How a match actually works.
A game runs about forty minutes. It is not forty minutes of fighting — it is three fairly distinct phases, and most of the confusion about Dota comes from not knowing which one you are in.
The five positions
Teams number their roles one to five. The number is really about how much of the team's gold that player is expected to take.
| Position | Usually called | Job |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Safe lane carry | Takes the most farm. Weak early, decides the game late. |
| 2 | Mid | Solo lane, levels fastest, expected to show up in other lanes first. |
| 3 | Off lane | Plays in the hardest lane. Usually tanky, starts the fights. |
| 4 | Roaming support | Moves around the map making other lanes go wrong for the enemy. |
| 5 | Hard support | Takes the least gold. Buys the wards and keeps the carry alive. |
The three phases
-
Laning — roughly the first ten minutes
Heroes stand in their lanes and kill the small creatures that walk down them. Landing the last hit on one gives gold, and denying your own gives the enemy less. It looks passive and it is where most games are decided. -
Mid game — ten to thirty minutes
Towers start falling and the map opens up. Teams group to take objectives, fight over the Roshan pit, and try to catch people out of position. The supports stop farming entirely and start making space. -
Late game — thirty minutes onwards
The carries have their items, and one lost fight can end the match. Play gets slower and more careful: teams take twenty seconds to decide something they would have done instantly at minute twelve.
Four things that confuse everyone at first
Denying
You can kill your own creeps to stop the enemy getting the gold. Almost no other game in the genre lets you do this, and it is a large part of why laning looks so strange from the outside.
Losing gold on death
Dying costs you gold as well as time. An expensive hero dying badly is a real setback, not just a walk back to lane.
The courier
Items are bought from the base and flown out by a shared courier. You do not go home to shop, so the shop is always open and never convenient.
Roshan
A neutral monster in a pit by the river. Killing it drops an item that revives the hero who carries it, which makes the pit the most fought over twenty metres on the map.