The way that Dota is being played right now requires 2 players in their individual side lanes to work together in order to come out ahead. One of the best ways to gain an advantage in lane is understanding how to manipulate waves through pulling creeps. Today, we discuss pulling to manage to the lane.

Today, we are going to look at the top tier offlaners in the current patch and the reasons they are so popular and successful. Offlane is historically the role that requires the most flexibility, and this is heavily emphasized in the current patch, with a variety of heroes with very different playstyles.

We can learn a lot about the game from studying successful pro players, such as those on Team Secret. Today, let's breakdown what characteristics make these players so successful in their respective positions.

Whenever there is a Tier list, there is always a question of what level of play it is based on. After all, heroes can be more or less powerful, depending on where they are played. That said, we firmly believe that while blindly copying the professional scene meta and builds is not the best idea for pubs, looking at it for inspiration is. Today, we would like to discuss the most popular and successful support heroes of the recent tournaments and figure out why exactly they are good.

In our previous post, we touched on the idea of smart economy distribution. Carries still farming after getting six slots, while their supports are starving for any item is only one part of the problem, however. Today we would like to look at some of the late-game options and discuss when players should get them, from a perspective of a core hero.

This is the final part of our series dedicated to constructing frameworks for decision-making at different stages of the game. Today we are going to concentrate on the Late Game. Not every game goes late and in most cases, the outcome of the match is decided much earlier. Because of this, many inexperienced players really struggle with making correct choices at this stage. We will not be able to solve the problem outright — this mostly requires in-game experience, but we can help with identifying things to pay extra attention to.

Phoenix has received several nerfs over the last few patches. It has had its base damage, strength and intelligence gain reduced and has received higher cooldowns on its Sun Ray and higher mana cost on its Fire Spirits. Overall, it seems like the hero has been significantly nerfed, but in reality, the hero is still one of the better supports in this slower metagame. in this article, we will explore how to succeed with this support at different points in the game and how this hero can take advantage of this slower metagame.

We are continuing our series on Analyzing Game State, arriving at the midgame, probably the most important period of the game. This is when your team composition usually has the means to start executing the plan for the game and this is when the vast majority of games are decided. So what do you keep an eye on and what sort of thing should you think about during the midgame?

Today, we would like to discuss yet another victim of players adhering to professional builds too much — Venomancer. The hero gained his initial popularity in SEA, but was soon adopted across the regions as one of the more specific offlaners. Recent nerfs do not seem to stop him, yet there are certain habits worth discussing and, perhaps, re-learning.