Last hitting is one of the most important things to learn when playing DotA. When you're talking about last hitting, there's always room for improvement. Always.
Last hitting is interlinked with lane control and overall dominance of a team. It's the core of the game.

If you're reading this, then I presume that you know what last hitting is. We all know it... moving around back and forth and trying to avoid harassment whilst trying to get as much gold as possible by getting the last hit on creeps when it has a sliver of HP left.

One hit-one kill. That's what I believe is good last hitting. You have to understand that by giving in more hits, you're upsetting a very delicate balance of creep clashes. If no hits are given, then the two creep waves will always meet at the same point. More or less, for every hit you give, you have to deal the same damage back to your creep to keep the wave clash in one place. Simple concept of "give n' take" With a good understanding of this, you can manipulate and move the creep waves in any way you want. One big plus to the team. :)

In fact, good last hitting and wave-manipulating is linked with almost everything in DotA. For example, good last hitting indirectly affects you getting ganked, or your team ganking the enemy. If you push the creeps too far ahead into the towers, you'll just give more EXP to the other guy and reduce chances of snagging a kill. You're susceptible to ganks as well. On the other hand, if you control the waves well, then you can play safe and not get ganked.

A common mistake which many players commit is last hitting consciously with concentration in the Early phase of the game but their concentration tapers off as the game progresses. If you're able to last hit consistently without losing focus throughout the game, then I'd say you're a good last hitter. This is more difficult than it sounds. In fact, it's a litmus test for the skill of a player. Remember that last hitting is more important than denying (since you can't deny the full creep exp like in older versions of DotA)

Here are a few advanced last hitting techniques:

1) MICROWAR WITH YOUR TEAM MATES
When you're given a chance to free farm, you'll get almost all the creep kills if you last hit well. But this doesn't always happen, and if you play against a good team they won't let you free farm very long. How then, do you stay on-par in terms of items?
The answer is to win the microwar WITHIN your OWN team. This involves deception in terms of movement pattern to get the last hit if your allies are good last-hitters as well.
Here's how you do it:
Move to and fro, as always and watch out for any low HP creeps. At this point your ally would have noticed it as well (if he's any good). Now both of you are likely to walk towards the creep to snag the kill. Often, it depends on your heroes attack swing, but it's still possible to do it -- right click the creep and when your strike is about to land cancel it and move a few mm. away. But since your ally thought you were going to land
the hit, he'll click the creep as timed by him. Most likely, he expected you to reduce the creep's health to just one TINY sliver so that he can get the hit, but now he did it for you, and you can get the creep kill!). Remember that you have to use the H key whenever necessary to perform this technique well.
Note that this is possible only when the creep's HP is enough to survive atleast two hits (from you and your ally and maybe your creep)
Explaining this micro strategy in words is difficult, so I'll try to edit and include pictures later.

2)TOWER-SIDE LAST HITTING: As you all know, if you're getting hit by a creep and you enter the tower's range, then the tower shifts its target and assists you by attacking the creep which is hitting you (As long as the creep is in it's range). The tower can help you last hit this way, because it quickly and easily reduces the creeps HP. You have to get to know your heroes attack swing (if you're melee) or projectile speed (if you're ranged)
With a little foresight, you can manipulate the creep's HP beforehand, such that you can get the last hit after the tower throws in a few attacks... say 2 or 3. This technique is SLIGHTLY easier to do if you're on Sentinel because the tower's projectile is a stone, which is easier to judge than Scourge's energy beam.
This strategy will help you farm fast by getting the creeps near your tower.

3)COORDINATING AoE SPELLS TO GET THE LAST HITS FOR ALL CREEPS IN AN AREA - Let me explain this to you by example: Say you're playing Queen of Pain. We know that at level four, you deal 300 damage to creeps with SoP. But by the time you get level 4 SoP, the Necromancer creeps have slightly over 300 HP. Now assume that you're walking with your creep wave and it clashes with a HUGE enemy creep wave. Give a hit (one hit) to each of the Necromancers. While you're at it, your creeps should have managed to halve the Ghouls' health. Now with a single SoP you should get all the creep kills. :)

That's all for now.

Next post: Garena vs. Bnet comparison

Here's my take on what I think are the Top 5 Most useful DotA Programs (legal, of course)

1) Warkeys: Coming in at rank 1, this is definitely something that every DotA Player should have. Highly flexible and functional, you can customize keys to your preference. Don't like how hero skills are placed? Don't want to click items like Necronomicon in your inventory with the mouse? Then this tool will definitely help you. You can remap your keys easily. You can have a standard 'QWER' keyset or you can have your inventory items on the 1, 2, 3, 4 keys. Apart from this, it also has the neat ability to display HP bars without holding down on the alt button. You have one extra finger for pwnage.

