Dota 2 Esports

One game of Dota 2 usually takes 20-70 minutes. During the battle, players pick heroes that grow in power over each game. Players level up characters by gaining exp points and leveling up, as well as acquire gold to purchase ingame items.

On each of the teams, some players focus on leveling up and farming best items in the game, known as “carry” players, while others focus on supporting roles and strategic gaming known as “support” players. This all together underlines the game dynamics, resulting in super competitive and exciting esports game with one of the largest prize pools.

Just like many other MOBA games such as League of Legends, Dota 2 has its own bu very similar game composition. Each player has its own role based on the characters they pick. Below is the breakdown of each of the roles in Dota 2:

• Carry – Is farming in the safe zones. They need the most exp and gold to grow stronger towards the end of the game. They are known to be the end game characters that can change the course from loss to victory in a matter of seconds.
• Mid – solo hero that gets the fastest levels and gold, can take over a game early.
• Offlane – These heroes take a stand in the dangerous lane with barely any farming or levelling. It is similar to the solo lane/mid lane.
• Support – Support usually makes supports other players on the map by helping middle lane to secure the runes. These characters can be dedicated to support the team, where they will cast defensive spells.

Dota 2 Gaming Style

Dota 2 has three core principles to win the game known as pushing, farming and ganking.

• Pushing - refers to pushing the game forward. It may sound simple but can become a pain in the neck. Taking and destroying towers is a form of pushing, it requires a lot of real time strategizing, as waiting too little will kill your character and waiting too long will give more chances to enemy teams. Sometimes both teams will be pushing at the same time, creating unpredictable situations that make Dota 2 a fantastic esports game to watch.
• Farming - known as a setback to kill creeps, collect gold and exp to buy more items and level up before making the next move.
• Ganking - is when two or more heroes gang up against enemies. Teams have to collaborate and quickly react together to create new ganking opportunities.

Dota 2 Buildings

As heroes progress along the map, they will face a number of towers that will fire a solid and strong damage. These towers/building control the progress of the game (to an extent). Teams need to destroy one tower before attacking the next one, as they progress to the base. Teams can push as far as the next tower before they can reach the base and destroy it.

At the end of the lane, after all the towers are destroyed, each lane has barracks which spawn the creeps. Destroying these barracks leads to less creeps, increasing the chances to win the game. When team destroys all three barracks, they are able to spawn mega-creeps with increased damage. It's very rare to see a team win once they lost all three barracks.

Dota 2 Roshan

In the middle of the map, in the “Rosh Pit”, players will find Roshan, a powerful boss that requires team game to kill but as a reward, Roshan drops the Aegis of the Immortal, an item that gives revival abilities for a period of time. After the kill, Roshan spawns somewhere between 8-11 minutes and after the third kill, Roshan drops “cheese”, an item that can restore large amounts of hit points (HP) and mana points (MP). Rosh Pit is a place where you would usually find a lot of ganks and deadly battles. It's one of the fun moments in the later game, for players, streamers and spectators!

Runes

Dota 2 has a river flowing from top left to bottom right corners of the map. When around river, players are particularly vulnerable due to limited vision and very little escape routes. However, every 2 minutes special runes spawn on either corner of the river. Runes can contain gold and experience points as well as strong empowering buffs.

Rankings

Dota 2 uses Matchmaking Rating system (MMR) implemented by Valve in 2013. Ranked matches are usually played by competitive esports players that are equally matched based on ranking system.

Dota 2 utilises ratings that provide access to skills that are individual to each player. The rating rises and falls based on the games won or lost.

Newcomers can’t participate in ranked matches. They have to start off with unranked games before proceeding to the ranked gaming. This is why competitive matches are usually played by competitive esports players.

Dotas’ rating system comes with 7 ranks in each of the game modes. Each rank contains its own 5-star ranking system. Once players progress through five stars, they can move up the ranking. The final rank is Divine rank and is attributed to elite players of Dota 2, where the best players can participate in the World MMR Leaderboards.