Steel wins battles, gold wins wars!
Gold is the currency of DOTA 2. If you've watched any pro games, you realize how important gold income is. When two teams of equal skill level are going head to head, it's often the difference in gold earned that dictates the winner. But how does gold work? How do you efficiently earn and spend gold? This guide will answer those questions.
Reliable and Unreliable Gold
There are two types of gold in DOTA 2: reliable and unreliable. You earn reliable gold from hero kills and towers, but only if you didn't last hit the tower. (If you last hit the tower, you'll get 500~600 unreliable gold, as opposed to 200~260 reliable gold.)
You earn unreliable gold from everything else like creep kills. In addition, everyone also gets 1.25 gold/sec (5 gold/4 sec), which is also unreliable.
What's the difference? You lose gold when you die -- 30 times the level of your hero. So if you were level 10 and you died, you would have lost 300 gold. But you only lose your unreliable gold. So if you had less than 300 unreliable gold at the time, you'd just lose all of what unreliable gold you had!
What's the point?All this knowledge is more or less trivial. You'll want to kill creeps, towers, Roshan, heroes, and do it all without dying regardless. More gold is good. The point is when you're about to die, and you know it, spend your unreliable gold on something. (There is one exception to this rule; more on this later.) What do you buy? Well, that depends on how much unreliable gold you have. You can check how much unreliable gold you have by hovering your mouse over the Shop button as shown.
If you have around less than 300 unreliable gold, you want to buy one or two Town Portal scrolls. Conveniently enough, that is right to the right of your Shop button. You can also map a hotkey to buy it.
If you have more than unreliable 300 gold, that really depends. In general, you want to buy whatever you can afford that is on your quickbuy (also can be hotkeyed), but sometimes you may want to spend as little as possible if you're rushing big items like Radiance on Weaver.
When you shouldn't buy anything before dying: Towards the late game, especially if you are a very skill dependent hero like Atropos or Enigma who hasn't used his ultimate yet, your items will not matter as much. It's more important that you are there when the team fight happens.
In that case, if you are about to die, don't buy anything, and save for buy back. You having that extra Vitality Booster will mean nothing compared to disabling their hard carry for 4 seconds. You can see the buy back cost under the unreliable gold, so do some quick math, and/or plan ahead. Remember buy back has a cool down increases by a minute every 10 minutes.
How to farm quickly
If you want to be a godly carry, you have to learn to farm, because carries are very item dependent. It's simple as that. Here are my tips:
1) Learn to be apathetic about team battles until you get your core items: You're item dependent. If you don't have the items, you are just a dependency for your team to protect. Don't get me wrong, of course you need to help your team out, especially if you're only a semi-carry. Storm spirit for example should be getting most of his gold from his early-mid game ganks. But if you are a hard carry like Antimage, remember that even if your allies were smart enough to let you take the last hit, it's only 200+DyingHeroLevel*5 gold.
In the early-mid game, that's 260 gold at best. Then there's the time it took you to get to the fight or the Town Portal scroll you had to waste to get there... It's just not worth it. Until you know you can make a huge contribution and not die farm, farm, farm.
2) Don't die. If you're farming, you're going to be getting your gold from creeps, ie. unreliable gold. All the gold you earn is subject to be lost upon death. But how do you not die? Of course, the obvious tips are to encouarge your allies to ward your lane and watch the minimap. If your allies don't do it, do it yourself. You lose 210 gold if you die at level 7. A set of wards is 200 gold.
But equally important: have good map awareness. Even without wards, if you have good game sense, you can afford to farm without dying. How many enemy heroes are missing on the mini-map? If all 5 are missing, you should probably tower hug for a while. Don't be greedy. But what if only 2 heroes are missing? Then you have to think: Is their missing hero a jungler or a hard-carry as well? Keep farming. Are their missing heroes gankers with stuns? That's right, you should back off for a while. Play it safe.
3) Last hit, last hit, last hit: If you're serious about getting better at farming, do last hitting drills. It's not only important to know at what HP you should be attacking the creep, but to notice the change in the HP of the creep. Because that way, you can consider your hero's projectile speed (if you're ranged) and attack animation to guarantee that last hit.
Keep an eye on the ranged creep. It's by far the most substantial creep in the lane because it does piercing damage. To those who didn't play original DotA, I will just say it like this: the ranged creep does more damage to other creeps. Try to land your attacks immediately after the ranged creep's attack.
4)Lane and Map control: You want to dominate your lane early on so you can get easy farm. That means you ideally want a babysitter that can heal you, ward for you, and harass the enemy hero so you can have an easy time last hitting. And when the laning phase is over, you want to keep hop around the map using Town Portal scrolls. Read the enemy creeps' momentum and be there to farm them when a large cluster is about to reach your tower. Some heroes like Prophet and Morphling have abilities to help them teleport around the map to help with this even further.
5) Neutral creeps: When there are no lanes to farm, go neutral creep. Make sure you don't overextend yourself and get caught by a roaming Bounty Hunter at 100 HP because you barely finished off a strong camp. Again, wards and counterwarding helps out a great deal here.
