What competitive DotA is all about

~Guide's Index

I. Introduction and Foreword
II. Moving On
III. Captains Mode
IV. Individual Skills
V. Team Play
VI. The Heroes
VII. The Strategy
VIII. Replays and Interviews
IX. FAQ and Changelog
X. The Conclusion

I. Introduction and Foreword

Hello, I'm DarkMedina. I'm writing this guide as requested by some friends, they wanted to get their teams to play serious competitive games (CG). I hope it also helps the dota community, it's for them I write.

1. Who should read this guide?

All the dota players that want to get into competitive dota, search for hints to improve his/her gaming experience or could use some help to manage/build/get into a team.

2. My DotA Experience

Well, I would say I don't have an extense dota experience, I have never played in IDEC or such. I play in the best leagues (WarDotA) and championships (ProSeries, NexImpetus) in my country (Brazil). This could make things interesting because I still remember when I got into competitive dota and could point the way =).
Also, as I play as captain on some games, I can point the general strategy you should follow on competitive games and well, read the guide for the info.

II. Moving On

1. What is a Competitive Game?

Competitive games are those you play aiming for a prize, which may be a championship victory/trophy/award or prize money/stuff.
Usually, it is also used to mention all games played after arranging a team. This guide aims for this case, it has no info on sponsors, championships or leagues, but the way to play them.

2. Arranging Games

If you play at BNET, it may be a little bit more difficult. You should be a friend of other clans and ask them to arrange a team against you. This is called a clan war. At GArena, there are Clan War Rooms, made specially for this purpose.

3. No more pubs?

Why not? Even Vigoss plays pubs. I myself don't like them, but... If you're bored and have to team to play with, you can go to the clan war and ring for another team, play pubs or AI games. The choice is up to you, I'd say that ringing is very good for building up individual skills though.

4. Flaming/Leaving/AFKing/Noobing

Well, generally competitive games don't have those. Generally... You must know that, if you want to be known in the competitive scenery, you must play your game to the maximum.

5. Forfeit

It's a general rule of competitive games: Captains can forfeit the game, this is the same as giving up and is as worth as losing (for the team that forfeited) or winning (for the other team). As the captain, you should comunicate with your team and decide wheter to forfeit or not if the game looks seriously bad to you, then if you decide to do it, just say "FF wp" in all chat and leave the game alongside your team.

6. Publics x Clan Wars

Is the main difference really the teamplay? Well, not really.
The strategy is the most important difference. Map control, drafting, teamplay and roles second that. Some say that they don't play clan wars because it may be boring to search for games and it may be stressing to play very seriously, but most say it's worth it. Trust it, competitive games are amusing.

7. Real Life and CGs

Well, it's not always that you will have spare time to play DotA. You should schedule games with your team so that all of you can play together and build team play. If you can't play or don't feel like playing a scheduled game, get someone to play for you so that you don't ruin your team's game. If you still can be there, observe the game and help with saves/pauses.
Some people say that CG require too much patience to be played, so they play pubs instead. I somehow agree, but as pub level is very low on most places, I stick and recommend people to hang on with CGs.

III. Captains Mode

1. Why Captains Mode?

It's said to be the most balanced mode. But this section doesn't cover the -CM mode. All the info is taken in consideration when playing a CG.

2. Roles

Pretty self-explanatory, they are what you're supposed to do in the game. Balanced teams have heroes on different roles.

a) Carry

The one who farms and have decent late game action.
Carries are supposed to spend a long time farming for maximizing their potentials. Overfarm can be useful, but not really. Sometimes you need to know when to end a game and the carry usually needs to comunicate the timing for it. Carries are also supposed to be on team battles they can win, so always have tp scrolls with you.

b) Ganker

Ganks, duh. It's the one who goes around killing enemy carries and ensuring the farm for your carries.
KuroKy's favorite role. Those are the heroes that can win the game by three means: Gank and let the carries farm, then win. Gank, then push fiercely and win. Gank and kill a lot, outlevelling and outfarming the enemies, then win. It may look like ganking is the best way to win games in the current metagame, but actually it is not. Refer to KuroKy's interview at #RI section in this guide.

c) Support

The one who sticks inlane with the carry, if necessary, allowing the carry to farm and level up. Support heroes are supposed to leave the farm to the carries, also to hang on with the team if the carry doesn't need the support around. Buying consumables for other heroes is acceptable, provided that the support has money to spare. Be sure to care about the safety of your carries all the time by ditching enemy heroes away from them and ganking/counter-ganking.

