tower. This means a 1,000 gold networth advantage, which isn’t to be scoffed at. Killing Roshan also gives 750 exp (which is then increased by a further 20 exp every 20 minutes) shared by all allies in the area. This is equal to killing a level 11 hero. 
• When in a teamfight, it is a very good idea to disable their damage dealers and kill off their supports as quickly as possible. The supporting duo is often where the enemy gets their sustain (think Dazzle, Mechanisms etc.). Taking these out quickly means you don’t have to deal as much damage to kill the real scary guys.
• When destroying a tower, make sure one of your team gets the last hit. A tier 1 tower will give a bounty of 160 base gold to the whole team, but will give an additional 150-250 gold to the person getting the last hit. If the tower is ‘destroyed by the radiant’ that’s 250 gold lost! In total, accounting for all towers in the game, this could be an extra 2750 gold! 
• The above rule is also applied to roshan. For Rosh, while a base 200 gold is given to everyone, an extra 150-400 gold is given to the person getting the last hit. Don’t miss out on it!
• When in the picking stages of a game, and you see the enemy team pick up their mid hero, get at least one hero that directly counters him. Enemy team goes for Storm Spirit? Get a lion (tons of disable). Enemy team goes for Invoker? Get a hero with a silence (like, hey you guessed it, Silencer).
• Similarly to this, in the drafting stage pick heroes that counter the enemy team. If you can grab a hero that effectively counters 2 or 3 heroes on the other team, you will be golden. Think Necrophos against a team of strength heroes. Enigma against an all melee lineup etc. 
• In pubs, the only way to win is by destroying the enemy team's Ancient. Dota 2 is an objective based game. If you have the choice between killing heroes and taking an objective (tower, barracks, roshan) take the objective. Strategically it makes a lot more sense. 

Tower dives can go real bad, real quick.

• Lots of heroes have certain points in the game where they become really strong and scary. Gank and kill them before this point. Think of killing AM before the battle fury, or storm spirit before the level 6. End their game before it even starts. 
• Similarly to the above point, wait for your moment to strike. If your carry is 400 gold away from picking up his Assault Cuirass, or your initiator needs 2 minutes to get his blink, wait for it. Be patient. There is no point in teamfighting when in 30 seconds your team will get a whole lot stronger. 
• On the game's scoreboard, underneath the name of the enemy player, the hero they’re playing and the hero’s level is shown. You can use this trick to keep tabs on the enemy jungler’s level without needing vision on him. For instance, when enigma jungles, the point when he gets his ulti is a time for everyone on your team to have TPs and play more defensively. Use the scoreboard to look at when he is level 6. 

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Although Shadow Fiend is absent from the map, his hero level can still be seen by looking at the scoreboard

• Constantly check your enemies inventory’s when you see them on the minimap. Noticing when a support had an observer and now doesn’t, can give you a good idea where on the map to try and counter ward. Also, knowing what items they have will allow you to make high impact decisions that can win you the game. You can also let your allies know what items they have by holding down ALT and left clicking on the item in their inventory. 

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'Pinging' out an enemies item.

• If you are playing support, the shop should never have a supply of observer wards available. Vision is one of the key elements of dota. Knowing where your opponent is a huge advantage. You can avoid them if you can’t fight, or gank them if fighting is exactly what you want to do.
• Items like aether lens and octarine core affect all spells. Regardless of whether they do pure, magical or physical damage. This also means that for spells like Rot or double edge aether lens increase the damage done to you as well. 
• Not all damage types are equal. Physical damage (your right clicks, as well as some spells) has its damage reduced by armor. Magical damage (most spells) has its damage reduced by magical resistance and pure damage (some spells, like laguna blade) cannot be reduced by anything. 

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Enigma's black hole deals magical damage, whereas Midnight Pulse deals Pure damage.

• There are 3 ‘phases’ in a dota game. The early game or laning phase, the mid game and the late game. In the early game supports are the most effective. In the mid game, the mid player is the most effective because of their level advantage. In the late game the carry is the most effective because of their expensive items. Depending on the role you’re playing, you should use this as a rule of thumb for when you should look to be active. 
• Always try and maximize your efficiency and time. If you get ganked and are nearly killed, but make it out with low health and high mana, stop by the neutrals and cast your spells on them to squeeze out some extra gold. 
• Not all that glitters is, necessarily, gold. In Dota there are actually two different types of gold. Reliable and unreliable. Reliable gold is granted for hero kills and assists, tower kills, Roshan, hand of midas usage and courier kills. Everything else is unreliable gold. When you die only unreliable gold is lost, not reliable gold. When buying items, your unreliable gold is used up first. Buyback uses reliable gold first. Unless it’s late game, quickly try and buy some items before you die. This way, you may not actually ‘lose’ any gold at all. 
• By hovering over your gold, dota will give you details about it. It will tell you if you have enough for buyback. And how much you have on top of the gold required for that. It will also tell you how much reliable vs unreliable gold you have. 

