Dota 2 Guides

How To Play The Map Featuring Team Falcons

We hear a lot in professional Dota 2 about the concept of "keeping the lanes pushed in",but why do people do that, most people don't really know or understand the idea behind it. As a viewer sometimes it's hard to recognize what it means, so let me try to explain it in simple terms. So every 30 seconds creeps will spawn, and it's the duty of X hero to clear the creeps. This X hero could be any of the 5 roles. But ideally a hero that is able to deal with waves easily e.g Pangolier would be much better to push out a wave because of his 2 spells, compared to a hero like Venge. As it will take Pangolier significantly less time compared to Venge to deal with creeps.

By pushing out each lane we achieve a specific advantage apart from just pressuring the tower:

What happens when you kill a creep wave? What do you gain?

Everything that happens on the map, IS NOT RANDOM, all of it is a chain emerged from shoving waves and tp usage. If you are able to understand these two things, you will understand where each and every hero should be placed on the map as if it's a game of chess. Where you are supposed to place your own self (you are a piece on the board, the board is the dota map), these moves are not random.

Let's discuss the 3rd point above: which is Tower Damage/Tower Kill, every tower has its own importance in terms of map control.

Mid Tower: After taking mid tower, you get have an easier time securing power runes because the lane that you pushed on mid after mid tower, is now going to go into the enemy's tier 2 tower. If creeps are shoved all the way back to enemy tier 2, they will not be able to contest you for the power runes, as they will be spotted coming to runes, if they do come they will lose farm.

Bottom Tower for Dire, Top Tower for Radiant [Offlane Tower]: Gives you control of Rosh area, because people cannot use TPs to fight for Rosh, they have to walk from tier 2 tower, also it kind of gives you control of the inner ancients but still it doesn't really help that much. Only for Rosh. However, Tier 2 offlane, tower will give you access to enemy tormentor.

Safelane Tower: After taking the offlane tower, certain camps will be much easier to access, which is going to be the small camp and hard camp for dire.
Radiant:

[ TEAM FALCONS VS GAIMIN FINAL QUICK RECAP ]

So why do I say it's not easy for Dire to access the small camp of Radiant, because something like this can happen,

As soon as Centaur walks to the small camp, Timber instantly TPs, this shows how important it is to have a tower, before you try to go for small camp, it is like literally 1 second of a mistake, and it was punished by Falcons.

Another reason why this worked is that even though Timber went back to base, he did not use his Teleport. This shows the importance of not TPing back to lane, as this opportunity popped up and he was able to find an important kill to comeback in the game a little bit, as his own matchup vs OD was hard.

Let's talk about another concept that is called Mirroring, this also happens in other games like chess, where when the opposing player trades a piece with you, knight for knight or pawn for pawn, similarly in Dota, when people are ganking your carry, it isn't always wise to TP as 4 heroes to try to help him, rather go together and kill the enemy carry, in this way the game remains balanced.

Look at this part of the game .

Explanation:

Quinn quickly shoves mid lane, so he can smoke with his team, walks top because Axe has been free farming, to try to punish him. Even though Axe is dying, Team Falcons do not respond to top lane. What they do instead is start pinging bottom lane. Crystal Maiden tries to catch Centaur but he retreats towards his ancient camp, because he realizes that none of the supports are showing top to help, which means they are moving bottom, to try to kill him. As soon as Outworld Devourer TPs mid to kill Timbersaw, Team Falcons instantly use this opportunity to dive Centaur and kill him, which helps them gain a huge advantage, and throughout the entire fight bottom, due to Quinn having no teleport, as he exhausted it on Mid, there was no need for them to take this fight on bottom Quinn on Outworld Devourer without having any choice, makes the best decision which is to pressure Mid Tower.

Solution for Gaimin:

Instead they could've mirrored this move made by Team Falcons, and try to kill Ammar again on top-lane, because Quinn could connect top again after pushing the lane.

So every move that is made on the chess board ends up having some sort of effect on the rest of the game, if of course you make an active move, which means to smoke up and go somewhere. A reactive move means how Dyracho just TPed bottom to try to help Centaur live. Try to avoid reactive moves in your pubs and you will instantly see a lot of success, try to have some meaning even if you are reacting, you can't be too late when you are trying to react otherwise you will miss the window for the play and it won't work. Each play has a time limit.

Let me show you another example of time factor when it comes to making a move .

Explanation:

In this play Cr1t dies top, realizes DK is hitting level 6 and clock is still showing on his lane, which means for the 6-minute rune he can be useful, and even help DK take the tower. So both him and Sneyking are already in the river at 5:40, compared to Gaimin Sups who are showing on lanes. So no matter what they do on Gaimin there is no way, they can secure the runes now but they still reactively show up mid, which costs Tofu to use his TP back to base, which then allows the Weaver to free farm bottom, because he is in a 1v1 now, and at the same time, Clockwork also walks mid too late giving ATF a free minute or two against the Clinkz where he can free farm.

Solution For Gaimin:

Even after Gaimin's reactive move to mid, they lose whatever they wanted to protect i.e. Mid Tower and Power Runes, so a better play for them would be to mirror this pressure onto some side lanes, and play for the enemy experience rune, it would be better for Willow to just go top, with gates and try to kill Slardar and pressure top side, because that is the only play that has a higher chance of working, as soon as the Falcons supports would react to this top lane aggression, they could then respond back to mid and defend the tower.

So I hope this gives you some idea of how pros think, and to use this in pubs be mindful of how you TP on lanes, and realize that each tower in the game gives you some sort of control on the map, as supports it's your job to control these areas, like in the video above, when Cr1t was walking to mid-lane he placed a ward on the camp, to be able to see any rotations from enemy supports or Lesh, because with this vision they can instantly punish any hero that shows up on the ward.

So through this post I tried to explain rotations for both the cores, you can use this concept and watch more replays, and see why Skiter uses gates so much or how carry players are rotating, (probably because their camps are being controlled by wards or their towers have fallen).

Let me know in the comments below what else you would like to me to cover, or stuff that you struggle with.

https://discord.gg/v76YbxrPW8s

And discord id: sanityyyyyy