IMBA LANE CONTROL GUIDE !!!!!! PART : 4

D. Neutral Creeping
In this guide you have learned how to use your own creeps, your opponent's creeps, and any other type of unit/tower to your advantage. Now we will move on to something that will let you survive and control your lane without even being there (Weird huh?). Neutral creeps are there for your benefit, use them to your advantage at all times during the game.

As an example, say you have pushed a little too far into your own lane and fearing getting ganked, you decide to stay back and wait by your own tower. While this is smart and useful, you can put your time to better use by creeping or using the neutral creeps to stall your own creeps. Making your opponent's creeps get closer to your own tower.

How can you do this you might ask?

Well its quite simple, all you must to is wait for your own creep wave to get to a certain point (timing is key here or your creeps will just walk by) attack a neutral creep camp (The one closest to your own lane is probably the best) and instead of staying and killing them all, run back to your lane. Make sure you do not go out of sight, and don’t run to far ahead. Lead them to a point intercepting your own creep wave, and instead of pushing forward your own creeps will stop and start to attack the neutral creeps.

Once the neutrals have been away from there camp for a certain period of time, they will try to return (taking your creeps with them), and viola you just stopped a whole wave of units. Now your opponent's have no choice but to follow their creeps directly to your tower, while you laugh at them the whole time (Laughing = Optional).

(Please remember if you see an ally creeping it is bad manners to run over there and start attacking also. They must be there for a reason, and you should not be so rude as to try and take there kills. When someone does this to me I get extremely frustrated. Sometimes I am just 100 gold away from an item, and killing that 1 creep camp would have given it to me. Now I either have to wait, or go find another creep wave. Remember manners are important in any game)

The last strategy I can think of at the moment is neutral creep dieing. This is a bad name for it, but the basics of it are, running into a creep camp and letting them kill you to stop your opponent's from getting experience and gold. This is a very good thing to get into the habit of, because you never want to give out gold and experience if you don't have to.

If a neutral creep camp is not around, dieing to a tower or other creep is acceptable.

(On dieing to neutrals, this does not mean as soon as your almost dead run into a creep wave and let them kill you. If you’re not going to die in the first place obviously don't go killing yourself. Good judgment is essential also, when being chased by an enemy hero. If you think you can get away or that you can just make it to some allies. Then keep going and do not kill yourself. But if you’re at 75 life points and slayer is right behind you about to nuke. Turning into a creep wave is probably the smart thing to do.)

For a much better guide on Neutral creeping, I suggest you read Neutral Creep Guide by MrX

E. Types of Attacks
In almost any guide you read it tells you about how constantly attacking is a bad idea. Here are the different styles, and the Do’s and Don’ts related to them.

There are 3 styles of attacks that one can use.

Last Hit: This is when you time your attack to take out the last sliver of health a creep has. This should be used in almost any situation. The drawback to this is that it is quite slow. When pushing or defending, waiting for creeps to hit a certain point can take a very long time. That can be a very bad thing, especially when you need to get rid of them quickly.

Constant Attack with timing at end: Basically a middle point between last hit and continuously attacking.

In some situations you should be constantly attacking. That is because constantly attacking pushes the creeps further back, or pushes opponents away from towers and such.

Here are some situations you should be constantly attacking in:

When pushing a lane quickly: You want to push as fast as possible. To do that you must kill creeps quickly. Sitting around waiting for your creeps to get them to red life will take a very long time. This is one situation were constant attacks are a good thing.

When defending a lane: Your opponents are pushing quickly into your lane. They are going to be near the tower soon, and are going to deal heavy damage to the tower. Because towers are vital to winning a game, you always want to keep them as high as possible in life points. Allowing your opponents to push next to your tower is fine, but you do not want them actually attacking the tower. If they push a little too far in, you should start to continuously attacking to push them back.

As soon as they reach a safe position, you can resume last hitting again. Last hitting should be used in 90% of situations.

Constant Attack: This is the style most “Noobs” use and they get ridiculed for it. You should never be using this style of attacking. You should always be last hitting, and only using constant attack with timing at end in the certain situations. This form of attacking will get you “owned” against a good player.

IV. Overall Teamplay

A. Hero Combos
Hero combos are not really used in lower level play (public games) but in higher level play (IHL, most IH games) Hero combos are essential. A hero combo is essentially a combination of heroes who compliment each other nicely. Combining heroes just right is essential because you need to even out your damage, stuns, nukes, and disables.

Depending on what type of hero you are, can decide who you will pair up with. Usually a stun is combined with damage, so that they can deal a lot of damage during the short stun time.


B. Runes
Runes are commonly used with wards. Placing a ward above a rune location allows you to check and see if a rune is there and what kind of rune it is. This is very helpful as any rune is useful. Using runes will help any team to take out a quick hero, or let someone survive further.

Going further into detail on runes, every rune is important, although admittedly some more than others.