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Dota 2 conveniently breaksdown your gold for you, and calculates gold in relation to death and buyback.

• In the late game, always keep money for buyback. Your reintroduction into a fight can turn the game around. 
• If you take a fight outside your base, don’t rush all the way to their base and take rax. There will not be enough time to do this while they are dead (at 310 ms, it takes 30 seconds to reach the enemy tier 3). Once they respawn, while you are on low hp from the previous fight, they will engage. Chances are they will take this fight, and you will lose the advantage you had gained. Rather than face rushing the enemies base, use the time to deny the map to the enemy. Plant wards, take any outer towers still standing or try Rosh if it’s up. 
• If you’re playing against a Riki, Broodmother, Bounty hunter or Techies get a gem sooner rather than later. Being undetectable is how these heroes excel. Take it away and they quickly become garbage. 
• Playing against a hero with a big ulti like Warlock or Enigma? Play around their ultimates. Don’t look for a fight while their ultis are ready. When their ultimate’s are on cooldown, push your advantage. Look for teamfights and push towers down. The enemy team will be a lot weaker. 
• Having a carry like Anti-mage or Alchemist does not mean your team will automatically win late game. The advantage of heroes like these is that they farm faster than other carries meaning they will reach their late game sooner. However. If the enemy carry, say a Spectre, is on the same net worth as an Anti-mage then the AM will lose. To balance out their quick farming advantage, they have worse stat-gain and lower base attack times.
• When it comes to killing enemy heroes, you don’t have to hit them to get assist gold or experience for the kill. While it may not show up on your KDA, gold and experience are given in a 1300 unit radius to all allied heroes regardless. 
• It's hard to kill a high level enemy hero, like the mid. So at times it may seem more practical to gank the lower leveled supports. To compensate, Dota doesn’t have a static experience reward system. Between levels 1 to 5, experience earned from killing the enemy hero increases in bits of 20. After level 6, the experience jumps to increases of 100. From 280 to 2180! If you can, kill the high leveled heroes. 

• Similarly, You earn more gold for killing heros that are higher level or are on a kill streak. The formula for this is 100 + streak value + (killed hero level ×10) The kill streak rewards are as follows; 

So for instance, if you are killing a level 10 hero with a killing spree, you will get 100 + 60 + 100 = 260 gold. 

• A wave of creeps spawns every 30 seconds in every lane. Every 7th wave also spawns a siege creep. The first siege creep will spawn at the 3 minute mark and then again at the 6 minute mark and so on.
• When it comes to getting experience in lane, the ranged creep gives 90 exp Melee creeps give only half of that. The siege creep gives 88 exp. If you deny just the ranged creep of 6 waves from the enemy, you would have starved them of over 500 exp. That is the difference between level 3 and 4. This means that in terms of creep importance, the ranged and siege creeps are the most important.
•  When playing in 1v1 lane match ups, a single death will be a lost lane. If you see your mid laner has died to the enemy mid, don’t just say tough luck. Go and gank the enemy mid, or harass him out of lane. With 1v1 matchups, an inch is a foot. 
• Roshan gets slightly stronger every 4 minutes after the 00:00 mark.  If you plan on doing Roshan soon, go when it is say, 22:00 on the game clock. It will be easier than going at the 24:00 minute mark. 
• With helm of the dominator, you can take control of a creep until it dies. A great use of this active is to use the creep to stack ancients or hard camps. You can give control of this creep to a support on your team by clicking on the icon that looks like a little information dot (between the combat log and shared items buttons). Just click on the “units” checkbox next to the person you want to share control with. 
• By accessing the settings (the cog in the top left of the main dota menu) and navigating to ‘options’. A checkbox can be found that will allow you to see the spawn boxes of neutrals in-game if you hold down the alt key, helping you to block enemy camps and successfully stack your own. The checkbox is found under the Interface sub-menu on the right side of the screen.

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Where to find the options menu.