d) Initiator

The one with disables/nukes that can initiate a team battle. Initiators usually gank or support too.
Initiators are said to have balls of steel. Yes, sure, but they can't just throw then in the middle of the battlefield and... die? You must, as a initiator, time your nukes so that your team can follow up and take full advantage of the battle you have just started.

e) Pusher

No, not MYM|Pusher. Pusher is the hero that can clear creep waves and injure enemy towers with ease.
There are two kinds of pusher heroes: Summoners and Healers. Summoners like Broodmother, Krobelus, Rhasta, Lycanthrope and Furion usually push alone because they can push fairly fast by themselves, but can't do much at bigger team battles. Healers like Warlock, Enchantress, Abaddon, Necrolyte, Chen and Shadow Priest push with their teams. They can make better use of team battles to push and can take down towers in seconds if don't countered.

f) Semi-Carry

Usually with another role, the semi-carry is the one who excel at mid/late game, but not too late.

g) Tanker

The hero that can endure nukes/disables so that the carries remain safe. Extinct role in the 6.6x metagame.

3. Drafting

a) Introduction to Drafting

The version 6.52e was very popular. The drafts were all like tanker + ganker/semi-carry/support + carry. The metagame sure has changed a lot. Old semi-carries are now considered carries, like Enchantress. So how should one draft a balanced team?

b) The general idea

It's way more complicated than it goes for only a section. You need to mind strategy, good picks and counter picks, lanes, roles and your own team style.
Usually, you pick first key heroes. Some say they are the imbalanced heroes, well, maybe. Then you proceed with picking heroes to counter the enemy's key heroes and strategy and also to build your own strategy. Then you finish it with the heroes to build strong lanes.

c) Draft Examples

All the drafts show: Short Lane/Mid Lane/Long Lane/Jungle

i) Push Strategy

Abaddon + Necrolyte / Warlock / Enchantress / Chen

ii) Gank Strategy

ES + PotM / Dark Seer / Kunkka + CM

iii) Turtle Strategy

TideHunter + Puck / Zeus / Spectre + Warlock

d) Your picks and your team

This is one good advantage of having a competitive team to hang on with.
There's a very strong team on Brazil that wins most games they are able to pick Lanaya (aka the enemy team doesn't ban her). If you know that someone in your team plays very well a specific hero, you may abuse it as this team does with Lanaya and have a trick up the sleeve.
Well, this is not the only case. You also should not pick heroes that no one in your team can play decently, as DarkSeer, that is very hard to play, in my opinion. It's a wasted pick if no one knows how to play him.
Take advantage of your team style. Draft ganking strategies if they know how to gank very well. Just don't let the enemies counter you so easily (by picking counter-gankers like LoA).

e) Your picks and the enemy team

It's important to acknowledge the enemy team's style and usual picks so that you can pick the best way possible and hopefully manage to get the other team outpicked.

5. Who should be the captain?

Usually, the most experienced player because he'll usually know a bit more about strategy and drafting. Don't forget that the captain also leads the team in ganks and team battles.

6. Saves, Pauses, Referees

No, don't host games with observes, they can't aid you with saves / pauses and won't be able to talk in all chat. Instead, host with referees.

a) Saves

You're supposed to save the game if no one does so, even if you're not obsing. Well, each player can only save once. If no one saves the game after you did, YOU RESERVE THE RIGHT TO PAUSE AND ASK FOR A SAVE. Saves are supposed to be done once every 10 min and/or after crucial moments on the game like huge team battles, roshan, first blood and barracks down. After those, wait until all heroes take distance from enemy heroes and towers, then save. You usually don't need to say you're going to save, but you can just type save in all and do it.

b) Pauses

You may ask: Am I supposed to endure pauses that simply last forever? Well, no. There is a general rule that is used on some leagues, each team can have the game paused for 5 min tops. Apart from that, the team can only ask for a pause that will be conceded only if the other team agrees with, but those won't be counted as a pause for the other team. If the pause is necessary for both teams, then it won't be counter for neither team (i.e. if the other team asks you to wait for a little while before unpausing and the pause was very short).

c) Referees

What to do if the referee keeps spamming on all chat or telling the heroes positioning (ganks, roshan)? If you're playing on a host bot, what's likely on a league, save the game and kick the referee, also make sure that he will never play with you again. If not, save the game and load it again, then start without him (if you're on bnet, host a private game, if you're on GArena, ban him).
Also, can the referee be on a voice server with one of the teams, telling the same stuff? He/She may be there, but it isn't allowed. It is as bannable as map hacking and good teams never allow friends/referees to do that.

IV. Individual Skills

1. Last Hitting / Farming / Denying

One of the most important things to do in a game. Some say this is the reason why Yamateh wins most of his games.
Last hit is to time the attack so it results in the killing blow to a creep. This way you get the gold bounty and full exp (farm) or deny your enemy of doing so.

