How to Play Dota 2

Dota 2 has a ton of different roles and heroes that fill those roles. It can get pretty hard for newcomers to wrap their heads around it. I'm going to explain what each role does and give beginners some recommended heroes to get started with.

1. The Roles

Dota 2 has five different roles, all in 5 different positions. They're called the Hard Support, Soft Support, Offlane, Mid, and Safe Lane.

The Hard Support supports the safe lane player during the laning stage to make sure that their carry can safely last hit and scale while simultaneously preventing the enemy laner from farming. They help deny the enemy's creeps and also help control the lane and stack up jungle creeps for their carries. If they're played well, they let their whole team safely take gold and Exp. However, they sacrifice so much doing so that they tend to be weak. 

While that may not appeal to many players, this role is absolutely crucial to a team's success.

The Soft Support hands out with the offlaner in the offline. While the hard support exists to support the team, your job is to ruin the other team's carry's life. You'll be working with the offlaner to make sure that the enemy carry can't scale, and also roam around the map to gank the enemy lanes.

The Offlane's job is to secure CS and deny the enemy as much as possible and do your best to hold the enemy's safe lane down. You powerspike much earlier and, if you coordinate with the soft support well, can set the enemy quite a bit back. However, you also have to know when to play safe as you're very often alone.

The Mid's job is to beat the enemy midlaner. The mid lane is very vulnerable to ganks on both sides, as you can't run into the jungle and you're alone. The upside is you're not sharing  lane Exp, meaning you scale much faster.

The Safe Lane's job is to simply scale. You need to farm as efficiently as you can manage to win the game and reach your late game and carry your team as hard as possible. Take few risks as you are weak early game. Do note that if your team is playing well, they will be doing their best to support you.

2. Best beginner heroes

Before we start, do note that if you want to learn how to play these heroes, it's best to look up guides for each of them using websites or in game.

A good hard support is the Lich. The Lich has enough raw damage in his kit to stay relevant for a while despite not getting gold, and does enough damage to springboard his safe lane into relevance. Other good hard supports are Witch Doctor or Lion.

A good soft support is the Spirit Breaker. This character's design makes him useful without items and is fantastic at smashing melee enemies and running across the whole map to gank the enemies. This makes him perfect for soft supporting. You can also try the Bounty Hunter or the Undying.

Bristleback is a good beginner offlaner, as his tankiness makes him much more forgiving to play and his quill spray makes farming easy. Other alternatives are the Wrati King and Abaddon.

A good safe lane carry is Luna, as unlike many other safe lanes, you can actively contribute from earlier in the game.  Other good alternatives are Viper and Juggernaut.

A good mid lane to start off with is Sniper, as his insane range lets you play much safer than many other heroes. Another fantastic one is Zeus and Queen of Pain.