Download: http://www.garena.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=62433

2) Ventrilo: A thousand letters is worth 5 seconds of audio. Ok, maybe not, but with this you don't have to type while playing DotA (if you're playing with friends) All you need is a headphone and you're set to use this. Ask your friends to install it and you can coordinate much better. Much. You'll see how it improves your win rate. Voice chat beats text chat when you're playing.

Download: http://www.ventrilo.com/

3) Warcraft III HP View Helper: Same function... viewing HP bars without pressing alt key. But the interesting part is that you don't have to install anything. Just download the 200kb file and place it in your Warcraft folder. Helps when you're playing in cyber cafes or places without Warkeys and you don't have time to install.

(Note: My bad, but I forgot to tell why you would want to see HP bars after v 1.22 was released. The reason is, some of the Asian countries still use v1.20e and v1.21 where you can't enable HP bars in the WC3 Client.)

Download: http://www.trinigamers.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=18


4) ReplaySeeker: Currently, we don't have a program that allows us to view replays like you would in a media player like VLC. So we have to settle with this. It allows you to speeden the replay length upto 36x. With this you can get screenshots or make videos even if you skip further ahead in your replay.

Download: http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=196471

5) DotA Theme Manager: It allows you to have different tilesets for your DotA map. Currently there's Beach Theme, Hell Theme, Snow Theme or Barren theme. They're all very nice and you should try them out. Apart from the aesthetic aspect, it may help you target or last-hit better because of the color contrast... depends on you though. :)
Note that using this changes the tilesets of all maps in WC3 so if you're playing something else then you better switch back to Original.

Download: http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=185881

Other useful programs:
Warcraft TFT Version Switcher: You don't have to create a backup folder for playing DotA in other servers. Mainly for use in Indian and Philippines servers where they still use 1.20e and 1.21.

Credits to ahmet476 for these:
1. DotaHIT by danat
2. DotBeer by Mendoza32
3. DotAReplay by d07.RİV

Next post: Advanced last-hitting strategies

We all know that it's not good to pick all Agility or all Strength heroes in a serious game. The reason for this being, these heroes don't have the raw power that INT heroes are able to achieve with nukes early game. More importantly, they are not reliable early game (more explained later on in the post). Most of them can really be set back in the game if they're ganked a lot. In serious games, we need heroes who are an asset to the team even with sub-par items because you can't run around site-seeing in these games - you're bound to get ganked.

So the best way to maximize efficiency would be to have a blend of INT/STR/AGI heroes. Ideally, we would like to have two nukers, a carry, a tank, a tank-carry, but this can change depending on the situation and enemy picks. That said, those two nukers don't have to be strictly early game. INT heroes like QoP or Nortrom can really carry the team if it needs one, so they're really flexible. An ideal combo is called a 'Lineup'. Popular double lane lineup combos include: Leshrac-SK, Lina-Crystal Maiden, and Earthshaker with just about any hero who can deal damage quickly (Juggernaut, for example)

Popular lineups used in league games are: Leshrac, SK, QoP, Spectre/Rikimaru, Bristleback. Axe is also starting to get popular these days. The reason heroes like Mortred or Troll aren't picked very often in serious games is that they aren't a reliable source of damage. The key word here is reliable. While they are certainly powerful when trading hits with heroes, you can't follow this idea in serious games. In serious games, you need damage that you know will DEFINITELY work, and that you WILL be able to execute it (eg: nukes, fixed damage attacks, AoE attacks)

Performing Combos
When performing a combo you have to talk with your team about who does what first. Initiators are the MiPs (Most important player :P) here.

Let's take the case of a Magnus-Warlock-QoP combo. The best way to perform the combo would be - Magnus blinks in, uses Reverse Polarity and tries to get as many heroes clustered together. Warlock then uses Fatal Bonds (damage shared partially between linked units) to link the heroes and summons Infernal. Magnus uses his Shockwave.
Right now, the linked units receive partial damage each, i.e, each of them gets 175% damage. Since all of them are clustered together QoP can easily finish them off with a Scream and a Sonic Wave, obliterating them.

[Note: The reason we don't get Warlock to use bonds before Magnus casts his ult is because when enemies realize that they're linked, they'll start to spread away from each other, and we definitely don't want that because it'll become difficult for Magnus to catch them all in his ult.]

This was just an example, and the combos you can perform in DotA are infinite. The only thing you need, is coordination. If the Magnus-Warlock-QoP combo had been performed differently, the results wouldn't be enough to kill all the heroes, or with maximum efficiency. You need to know your place. For this you need to talk a bit with your allies.