2. Lane Control

To control your lane means to farm, deny and harass enough so that you can be always on a higher level than the enemy heroes.
Higher levels mean more/better skills, so that controlling your lane is easier, also you are more likely to win team battles, therefore winning the game.

3. Map Awareness

To have map awareness is to know where are the heroes positioned, thereby avoiding or executing ganks. When you're about to gank / be ganked, some heroes can teleport on the towers, counter ganking / aiding you.
Carry players are supposed to know very well where are the enemy heroes so that they don't gank him. Also, gankers are supposed to know when to gank, therefore to know if they will be sucessful or counter ganked. Comunication (telling miss) also helps a lot, mainly if the heroes teleport away.

4. Ward Awareness

What? Yes, ward awareness is the ability to know where the enemy wards are placed, not map hacking. This is crucial to roaming heroes, you can't just cross a ward and hope things will be just fine because they will counter-gank you very easily. Instead, you should take another path (that the ward doesn't cover), TP and/or counter-ward.

5. Juking

To juke is to buy time abusing the fog. This can be used to multiple purposes: to escape, finish a cooldown, counter gank and have mindgames.
Mind the map (map awareness), mind the enemy skills, cooldowns, mana pool and the other heroes in the map, decide which path to follow and how much time you need to buy, then act accordingly. Remember that the more time you try to buy, the harder is to juke.

6. Have a Role

Usually, every dota player have a set of heroes that he/she excels at playing. Often those heroes have a similar role. I suggest that you play all the heroes at least once and play around all the roles so that you can have more freedom when making the picks.
AI maps and pubs may come useful for this, for example, I learnt how to play Storm Spirit against bots, then proceeded to get 15-5 in a wonderful game against one of the best teams in my country.

V. Team Play

1. Voice System

The most famous voice systems are Ventrillo, Team Speak and Skype. Also, you may just be with your team in a Lan House and talk directly to them (professional teams have their own rooms at lan to play and chat, very cool).
Ventrillo is very well known in USA, the sound quality is somehow low, but it's very simple and doesn't lag.
Team Speak is vastly used in Brazil and Germany, the sound quality is better, but there are some server issues like a bit of delay.
Skype has the best sound quality between those three, but it lags a lot. Period.
Is having a voice system really important? YES IT IS. Team Play relies on it a lot. I suggest that all the players in the team have headsets with mics for better performance.

2. Ganks and Counter-Ganks

TP Scrolls and Wards are your friends. They really buy you some gank/counter-gank situations now and then. Be sure to comunicate when teleporting/closing up to a lane and say what is your ganking/counter-ganking plan, so that your allies can act accordingly or provide you a better plan.
Ganks and counter-ganks used to be more important in previous versions. You could win games by ganking and Ks.Int abused it a lot. Now, it is more used to push and farm.

3. Team Battles

a) Initiating

The initiator is supposed to initiate, oh yes, but the captain needs to say when. Not the exact second, unless your team is EG, but you must always comunicate when it's better to fight and when it's better to retreat. Mind your team's positioning, the enemy team's positioning, mana and health pools, cooldowns and make your decision.
Also, pay attention to the enemy initiators. Watch when Kunkka raises his hand to Torrent + Ghost Ship, unless you want to be crushed down in a matter of seconds. Watch out for blinkers, for wards that may have sight of you and for the heroes that can disable your blink daggers (or your allies's).

b) Coordination

Coordination. This is what make the greatest teams what they are. If you take the coordination off EG, Ks.int, MYM etc., they are just regular teams. So, what is it all about?
It's very complicated. You must pratice a lot with your team in order to acquire coordination. Aim your nukes. Chain your disables. Time your initiating. Enjoy your glory.
A simple example is Kunkka + Warlock. Kunkka comes all the way to the enemy base and supposedly unseen, casts Torrent and Ghost Ship from fog. Warlock goes into his position discretely, so that he doesn't make the enemies move out the AOE. Then he ults, one and a split second before torrent procs. Some of the heroes get badly damaged by the combo and the team battle is made easier for Kunkka and Warlock. Feel free to expand this example, there could be an entire guide just to teach Coordination and that's not the purpose here.

c) Avoiding Team Battles

When to avoid? Whenever you're outnumbered and /or outclassed, you may want to buy time for your allies to reach the battlefield or just don't want to battle at that situation.

Why to avoid? Because the odds are that you'll lose the teambattle and thus give exp and gold to the enemies, also an oportunity for them to push.