Illusion - Most people would say illusion being the most useless. Although illusions in high level play can be one of the best (if used right). Let’s say your mid lane, your ward shows you having an illusion rune at the bottom spawn. You run down there and take it. In high level play (if they don’t have wards themselves) your opponents would warn there own teammates that your missing, which would in turn, cause most of the enemy heroes to back up to their towers to avoid a gank.

To counter this, take your illusion and put it back were you were supposed to be (middle) make sure you don’t attack with it or get hit with it as this would give you away. You now have freedom of movement for a short period of time. This freedom can now be used to do anything (ganks, heal, buy items). Although the first (gank) would be most useful.

Haste - Being warned about someone missing and having time to react are two different things. Say your teammate just warned you that someone was missing, and then they come charging at you 1 second later with haste. Pretty much guarantees a kill. Also allows you to heal and get back to your lane extremely fast.

Regeneration - Probably the most useful rune as it can be used by every hero. Not much can be said about it that isn’t to obvious. It saves you a trip back to base to heal, and allows spamming of your nuke if you have one (long as you don’t get hit). Heroes that can spam nukes include, Zeus, Lich, Crystal maiden. They all have a powerful nukes that have fast cool downs.

Double Damage - If you’re not a DPS hero with high attack speed don’t get this. Save it for teammate UNLESS your teammates cannot get to it in time. Do NOT allow your opponents to get this as it spells death for any hero.

Invisibility - Can be used in the same general way as illusion. It is used for a gank, to position you behind an enemy hero to get a kill. Although honestly in high level play to me illusion is more useful. As with invisible your opponents will still know you’re missing. But it is still very useful.

If I have not covered the basics or you want to know more you can find a great guide on runes Guide to Runes, by MasterJoe.

C. Teamwork
Teamwork is the basis of all DotA games. In public games it is much less noticeable as it is in higher level games, although both do utilize it.

Teamwork does not mean two or more heroes both attacking the same unit/hero. Teamwork is considered all things dealing with the cooperation of two or more heroes. That does include attacking a hero/unit, but is most definitely not limited to that.

An example of bad teamwork, is two ally heroes both attacking the same enemy hero. Say they both have a stun or disable spell, and one immediately casts their spell to stop the running hero. In most public games, the 2nd hero would either immediately cast their own disable, trying to get the last hit, or wait and not use their spell until they are absolutely positive that it will get the kill (also known as kill stealing).

A good example of teamwork is, using the same scenario, if one were to stun. And right before the first stun ended, the other hero also stunning. This makes sure that that hero gets the full disable time of both spells. It also lessens the damage either of the heroes would have taken, had the opposing hero been able to attack.

In a team battle you always want to cast your lower cool down spells as fast as possible. That is because the faster you cast them, the more you can cast them in a single battle. It annoys me very much when heroes like Zeus or Slayer save their spells just to try and get the last hit, when if they had cast them right in the beginning of the battle, they would have been able to cast it at least once more before the end of the battle.

Always try to kill a hero as fast as possible to lessen the damage you and your allies take.

D. Ventrilo
Obviously talking is much faster than typing. In higher level games, the players are usually talking with their teams on a program called Ventrilo. To do this you need a microphone, headset and to download Ventrilo.

The link to the Ventrilo website can be found Here.

DotA-Allstars ever has their own Ventrilo server that can be used by anyone who wants to use it.

You can find all the information on the DotA-Allstars Ventrilo Here.

Ventrilo is a small program actually. It has fairly good quality; there are 2 other types of talk programs that I know about. Skype, and Teamspeak.

Skype has the highest quality out of all 3 of them, but it has its limitations. For one it takes up a lot of hard drive space. So if you have a slow computer, playing DotA and having Skype on can be a problem. Also only 5 people may be in a chat room at a time, which makes a big clan or channel impossible to keep together.

With Teamspeak, you have much less quality than both Skype and Ventrilo, and it also uses up more hard drive space than Ventrilo………weird.

Here is a great guide on how to use Ventrilo.

E. Wards
Wards are essential to any team, whether for map control, or just to have sight over that annoying invisible hero. There are many different locations to place a ward, depending on which lane, and side you are on.

Here are some common ward placement locations:

This is of course, the middle of the map. It is very common in all levels of play, and it is one I use quite a bit. It is mainly used to remove the fog of war, so your opponents cannot use it to their advantage. It also lets you nuke them without having to run up the ramp to get sight.

This spot is not common, at least not in public games, although it is a great spot to place a ward. To get the sight of this location, you can press the Insert or Delete key on your keyboard. It will rotate your screen, giving you sight.

This gives great sight for either side. It is common in both pubs and TDA/IH. I use it quite a bit depending on which hero I am playing.

Chickens can also place wards. Using them to place wards means you get to keep that extra space in your inventory. Also, if your opponents pay attention, a lot of people will notice the wards in your inventory and (through common sense) know that you have placed one or two depending on the number of wards you have left.

Placing wards with chicken removes that, although you need to be careful of heroes in the woods. You don’t want to get your poor chicken killed, that is just mean…..

You can find a great guide on wards A Guide for Warding. This should teach you common warding spots.