Countering Combos

Countering enemy hero combos is an important aspect of winning the game. Even a small change in their attack pattern can be very beneficial to your team, allowing you to push further or mess up their entire strategy. You have to understand the role of each hero in the enemy team. Human psychology tells us to dish out all our spells on the main enemy hero. Is this correct always? No. More often, it's the initiators and disablers that mess up our strategy; so we have to eliminate them first, so that we can focus fire on the carry later. Disablers are what help the carry to dish out his damage. Know where the enemy heroes stand and what role they're playing.

You can always pick counter-heroes with skills to counter your opponent team. That, or you can pick an all-rounder like QoP and improvise by buying items.

Here are a list of items that you can use to perform or counter combos.

1) Guinsoo's Scythe of Vyse - By far the best counter item. Can wreak havoc if used properly. Even the most powerful carry heroes can be brought down if you have a double-guinsoo combo on your team.
2) Blink Dagger - Every initiator's favourite item. Helps in loads of things, and the possibilities are endless.
3) Lothar's Edge - It's pretty useful on initiators after the blink dagger nerf in 6.48. Eg: Nevermore/Ursa.
4) Orchid Malevolence - Next best counter item after Guinsoo. 5 secs of silence is godsend to your team if you know when to use it.
5) Shiva's Guard - AoE damage is a definite must for every serious game. The armour bonus helps, but it helps immensely on AoE heroes like Puck/QoP/Earthshaker by supplementing their already powerful damage.

There are lots of other items, but I found these to be the most important in terms of combos. It's always good to have a Guinsoo on your team in every game. Spend time formulating and thinking about combos, it'll help in the long run. Definitely.

So you've just started out DotA recently, and think you're getting good. Like everyone, you want to get better at it, and fast. If you think playing 24/7 is going to get you to proness in the quickest way possible, then think again. While this may certainly improve your skill when you initially start out, after you reach your intermediate stages, it'll lose its efficiency.

I can put it this way: When you start out DotA and play for about a month, your playing ability improves very fast. After five months, you're still growing, but not as fast as before. After a year, you're practically the same as what you were two months ago.

So why then, are there some players who are better than others who may have started out before them? It depends on the individual, but there are ways for everyone to get better.

I'd like to explain this with a simple theory which occurred to me because of my busy life: Linear Growth vs. Exponential growth.

An example of the first: Mr. A plays 9 hours of DotA a day on Garena. He doesn't really care about who he's playing against, and just wants to play for the sake of it. He's been doing this for a year now, and still he isn't that spectacular. He doesn't read about DotA, and his strategy is based purely on in-game experience. At the rate he's going, one can expect him to stay the same after a year.

An example of the second: Mr. A's friend Mr. B plays about 3 hours of DotA a day. On Garena. He can't play as much as Mr. A can, so he enjoys what he can in those 3 hours. He reads strategy guides, discussion forums, and thinks about WHY something was said in the guide, than just blindly following it word to word. He also tries to improvise his own strategy and playing style to suit the game situation. Mr. B watches replays of professional players and is amazed at how good they are. He starts to think like them, and eventually improves fast. At first, he tries to mimic them but later improvises according to the flow of the game. He improves fast. Really fast. He learns from his games and his mistakes in game. Eventually he gets better than Mr. A (who started out before him) and is ahead of him by a margin. He plays better than his friend because he has a strong strategy and understanding of the game. He WANTS to improve. This is what sets him apart most -- he WANTS to improve at DotA.

You may argue that by saying that playing DotA this way spoils the fun of the game, as it's a game and meant to be played for fun. Not really. When you don't have all the time in the world to play, you'll really try to make every minute count. You'll learn from the game. You'll be better than what you were yesterday.

This might make your games better and more enjoyable. :)
Adios. Next post: Hero picking in games/Analyzing combos.

P.S: Next post may take a while 'cause I'm busy at the moment. :(

Hi there, and welcome to DotA blog. I decided to create a blog because DotA is game that will always have something new because of the regular updates and has lots of scope for discussion. The blog platform is perfect for me to pour out my thoughts into a layout. DotA stands for Defense of the Ancients and is one of the most popular maps in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. It is one of the most widely known games, and is more popular than the stand-alone PC game Warcraft. It has elements of both strategy and skill; and a strong focus on teamplay, so it's definitely worth trying out. . You can either play Blizzard's official online ground - battle.net or a custom client like Garena. That said, this blog may not help beginners much. I'll be discussing strategy and in-game tips mainly, but I may post about map updates once in a while.

'Nuff said. Let's move on to the next post.
Linear skill growth vs. Exponential skill growth