How to avoid? Well, now the hardest comes. Towerhugging is the cheapest way of avoiding some team battles, also keeping your team at good positioning in fog may help because they will be afraid of finding more heroes than the screen shows. If it happens for them to jump in, well, disable and run if you really want to avoid the teambattle. Heroes like SandKing and ES need to be silenced before casting their ultimates.

4. Hero Kills and Farm

Do I need to say you are supposed to leave it to the carry or take it if you are the carry?
Well, I'm saying it. Leave the Hero Kills and the Farm for the carry WHENEVER POSSIBLE. Read: whenever POSSIBLE. Don't risk losing a hero kill just because the carry wasn't able to get it. Good carries know well how to kill steal and you should encorage them to do that.
Also, when you're pushing, you're supposed to leave the farm for the carry too. Say that the carry is Death Prophet and you're the supporter Puck. You can cast orb to nuke the creeps and hit them, so that DP can come and Carrion Swarm and farm all/most of them.
This is a very important aspect that can win some games.

5. Runes

Get the runes and gank. No, not only that.
Runes are very important for ganking heroes, for bottle heroes and for solo mids.
Basically, what it has to do with teamplay is that you can deny every single rune from the enemy by constantly (a little bit before every even minute) checking the rune spots. But not only one of them, two heroes can go check the runespots, so that your team is 100% sure to get the rune.
Warding won't help this much, but is advised too so that you see if the enemy heroes have moved out to gank you while checking the rune. Wards can see the runes, but won't see them before they spawn and that's when you go check the rune.

6. Wards / Courier

Bought from the start of the game, they provide a huge advantage for your team.
The courier will bring you the items you need, those can be consumables that will help you to stay inlane and core items, so that you won't need to go all the way back to fountain just to pick up some items. Wards help you avoid ganks and stay inlane farming when no one comes to gank you. They also let you counter-gank and initiate team battles with ease. Cool, uh? For the very same reason, you need to counter-ward, so that your enemies can't do the same and you keep up the game with a huge advantage. Refer to Heldarion's Total Warding Guide for more information about warding.

VI. The Heroes

This section is meant to emphasize the importance of acknowledging the potential behind every hero in the game, not to describe them one by one.

1. Competitive Tier Heroes at post 6.60

The heroes often used in CGs, their roles, popularity and link to the respective guides in PlayDota can be found at this link.

2. What is a Key Hero?

3. Acknowledging the enemy hero

There are loads of aspects you'll have to notice on a enemy hero, actually. Those are: Health and Mana Pool, Skills, Items and Cooldown, and also DPS and Positioning. Acknowledging all those aspects, you may calculate if you can have profit in ganks / team battles. Also, very useful for mindgames.
You may ask: how will I math all this stuff and play at the same time? It's not about numbers, it's about probability and standards. I'm only listing all this stuff here because it's the maximum you'll acknowledge, but some aspects are more important, like mana pool and cooldown when you're trying to get away from a Kunkka. This is the way, the rest is up to experience, but never forget that those may do all the difference for the initiation / at the middle of the teambattle.

4. Your own hero

If you haven't already acquired the habit to communicate skills cooldowns, do this as soon as possible. Also communicate when you're out of mana or going to farm or even going back to base, as many of your mates may just think you're with them and die mindlessly.
Oh, good players always check all the heroes health and mana pool, skills ... . No, actually it's too much, try to help with your own part and they will help with theirs, also they will communicate about enemy heroes and suddenly you'll have already acknowledged all you needed to in order to initiate the teambattle with ease.

VII. The Strategy

1. The definition of Metagame

2. Ganking Strategy

It was very well fitting to the metagame of versions around 6.57, where KingSurf had its peak on DotA championships and leagues.
The ganking strategy has the main purpose of killing enemy heroes. At 6.62b, when kills happen, the ganking team will execute the secondary part of the strategy, this is push or farm.
If the team decides to push, they will concentrate on sieging towers for getting into the bases and taking down Barracks, so that the upgraded creeps can push by themselves while the team itself ganks more and then pushes another lane.
But if the team decides to farm, the purpose is to overfarm and overlevel the enemy heroes, so that the team can gank easier and win the game on less, but more powerful, pushes.

3. Push Strategy

The Push is the simplest way to win a DotA game, a very powerful way also. This is because the only way to finish the game is to siege down all the towers and the throne. You do this by pushing. There are two types of Push Strategy, the quick push and the long push.
The quick push is revolved around heroes that can take down towers very fast, like Rhasta, Krobelus, Broodmother and so on. When it happens to have a tower uncovered, they come and take it. It's just like Chess, if they can take a piece, they go and take it with a simple and quick move.
The long push is revolved around heroes with defensive spells, like heals, shields and buffs, like Abaddon, Warlock, Chen and so on. They keep on pushing restlessly and it's very hard to stop the push because they never die really. Usually they stand so much time pushing that they eventually win because the enemy heroes get out of mana or at low life or even die trying to defend.

