Top 15 Tips to Win Ranked Games in Dota 2

Hello everyone. My name is Warren and today I will tell you the top 15 tips that you can follow to win ranked games in Dota 2. Let’s get started right away. 

Basic Dota 2 key points

First, you have to understand the basic key points of winning a Dota 2 game for that you have to destroy the enemy Ancient, to do that keep in mind the following points. 

1- Winning Fights 

2- Outfarm enemies or more resources than your enemies

3- Map control

Objective Gaming

Always remember that you are fighting for the Ancient, not for the kills. You don’t have to dive into the enemy base when not required just take down the tower and move back safely or teleport out. After every successful fight, communicate with your team to take the towers or the barracks just don’t play passively else you are giving them a chance to win.

Roles in the Game

  • Position 1  Carry

You have to become the top net-worth hero in the game by taking most of the farm safely to do that you have to play greedy in terms of taking the farm and you have to be selfish in terms of not helping your team. The more deaths you have playing Position 1 the more chances you will lose the game, avoid dying, and leave the rest to the supports. 

Tip: To get better at playing, always look after the most stable and easy carry to play with. The preference is to play Juggernaut for being the most beginner-friendly hero.

  • Position 2  Semi- Carry

 You need to farm some of the basic items and once you hit your level 6, try to move into another lane, and force some aggressive ganks to make a space for your position 1 carry. You should keep in mind one thing you are the playmaker for your team as you have the experience advantage as compared to your ally. 

  • Position 3 Offlane

The Hardest lane. You have to play with your teammates and participate in all possible fights to secure map control. Buy the utility items your team needs, and make space for your positions 1 & 2 in bad scenarios. Stomp your lane to win almost 70% of the game.

  • Position 4 Soft Support

A combination of a utility core and support. Depending on the hero, you need to stay active in the laning stage and help out in different lanes. Help out with support if needed, but be a little greedier than the hard support and try to get some key items like Orchid, Aghanim’s, and Blink Dagger that will increase your impact in the fights.

Tip: looking for the best position 4 hero to play with? Nature’s Prophet is the best option currently in the latest Dota 2 patch, to learn playing NP the guide is mentioned here in detail

  • Position 5 Hard Support

Your main join is to babysit the Position 1 carry and make sure he has a good start by getting him kills and also saving him in terms of healing in the lane. You also need a vision in the area where your main cores are farming, secure the map with sentries, and make sure that the enemy has no vision. Dying is not a big deal for your cores try not to give so many deaths just trade hits in the lane and harass as much as you can.

Understand your role in fights

  • Frontliner

 You are a tanky hero who stays on the front and keeps attention on the fights, your job is to stay in the front always tanking all the spells and hits, making your other team make the plays.

Don’t play too defensively else enemies will ignore you and kill your teammates first.

  • Damage Dealer 

Your job is to follow up in the game after a good initiation, no need to jump early as once you die with the bad positioning, there will be higher chances of losing a fight and eventually losing the match.

  • Initiator

Your job is to look for a good opportunity to start a fight. Don’t show yourself as you are the main target of the enemy team always stay in the fog for better initiation.

  • Counter Initiator

Hero with a big team fight ability. Your job is to wait for the fight to happen. Once the enemy team commits and ideally clumps up, you jump in and get a multi-hero disable.

  • Support with heal

The support with defending/saving items and spells who stays behind the cores, saving them from stuns/ disables, and healing the cores. Your positioning matters as long as you won’t let your core die you eventually are the MVP of the game.

How to create space

  • Push waves

This provides vision and forces your opponents to react (push back the waves) and reveal their position, making it much easier/safer for your cores to farm.

  • Fight away from carry

This moves attention away from the farming carry, and even if the fight itself isn’t successful, the carry has free space and time to just hit creeps.

  • Fight in enemy territory

This way you are taking away the space of the opponent’s farming cores.

Win the vision gaming

To outplay enemies you need information on the map and information comes from a vision that whether enemies are in smoke or they are doing Roshan or farming at the spots where you can simply kill them.

Types of Vision you need

  • Offensive

Aggressive wards are required when you need to smoke gank them and want to take the map control and the best part is you can easily identify smoke gank by the enemy team. 

  • Defensive

Defensive wards are required when you want to play safe or to farm safely, these wards are required when enemies are being aggressive.

Understand dangerous and safe areas

Which areas are safe to farm and which aren’t changes throughout the game? For example, during the early laning stage, your safe lane and your jungle are the safest places to farm. After the lane progresses, it’s very common for the enemy team to try to move into your jungle and safe lane to take control of that area. At this point, the T1 safe lane tower becomes one of the most dangerous locations on the map.

Use the map tactics

The map tactics are crucial when it comes to fighting and ganking:

  • High ground

Don’t walk high ground without vision if the dangerous enemies are alive you are going to die. Try to avoid team fights where you are the one pushing onto a high ground without vision it’s impossible when you’re pushing the enemy base, but easy to avoid in most other situations. Use Observer Wards to make your life easier.

  • Watchers

 Mostly players ignore the watcher as far as I observe but this is like a mini ward from where you can identify the position and get a little information for ganking down the enemies.

Important strategic areas

The most important places on the map are the map features (choke points, ramps, high grounds, etc.) leading to important resources – Roshan, Ancients, farm triangle, outposts, runes, etc; Make sure to think about those areas if you are the one warding or the one making map movement calls.

Farm distribution

The resources and space you have on the map are limited and to secure an advantage, you need to realize which hero needs to farm the most at what point. You need to think about the resource gain for your whole team and how to optimize it, not only for your hero.

This usually means creating space and protecting your farming cores. Sometimes, it might mean allowing a support/utility hero to take some safe space to farm an important item like a Blink Dagger, etc.

Finish your game ASAP

Win or lose can be predicted in the middle game but once the game goes on longer the chances of making mistakes and getting punished is very high. The single best tactical tip you need is to try to get objectives after every successful fight.

5 men Dota is important

You maximize your fighting strength by sticking as 5 for team fights and pushing the lanes sometimes sticking as 5 men can win you a game depending upon the heroes you have. Now a days 5 man Dota is way stronger. 

Split-Farming (Rat Dota)

The goal is to utilize all available resources on the map. The advantage is that you are growing to have a very fast farm. The big disadvantage is that you are vulnerable to fights because you’re always solo. This means you need to avoid fights as much as possible.

Bait your enemies 

The art of baiting the enemy team into taking a winning fight. The best way to perform a bait is to leave one hero visible in a location where it seems weak (usually pushing out a lane alone) and to hide the rest of the team (or part of it) nearby in the fog of war (or even better if smoked) so that the whole team can respond once the enemies initiate on the weak target.

Buying a Dota 2 boosting  

If you are stuck in a low bracket where you perform a lot well and due to the teammates you lose because of their picks in the game, toxic behavior and not understanding your gameplay. The frustration is real and makes sense, In that case, you should buy Dota 2 boosting from the best service at the best rates to save you time in achieving the desired MMR as it can be a quicker way to reach higher without grinding through numerous games.