This guide helps Dota 2 beginners have an insight into how roles are defined in Dota 2 and which heroes you should pick basing on their types to fit the roles, to maximize your team’s winning chance.
A new ranked season of Dota 2 has just kicked off. While everyone is trying hard to win, some just want to see the world burn by being a real burden, failing their teammates.
Those distressing situations where support heroes play like a carry, take all the last hits, wouldn’t support their teammates as they are supposed to; gankers stay in lane and farm all the time, make no impact on enemy team, etc could probably be caused by the fact that those players don’t actually know their real roles, what are the objectives of each role, or their heroes are not fit to the roles they wanted.
The farm priority (from highest, 1 to lowest, 5) answers the question of which role one player is taking, each role basing on the number is also named properly: 1 – Hard carry, 2 – Semi-carry, 3 – Offlaner, 4 – Greedy support, 5 – Hard support. On knowing that, the player then proceeds on picking the right hero to do the job.
Hard carry (1)
This is the role that is deemed to take all the farm. Becoming the highest networth hero in the game to be able to carry the team to victory should be this role’s main goal. Getting started, a hard carry hero maybe weak, vulnerable and unable to make any significant impact on enemy heroes but thanks to the farm, hence the experience and items, it gets, it will become much stronger and more reliable towards late game. In most scenarios, hard carries are the key to victory in Dota 2 games.
Heroes to pick for Hard carry role: Anti-Mage, Faceless Void, Medusa, Phantom Assassin, Phantom Lancer, Spectre, Terrorblade ….
Semi-carry/Mid (2)
This role has the 2nd highest farm priority and often takes mid lane. Semi-carry tends to stay in mid lane alone to get as much experience as possible to quickly reach to high levels to be the team’s trump card in mid game. This role’s main objectives may vary depending on the team’s strategy but usually it’s ganking enemy heroes from the beginning of mid game or maybe sooner if they could farm well earlier.
Heroes to pick for Semi-carry role: Dragon Knight, Lina, Mirana, Puck, Queen of Pain, Shadow Fiend, Outworld Devourer, ….
Offlaner (3)
The third core hero of the team often has ablities with escape mechanism in order to survive in the hard lane which is, in most cases, packed with enemy supports. Due to the lane’s natural disadvantage, offlaner often gets ganked by enemy team. Offlaners are often tanky heroes or the initiator type ones that are good for team fights.
Heroes to pick for Offlaner role: Batrider, Clockwerk, Dark Seer, Enchantress, Tidehunter, Underlord, ….
Greedy support (4)
If a carry with lower farm priority is called semi-carry then this support with the 4th position on the farm priority scale maybe called a semi-support. The role’s main objectives is party supporting and partly helping its team with other tasks like harassing enemy heroes, early ganking and for that it is often geared with disables, crowd control abilities.
Heroes to pick for Greedy support role: Earthshaker, Nightstalker, Sandking, Monkey King, ….
Hard support (5)
Hard supports are the “early game carries”. The role’s main objectives include buying support items like courier, Smoke of Deceit, warding, dewarding, stacking neutral creep camps, staying in lane all the time to protect the team’s carry if needed, or even dying for the carry’s sake. All of that are hard but much needed work for the team, not just in early game but also mid and late game.
Heroes to pick for Hard support role: Crystal Maiden, Bane, Disruptor, Lich ….
Dota 2 is a team game and every role is the same in terms of importance. Having low farm priority doesn’t mean that you are less important than any other role. Hope that this article gives you a clearer vision towards Dota 2’s roles. Don’t hesitate making your comments below on this topic.