4. The Turtle Strategy

The Turtle Strategy is where you pick carries or even hard carries. You place them near supports and make sure that they are farming. The counter-ganking action is intense, you usually draft a few anti-pushers for this strategy too.
The Turtle Strategy was very famous at versions around 6.52e and came back to action at 6.60 with a new kind of carries, those who can stay alive enduring even the worst ganks. There are two kinds of carries to be drafted for the Turtle Strategy, those who can Tank and those who can Escape.
Heroes who can Tank are Kunkka, Dirge, Necrolyte, Krobelus and so on. They usually farm tanking items life the so imba Heart of Tarrasque and the nerfed BloodStone. Also, they have tanking/bracing skills like Ghost Ship and Silence.
Heroes who can Escape are Morphling, Slardar, Juggernaut and BatRider, specially Morphling for having like three escape mechanisms. All of them can escape ganks with their spells and thereby save money for carrying.

5. Countering Strategies

Well, first and foremost you must notice which strategy the enemy is trying to build. Generally, they are related to the team's style, so planning a strategy beforehand is very important.

VIII. Replays and Interviews

1. Replays

Watching replays is crucial, even to professional gamers. They need to know the style of the enemy team so that they can pick / play the best way to win. For less experienced players, they can learn by watching replays and also have amusement with epic games.
I like to watch replays when I'm home but unable to play, like when I'm having lunch or whatever not important. This doesn't apply to the games I watch to observe the enemy team's style, those require you to focus a bit more attention on the game itself and sometimes you may want to write down stuff.
Don't start off by watching the most skilled replays, you won't understand much of what they do. Just don't waste your time watching total stomps or pub replays, if you happen to see a very good replay, track who posted it and see more replays of the same player, this usually works. When I started out with CGs, I tracked down Shorttail's replays :3. You can track down me, if you want, it's pretty simple, I have a replay portfolio and stuff, you know?

I have handpicked some replays to post here, more will come as I watch them.

GosuGamers DotA | Replay: MaNia- vs Loda

GosuGamers DotA | Replay: Abby vs Eddie[P]

GosuGamers DotA | Replay: MCiTY vs [R]Digi

GosuGamers DotA | Replay: CURRAX vs FnaticMSI

GosuGamers DotA | Replay: Cybertime vs Trust

2. Interviews

Interviews are more fan-related unless they talk about some particular aspect in CGs, in this case they can teach you a thing or two and are very interesting to read, actually.

dmZ|Moods - The Metagame By DarkMedina

MiSeRy-: Brief Chat about Drafting By DarkMedina

KuroKy: "Strategic part of DotA practically dead" By RuFFy7

Kwom - Strategy Chat By DarkMedina, not official

3. Videos

This section is here mostly for entertainment. You can learn a trick or two with DotA videos.

sP DotA Movie 2 By Black-_-Lotus

IX. FAQ and Changelog

1. FAQ

None yet.

2. Changelog

- September, 2009 -

15th - Anchor style ninja'd from Ramonar's guide
15th - Guide complete'd.
13th - Typos ninja'd by Un1t3D_.
9th - Posted on my Blog.

X. The Conclusion

Playing competitive games is more than just stats in a league. It's fun. You get yourself into the game, interact with the heroes and build a strategy to win. It's the way to go.
Winning a CG is very different than winning a public game or AI game. You feel great when you face a team which skills match your team's. Losing is also unavoidable and you learn with it. Actually you learn a lot by watching CG's replyas, there is strategy and counter-strategy, warding and counter-warding, ganking and counter-ganking, mindgames, team battles, huge pushes...
The reward? Primairly, fun and amusement. Your brain likes to focus and to think intensively and you do this playing CGs and doing your best at them. This estimulates your body chemically (yes seriously), making you feel good.
So, is the purpose of this guide to get all the pub players and insert them into the CG scenery? No, I'm just giving them a chance to move. No one likes close-minded pro-like and smartasses first time players. Not even experient players that claim to be "I am the very best" (no, Loda, we don't). So, acknowledge that there will be many who will outplay you in the beggining, but don't give up. Behave when you win and when you lose.
For all those who have come this far in my guide (and don't simply tl,dr), I recognize that your will is great and you will likely take your gaming to the edge. Good luck and see you in game!

Comment / feedback is appreciated.
Thanks for reading my guide.