• Stacking refers to the practice of pulling neutrals out of their spawn box and letting a new set of neutrals spawn. Hit the neutrals at 53 seconds, and run away. They will follow you out of the box and a new set will spawn. The timings are 55 seconds for medium camps. 53 seconds for hard camps, easy camps and ancients.
• Adjust your warding to where your team is in the game. If it’s early game, river wards are the best location to have vision on. If you’re looking to gank, ward the enemy lanes and jungle.  If you’re looking to farm ward your jungle and lanes. 
• Don’t be predictable in your warding. If the enemy team is counter warding, mix up where you place your wards. Keep the other support guessing by placing wards in unconventional spots, like in places near cliffs but not on them. 
• Runes spawn every 2 minutes. 1 bounty and 1 random rune. Make sure you control these spawns in the early game. If your support can leave you for 10 seconds, make him leave the lane at 3:45 and camp the rune spawn. Mids rely on these runes to keep in the lane.
• Playing carry doesn’t mean farming until you’re six slotted. If your presence in a fight will result in you getting kills and not dying then go fight! If you can’t be sure of this however, it is better to stay farming. 
• It is not the mid’s responsibility to gank. It is the supports! Mid players want to get farm and experience in order to dominate the mid game. The only reliable way to do this is by staying in lane. For supports, the biggest game impact they can have is by helping out their mid lane in the early game. 
• Play proactively, not reactively. Go and gank the enemy, not react to them! The best defense is a good offense.
• Don’t buy the same boots every game. If the enemy team is squishy, or you lack damage, go for  phase boots. If you need attack speed, or are squishy yourself, go for power treads. If you find yourself having to run back every 5 minutes because you’re out of regen, don't be afraid to buy a temporary tranquil boots!
• Don’t be afraid to buy or use smokes. Smokes make you undetectable unless you get within 1025 units of the enemy. 1 smoke restocks every 11 minutes. It is best to use smokes during the daytime, so you can see your enemy before the smoke dispels. It is better to have a wasted smoke than to not smoke at all!
• Aegis disappears after 5 minutes, giving the bearer a regen buff similar to that of the regeneration rune. Use this time fully to press your advantage and take towers or gain map control.
• When rotating for a gank under smoke, take an observer ward with you. You can place observers deep within enemy territory without them knowing a thing!
•  The offlane, or hard lane, refers to the top lane (for radiant) and the bottom lane (for dire.). If your team is running a tri-lane or a jungler, then the person who is left to lane by themselves in this lane is called the offlaner. An offlaner’s chief role is not ‘do not die’. Though this is obviously important. More essential to the 1v2 offlane is keeping their lane support in lane. Do this by threatening their carry, or just making his life hard. If not, the support is free to stack camps, gank mid or gank your safelane!
• There's a nifty trick to switch the aggro of a tower that is attacking you. Rather than running out of tower range, right click a friendly unit within tower range. The tower will stop attacking you, and attack the new unit. 
• You can activate items on allies by holding down Ctrl and using it on them like a spell. This can be done with nearly all consumables, such as bottle regen!
• A ring of health or regen is actually shareable between you and an ally. If you’re dual laning with someone, and they have low health and you have full health, you can give them your ring of health or regen and it will heal them. Only do this if you trust them!
• Lets say its 65 minutes into the game you’re 6 slotted and you have 5000 gold in your bank. This gold is not useless. Lots of ‘post items’ can be bought. Ease the pressure on your support by buying wards and sentry wards. Get a moonshard and consume it. Get a refresher orb and leave it in your stash. Use it when bkbs or big ultis are cooling down. Get a level 3 necronomicon that can be activated when you’re about to siege high ground. There are tons of options for this gold. Remember to always save for buyback. 
• Transition your kills into map advantage. If you’ve just won a big teamfight, don’t go back to base and don’t go farm. Take towers, take roshan! Kills on the enemy team are only the means to an end.
• It is possible to disjoint certain incoming projectiles and stuns. Using manta style for instance, you can ‘dodge’ Sven’s stormhammer, tower shots, Vengeful Spirit's Magic missile and Sniper's ultimate! This principle applies to other spells and items too; blink spells and blink dagger, Mirana’s leap, Slark's pounce and Naga Siren's split image to name a few can all do this. 

An example of how Manta Style can be used to dodge various spells and projectiles. 

And that's it for out list of Dota 2 tips and tricks to help you improve your MMR. Share some of your tips in the comment section below!

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