21 Quick Tips

Here's 21 quick tips (some more obvious/common than others) to help improve basic pub gameplay.

1. If you are losing your lane, try ganking another lane. Helping another lane to win their lane, is often more useful than potentially losing your lane even more by dying again to heros with more gold/XP than you.
2. If you die in the laning phase, try TPing to a sidelane (the one you aren’t in) and get a gank off. Most pubbers won’t call miss after they kill someone, as it’s assumed that you’re just be walking back to lane. This is an ideal time to do tip 1.
3. Make sure you ping / say in chat which person you want to get in advanced while ganking. It’s best to go for someone you can actually kill, such as a lion over a clinkz (who can just invis away). You could also say something like “I stun first” to make sure you don’t stack your stuns.
4. If you’re level 1 jungling in a pub, chances are it means your safe lane is solo. It is your responsibility to make sure that your solo safe lane hero is doing fine. Lifestealer and axe for example, can get easy first blood by ganking at level 2/3. Lifestealer has one of the best level 1 slows in the game, while a net creep on an enchantress/chen is very strong early on. A gank from a jungler this early should get a kill like 95% of the time. I don’t care even if you’re an ursa or a lycan, you’re the reason that kid has to solo (most likely against two heroes), so take care of him.
5. If your mid is dying, even one death, try ganking mid for him. Shadow fiend for example is amazingly easy to gank early on, and helping your mid win back his lane can have a huge difference on the game. Just make sure you’re a hero who can gank, many carries can even do it.
6. If you’re a support who warded early game, try pinging the runes as soon as they spawn (or say in chat) to help your mid out. Similarly, if your mid is losing and the enemy mid has a bottle, try checking runes to help your mid out. Whether it be stopping that pudge from getting one, or making sure your rubick gets it.
7. If the enemy team has invis heros, buy dust. Even if you’re a carry, buy fucking dust. Often not killing an invis hero a few times early game due to no detection, can result in them raping mid game.
8. If you have a jungler on your team, and are making the danger lane hero solo, make sure that he’s going ok. Some heroes just get raped in that situation. Also, make sure that your tri lane rapes by having the jungler gank. Otherwise you can easily lose multiple lanes.
9. Don’t be a scrub. If you’re lion/lina, don’t ult to KS, you really should be trying to make sure your ult does 100% damage, not 10%. Death prophet and Necro aren’t really support heros, sure they might get mec, but don’t be a scrubling and rage at them for not warding just because they’re an int hero. Zeus and Batrider also need some farm to pew pew with.
10. Linken’s, Sange + Yasha, and Skadi are bad items. The majority of the time there are far better things to get. Morphling gets more out of ultimate orbs because he can morph his base strength to bring him back to his ideal HP pool so they're not that bad on him. You should only get S + Y on heroes that are easy to kite. Dragon Knight for example, has a frost dragon and a range attack, so doesn’t really get kited. While often on other heroes, manta is simply a better option. Skadi is also fucking expensive, and gives you great allround stats. But if you have that much farm, I swear something like a hex, heart, or butterfly would be better. Also, heaven’s halberd is actually a really good item, even on supports. It’s hilarious how awkward carries get when you disarm them. They just stand there half the time in a pool of omgawkies.
11. If it’s a guaranteed kill, like in a 4v1 situation, you really don’t need to ult for it. An axe ult for example, really isn’t necessary in that situation, and cancels the possibility of the carry getting the gold from the kill.
12. If the enemy team is more reliant on their ultimates to win fights, like an epicenter or ravage, Then try pushing when the ults are down (and communicate in chat about ults used). You could lose a team fight 15 mins in, but still be able to push towers as soon as you respawn, just because the enemy doesn’t have serpent wards or echoslam to take you on in a 5 v 5. Also, while pushing, try and let the carry get the last hit on the tower.
13. Don’t be a pussy. So many pub players, especially invis heroes, are non stop pussies. It’s also better that you start the fight with a BANG rather than the enemy. A pudge hooking on of your teammate gives them the advantage, same with that sexy Clockwerk hook.
14. Generally melee carries require boosted HP/Mana regen. So as their first item they get vlads or Battlefury. Often vlads isn’t a good first item, you’re probably better off just getting the regen part and then moving on, or going down other routes. Urn, soulring and medallion are all pretty good items (depends on the hero on what to get), such as on Kunkka.
15. Please learn when to make the enemy ‘invulnerable’, and when not to. So many scrub nubs don’t know when’s a good time to disrupt someone, or banish/ethereal form them, cyclone/euls them. So many invokers just chuck out tornados without actually thinking about how much damage it will stop the enemy from getting (not to mention purge them). So frustrating playing with people who don’t know when to invul the enemy.
16. You can share most regen items, even HP rings, be nice in the laning phase and it can help you win the lane. Full mana with perseverance? Here, borrow my void stone you sexy mana deprived disruptor, I’d rather you have mana to play around with right now, than me with that +10 damage. Just make sure the person you give it to knows that you have done so, so they know to give it back.
17. Getting a quelling blade against a Nature’s Prophet, even on ranged heroes, is really good if you can spare the slot (such as a support). Same goes for an orb of venom on a melee support (op as fuck on omniknight btw)
18. MoM makes you take 30% extra damage. It’s a very aggressive item to get and can easily make your hero just melt. Rushing MoM on any hero makes them so fucking squishy early game.
19. Say in chat early on if you’re getting an urn, and make sure you keep your eye on on low HP allies. Urn them if they’re low, they’ve probably urned it.
20. If you want mid, call it. Same goes for calling jungle (do this early). He who calls, gets it. Just don’t be a scrub and call solo mid as someone like omniknight.
21. Abide by basic dota etiquette. If someone is at a jungle camp, it’s their camp. Find your own. If someone on your team has stacked ancients for themselves, don’t be a cunt and steal them all. (Although sometimes it’s wrong for them to hog the ancients, they can’t always expect to get them). Check your allies bottle’s before taking a rune, same goes for HP/Mana if it’s a regen rune. Don’t intentionally KS (fuck you noob Zeuses), especially if you’re not a carry, or if you’re KSing another carry. It’s fairly scrubby to have 3 carries who all save their nuke for the kill in a 3v1 scenario.... Here's looking at you doom bringer.

I’m sure some people won’t like some of my points, such as dissing linken’s sphere. But this is just how I feel after over 1400 games of Dota 2. I'm zzzzz, and this was 21 tips; hope you learnt something, even if you don't agree with it all.