I thought I would share some of my favorite resources for learning how to play Dota 2. I’ve done a fair amount of research at this point, and I hope these links will be useful to beginner players like myself.
I think the best primer on the strategic elements of Dota 2 remains Kevin Godec’s “Welcome to Dota, you suck”. It’s hard for someone who has never played the game to understand it. However, it is contains so much important information.
This is a series that I can’t recommend enough.
Day9 is an ex-Starcraft player who is being taught Dota 2 from the famous Purge. This series is definitely for people who have a reasonable mechanical understanding of RTS / Dota, and want to learn the theory. Day9 is already 2.2k MMR at the start of the series.
This is definitely one of my favorite resources, and probably the best resource for understanding how people really play each hero. One of the most useful aspects is looking at popular skill builds and item choices. The hero “guides” are generated out of statistical analysis of what players actually do. You can also look at the builds of players in high skill brackets.
Special mention goes to this list of heroes that keeps me up at night. I don’t understand how can Icefrog allow some heroes at high skill brackets to have 42% (or 58%) win rates!?
This is a good resource for looking at hero abilities. One thing that is good about this site is that also tracks the changes over time (ability and stats changelog). You can get a sense of which heroes are getting buffed over time. Also good for winning Dota trivia contests.
Liquipedia is the wiki of Team Liquid. They list out every premier professional game. They also give you the direct links to the games themselves. Highly recommended if you are following the professional games.
These are some fun videos to have a laugh at all the crazy mechanics that can happen in Dota. It’s also a great way to understand the potential of each hero.
I think this is a high quality video that also takes you through some of the funny things that happen as a player, including dealing with toxic players, trying to climb MMR, and commenting on fads that are happening in Dota (like jungle LC).
If you have additional suggestions for useful Dota 2 resources, please write to pk at pkaction dot com.