6) Hero and Item abilities: Area of Effect spells help out a great deal when farming quickly but don't use it if you plan on farming that lane for a while. If you use Area of Effect spells, it will weaken the enemy creeps and push your lane. You want to stay on your side of the river, and close to your own tower. If you were at top lane farming a huge cluster of creeps and there's another one about to reach your bottom lane, then by all means!
Spam your spells, secure the gold, and teleport bottom to take them as well. If you are a carry that can benefit from attack speed, it isn't a bad idea to rush Hand of Midas as well. You'll have to weigh out the benefits between the extra gold and rushing your core items though. As Alchemist, Doom Bringer, and Bounty Hunter, you also have hero abilities that give you means to earn extra gold.
How to spend your gold
If you've read the section above, you sort of have an idea on how to spend your gold so that it complements your role in farming even more now. I will elaborate further in this section.
Starting items
Get stats and regen. Stats increase your damage to help with last hitting and increase your survivability to help you not die. Regen items like tango and salves heal you to help you stay in the lane even more. There are plenty of guides out there about this, so I won't go into too much details. But let me at least emphasize items you should get depending on your roles and heroes.
If you are a support, get a ward/courier.
If you are a squishy carry, get a stout shield. If you are a melee carry hero and suck at last hitting, get a quelling blade.
If you are a roaming ganker (without invisibility), get smoke.
Never get a magic stick first unless you know your lane opponent is going to cast a lot of spells, like warding Venomancer, Shadow Demon or Batrider!
Everything after that (Very situational items):
There are plenty of guides out there about what items you should buy for any particular hero. This guide isn't about restating what's already out there. Look -- you want to be a great DOTA player? You will only get good if you just follow guides and do whatever they say.
If you want to become great, you have to innovate. Read the status of your own game, and make your own decision. Think about what you and your team needs and adapt! Every game of DOTA is different, then surely not every game must be played the same way! Here are some unconventional item choices that can work on almost any hero, depending on the situation.
Orb of Venom: Sure, get it if you are getting Eye of Skadi. But if you're a melee hero that could benefit from a little bit of extra slow, this item is cheap and effective! At 350 gold, 12% is nothing to scoff at, considering Eye of Skadi slows by 30% and it costs 5750 gold!
Force Staff: It's core on certain intelligent carries. But this item is extremely versatile. You could force your allies out of Warlock's upheaval or Sand King's epicenter. You can push away Ursa before he dishes out a ton of damage, or push your allies away from him! And it provides an escape mechanism to any hero without one, while it doesn't have the disadvantage of blink dagger's 3 second cooldown after being attacked.
Veil of Discord: Get it if your team is heavy on burst nuke and starting to lose effectiveness in the late game.
Heaven's Halberd and Ghost Scepter: Why in the world is no one buying this item? If your opponents have a hard carry that relies on right clicking to do a ton of damage, get it! An Antimage that can't attack for 4 seconds during team battle might as well be stunned for 4 seconds! Same idea with Ghost Scepter, but be careful! If they have nukers, it can backfire on you!
Dagon: An item that everybody looks down on but if you're dominating as say, Tiny, who has great burst damage, it's not a bad idea. The enemy's Lina will be picked off before the team fight even happens. It's an item that helps you keep dominating, but it's not an item that you get to dominate.
Medallion of Courage: If your team's ganking line up relies heavily on physical damage, this is a nice addition. Just make sure you're not the one tower diving, because it will kill you as quickly as it will kill them.
Team oriented items:
Mekansm and Pipe of Insight: Look. In every game of DOTA, on every team, there better be a Mekansm. Communicate with your team and decide who'll get it. Don't fall in that scenario of "Lich why do you have a Headdress of Rejuvenation? I'm making Mekansm. Oh, well you can just make Pipe of Insight". Sure, Pipe is a great item as well. And in any decent game, there's bound to be some balance of heroes such that magic damage shield is useful. But my point is that you need to adapt. Get Mekansm, and get Pipe if it's necessary.
Urn of Shadows: Great for heroes that need the heal and mana regeneration, especially if they are going to be active in ganking during the early-mid game. But, like Mekansm and Pipe only get one per team! Why? If you don't know, Urn of Shadows gains a charge when an enemy hero dies near you. But if there are more than one Urns (on your team), only one of Urns gets the charge. And Urn without charges is just 2 Gauntlets of Strength and Sage's Mask taking up one slot. Hardly worth the gold.
Arcane Boots: This stacks so all 5 on your team could get it, but that would be redundant. You'll rarely need that much mana. You want it on a support hero that needs a bigger mana pool like Tidehunter.
Auras: Auras don't stack so, again, communicate and only get one per team. But also consider if you even need it in the first place. If your carry is Drow Ranger, she won't benefit from the life steal effect from Vladmir's Offering. If your team is heavy on nukes, then Ring of Basilius will be far useful and cheaper than Assault Cuirass. Or if the enemy team has squishy, physical DPS heroes, Shiva will cut down a significant chunk of their DPS as well as provide a great slow/nuke.
True Sight: Invisibility heroes are squishy, but can quickly spiral out of control (Bounty Hunter, Rikimaru). Don't let them. Buy detection early, and give them hell. Capitalize on the fact that they are weak early on and they'll never reach their strong point in the game.
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