[caption id="attachment_356908" align="aligncenter" width="560" caption="bookcoverimgs.com"][/caption]
It might seem simple on the outside but underneath lies multiple calculations and decisions that are made on the spot which will determine the outcome of the game. Last year’s ‘The International 2014 Dota 2 Championships’ winners team ‘Newbee’ brought home $5,000,000 (Rp. 65,2 milliar). What did they have to do in order to achieve such a prize?
Items
Each player controls their own hero. While the main point of the game is to destroy the opposing team’s ancient guarded deep within the corner of the map, this can’t be done without the help of items to boost stats and to acquire a few more abilities. There are items that can increase movement, attack speed and damage thus increasing DPS, or armor/regen increasing items.
Items can be bought through gold achieved from farming, collecting gold by taking out creeps (small minions) or the opposing team’s hero. Other than gold experience points are also gained in the process. So in addition to getting your own team to farm, it’s crucial to disrupt the enemy’s farm. Farm wins games, which brings us to ganking.
Support vs. Carry
The carry role although generally having a weak early game has the potential to win the game by achieving constant farm as they are reliant on the items that they ‘carry’. Carry’s are the target of most ganks because of the danger they possess when ‘fed’/fully farmed. They are also in most cases squishy/low health early game, making them easy to pick off.
A hard carry example could be Razor who when fully fed can be properly tanky and hard to take down, 2nd skill that steals the enemy’s attack damage and an ultimate of a storm cloud that strikes down on his enemies. Another example would be Phantom Assassin, whose 3rd skill can cause enemy attacks to miss 50% of the time and critical hits that can reach 450%. While combined with the item battlefury critical attacks can become monstrous.
The support role on the other hand doesn’t require as much farm as a carry, while their potential decreases as the game continues. Their main job is to protect the carry from possible ganks and to harass the enemy’s carry. However the farm they do receive can be used to buy yellow wards (for map vision), blue wards (gives true sight), smoke, dust and etcetera. Apparently in casual games no one likes to be the support (occasionally there can be all carry teams) and becoming a good support is not that simple to master.
