Study

Why do you need this? There are well over 100 heroes in Dota 2 and new ones are added semi-regularly. Even the simplest take a lot of skill to control, while the more complicated will demand hundreds of hours before mastery is achieved. While they’re worth the time, trying to do so while still getting to grips with items, ganks, wards, and being insulted in Russian won’t be efficient or fun.

Speaking of, we won’t be covering the building blocks of the game here. Valve do a decent job of that in the tutorial, which we’ll be assuming you’ve played. However, here’s a quick run down of the basics.

Heroes are characters with their own combination of unique skills and attributes, each of which can be moulded and shaped by items. Over the course of the game, a hero will gain experience which can then be used to level up, increasing their effectiveness. Depending on how a hero performs, their item builds and who else is on their team, a hero can fulfil a specific role.

Roles help define a specific method of playing any given hero. Every hero has at least one primary role, which helps a player achieve the maximum potential with that hero. However, it’s not uncommon for heroes to be able to fulfil multiple roles, and even change their roles throughout the course of the game.

To kill enemy creeps, heroes and eventually blow up the enemy Ancient, your team will need a mixture of roles. Here’s a rundown: 

Carry: The heavyweights of Dota 2, the carry heroes spend the majority of the game gathering gold to obtain key items that will turbo-boost their power. Relatively weak in the early game, they become the most powerful heroes if the game lasts for long enough.

Supports: These heroes don’t need gold to be effective, letting their carries maximise their gold income. They are also responsible for buying utility items such as the delivery courier vision-granting wards.

Nukers: Capable of dealing high burst damage, these heroes are deadly on the battlefield from very early levels. They excel at killing enemies in the early game to snowball their own power and disrupt the opposing team’s plans. Generally plays in the mid-lane to begin with and should be ganking early and often from that position.

Pushers: Heroes with AoE abilities for killing creeps quickly and/or ones that are capable of doing large amounts of damage to towers. Their job is to knock down all the buildings in quick succession to grab an early gold lead for their team, and pressure the enemy back into their own base.

Junglers: Favouring the jungle as opposed to the more traditional lanes, these heroes can go toe to toe with the neutral creeps located there in order to earn gold and experience, while freeing up the three lanes for the rest of their team. Survivability is usually their defining trait as they spend a lot of time being wailed on by golems and satyrs.

Solo: Similarly, heroes with great survival options are the best choice for soloing a lane. Their primary job is to stay alive while getting lots of experience. Gold is only a secondary priority, as they’ll usually be up against more than one hero in their lane, making it risky to farm safely. It’s a fairly miserable way to spend the early game, but can lead to great boons later on.

Initiators: The dictators of team fights, initiators can make or break a game with their huge area of effect abilities. They’re also good at catching and containing enemy stragglers, so their carry can close in and get the kill. Their two calling cards are lots of disables and a desperate need for the Blink Dagger item.

Obviously, there’s more roles here than there are available slots on a standard five-man team, so multi-tasking is important. The way this is summarised is by farming priority - who is it most valuable to give gold, experience or both to? They’re the “one position” and normally the carry. This filters down to five, generally the extra-poor supports who throw an ultimate than valiantly die for their team before stocking up on some more wards. As with everything in Dota, this can change throughout the game.

With our categories defined, let’s get on to the recommendations. It’s worth noting that this is a mixture of personal preference and community-sourced advice. As with the vast majority of games, it’s most important that you’re having fun - if few or none of these take your fancy, feel free to stab that random button and take whatever you’re landed with for a whirl. Just remember, we tried to help.

The best thing to do, and applicable to any hero: use the in-game hero guides. By the time you’re good enough that following them to the letter isn’t ideal, you’ll have a better grasp on how to play. Until then they’ll simplify buying items, keep you on top of your best abilities and let you focus on killing the bad guys. If you’re a fast reader, or look them up beforehand on Steam, they’ll even give some advice on how to play.