Secret Concepts for Dota 2 Carry to Raise Your MMR

The carry role only has two objectives to optimize. When you are not in teamfight, farm as much as possible. When you are in teamfight, deal as much damage as possible. In this post, we focus on the farming aspect.

Laning phase

Maintaining lane equilibrium

With 1 hour of practice, most people can get more than 80% of last hits in a free, uncontested lane. The problem, of course, is that the enemy offlaners won’t leave you alone. The key to maximize your last hits is to minimize this disruption.

You minimize the offlaner’ disruption by starving them of experience. This is because offlane heroes tend to be significantly more powerful with levels. For example, Axe level 3 is much stronger than Axe level 1, thanks to 2 levels in spins and 1 level in call.¹ In contrast, carries scale with items, and thus tend not to have a power spike with early levels. For example, Anti-Mage level 3 and Anti-Mage level 1 are fundamentally the same. Therefore, if Axe and Anti-Mage are both level 3, Axe can disrupt Anti-Mage a lot more than if both are level 1.

You starve the offlaner of experience by maintaining the lane equilibrium. Never hit the enemy creeps except for last hitting! If you hit the enemy creeps once, also hit your own creeps once so that the lane equilibrium is not disrupted. Ideally, you want the lane equilibrium right outside of your tower range. This position lets you run back to your tower in case of ganks, while requiring the enemy offlaner to be far away from his tower’s protection.

Since the offlaner will inevitably mess with the lane, you need to know how to not only maintain but also dictate the equilibrium. The most important factor is denying the ranged creep. In each creep wave, the ranged creep deals a lot more damage than the melee. If a ranged creep survive, your subsequent waves will deal slightly more damage, causing yet another ranged creep to survive. In only 2 or 3 waves, the lane equilibrium will spiral out of control this way, pushing under the enemy tower. We can’t allow the offlaner to get experience under the protection of his tower like that.

BSJ explains in this segment how to deny your ranged creep by manipulating creep aggro.

If the lane equilibrium is already spiraling out of control, tell your support to stack/pull, or chain pull. By doing so, you effectively remove one of your creep wave so that the equilibrium resets to its original position at the beginning of the game.

Note that maintaining the lane equilibrium is more important than getting a kill! In this coaching session, BSJ walks through an example of how killing the offlaner makes the lane worse by messing up the equilibrium.

Against a tough lane

If you face a tough lane, either solo or dual, you can’t freely dictate the lane equilibrium as above. (Indeed, if the enemy offlaner is not zoned out by your support, he has exactly the same toolkit as you do to manipulate the lane equilibrium.) In this case, you can’t stop the offlaners from getting farm and experience. Instead, focus on getting your own farm, using creep aggro to draw enemy creeps towards you, making it easier to last hit. (Nothing can stop you from doing this because the enemy can’t aggro his own creeps.) BSJ explains how to:

Summary

Maintain lane equilibrium!

• Never hit enemy creeps except for last hitting
• Deny your creeps, especially your ranged creeps
• Ask your support to pull if lane equilibrium is out of control

Extension: Harassing the offlaner

The next level in laning skill is harassing the offlaner while still maintaining your farm priority. At first glance this seems impossible: harassing the offlaner means leaving the creeps and missing last hits. Worse, it means drawing the enemy creeps aggro, leaving your creeps alive and pushing the lane. How is it possible to do both at the same time?

The solution to missing last hits is, once again, to deny your ranged creep. Since your ranged creep is the main source of damage, the enemy creeps won’t die as fast once it’s dead. This gives you more time away from the creeps to harass the offlaner.

The solution to maintaining lane the equilibrium is to attack your creeps as soon as they are in deny range. This way, the equilibrium is always slightly pushing towards your tower. When you harass the offlaner and cause the lane to push in the opposite direction, the equilibrium is still maintained.

Midgame

Destroying the enemy safelane tier 1

At the end of your laning phase, the key objective is to destroy the enemy safelane tier 1 tower. (This will require you to move to your offlane.) Destroying this tower opens up the enemy jungle and safelane, which counterintuitively is a much safer place for you to farm than your own jungle and safelane. BSJ explains why.

TL;DW: When you are farming the enemy safelane, you can spot all incoming ganks with only two wards. You can’t do this when farming your safelane.

To get the enemy tower, you need to maintain a lead over the enemies. This is why carries never jump straight to farming items (e.g. midas, battle fury) even with a good start. Instead, they always build early items (e.g. wands, aquila) to keep themselves ahead.

Farming pattern

In the mid game, the limiting factor to your farm is map control. Indeed, with some items and levels, farming is no longer about whether you can kill creep fast enough, but about whether you can do it safe enough.

To gain map control, the priority list in your farming pattern should always be: tower > Roshan > lane creep > neutral creep. Destroying enemy tower and Roshan is obvious. Without tower, enemies can’t TP in to stop you from farming. With Aegis, you can take more risk in farming.

More interesting is why lane creeps are more important than neutrals. At the most basic level, lane creeps give more gold. But much more importantly, by killing lane creeps, you shove the lane towards enemy towers, giving you vision and information. If you see enemies defending their towers, you can farm aggressively. If not, farm conservatively near your team.

Even when you can’t farm lane creeps, try to farm neutrals that are close to the next objective. This way, if an opportunity arises (e.g. all enemies TP-ing to the opposite lane), you have the option to take the objective.²

Summary

• Destroy the enemy safelane tier 1 to open up farm spots
• Farm in the enemy jungle, not your jungle
• Farm near the next objective

1. Other traditional offlane heroes, like Centaur, Underlord, Dark Seer, Abaddon also have this power spike with early levels. ↩

2. It’s not trivial to know what the next objective should be, or what qualifies as an opportunity to take it. Such depth is beyond the scope of this post. ↩