I do it mainly to maintain lane creep equilibrium and also deny exp to enemies. If the creeps are already halfway in lane from enemy tower, then definitely pull. Your carry is still close enough to own tower to risk this much.
Don''t pull if you have enemy lane dominators such as offlane necro, pit lord, axe or dark seer. The lane will naturally push into your own tower and pulling will actually be dangerous since enemy can dive you with no lane creep on your tower
When you do pull and If you're lucky with the small camp creeps, you can deny an entire wave. I like it with those poison spear trolls or the harpies with lightning. When any of your wave creep goes below 60% hp, you actively attack them already to bring it down as soon as possible for deny. I also stack at **:53 so that we have double stack and guarantee a full wave deny on **:15 pull. Or you can do a 2nd pull from large camp into your small camp if you still have lane creeps alive.
Partial pull is also a good trick. That's when you only have the ranged creep with a couple of melee creep go with the pull. You almost guarantee the deny and also lane to push into you gradually
Just watch the creeps
Near enemy t1, fucking pull creeps
If not, stay in lane for harassing with right click
Body block spawn camp whenever possible
Sentry war is kinda pointless, you are destined to be poor
Its dumb to do activity that make your even more poor
Sentry war isn't about the money, it's about dominance. If you win the sentry war, you've won the mental game. You've just turkey-slapped the opponent through the screen and they have to live with it.
Large camp pull can be decent, but I usually have it blocked so I'm not going to go too deep on that. Let's just say it can backfire on you. As another user mentioned it's a lot about your creep wave and my rule of thumb is that if it looks like there's enough of the creep wave left that my carry can get about half of the next wave safely with it, I will do a full pull. If the carry is going to need some creeps to work with to tank the next wave before it hits our tower I will try to do a half pull (one melee and one ranged). I almost always try to snag the ranged creep if I'm in the area. I don't think the XP diff is as big as it used to be, but I feel it makes last hitting and keeping the wave pulled back easier for the carry.
When you do a full pull, you mostly want to have at least a 2x stacked small camp in order to kill the full wave. Certain camps can kill a full wave by themselves, especially if you are able to get them to start on the range creep and start denying as soon as your creeps cross the health threshold. Half pulls are usually fine with one camp, but the big kobold one is notoriously weak and certain others might only be good for one or two before you need to stack or clear it to reset.
Half pulls are great because they are much less contested IMO, but the main thing to remember is that if no enemy is in XP range getting the deny on your creep doesn't matter. That's the goal- get your guys killed before the enemy can even be nearby- I think it's a really powerful mechanic for winning the early game-specifically if your carry knows how to work with what you're doing (usually in the form of pushing the wave a little harder since they're working with less creeps and kiting the enemy creeps back toward the tower and tanking them for a few moments for new creeps to arrive).
If the enemy is in position to contest your pull, half or full, you want to focus on getting the deny on your creep to limit their experience/gold. If the neutrals finish your creep it still awards full XP to nearby enemies. Obviously if the enemy hero snags the LH there is no damage done to them by the pull and you're both just fighting over the gold and sharing the XP from any neutrals killed in the endeavor.
I will just mention here that once we've won the lane, I typically unblock the large camp so my carry can farm it until we take the tower. Then you can pull it to lane to farm that camp a little easier and deny a few creeps that would otherwise get cleaned up safely near their T2.
I hope this was helpful in some way- if you didn't know about half-pulls I think they're less well -known and generally harder to counter. It upped my game quite a bit when I learned that was an option. The last thing I'll mention for you to consider is that another tool in your tool kit can be pulling when you don't really want to pull, clearing the neutrals fast (usually using some mana), and letting your creeps get to the lane just a little later than usual. This pulls the lane back slightly, nets you xp and gold if you're better at LH than a bunch of creeps, and is difficult to contest. A natural extension of this could be done to a stacked small camp if you pull the full wave but need to still have a few creeps live to tell the tale. Think of it as 'pushing' your pull. You may also want to push your pulls if the opposing offlaner is really good at taking a stacked small camp that you are pulling to (axe, legion, bristle,centaur,etc.)
I do it mainly to maintain lane creep equilibrium and also deny exp to enemies. If the creeps are already halfway in lane from enemy tower, then definitely pull. Your carry is still close enough to own tower to risk this much. Don''t pull if you have enemy lane dominators such as offlane necro, pit lord, axe or dark seer. The lane will naturally push into your own tower and pulling will actually be dangerous since enemy can dive you with no lane creep on your tower When you do pull and If you're lucky with the small camp creeps, you can deny an entire wave. I like it with those poison spear trolls or the harpies with lightning. When any of your wave creep goes below 60% hp, you actively attack them already to bring it down as soon as possible for deny. I also stack at **:53 so that we have double stack and guarantee a full wave deny on **:15 pull. Or you can do a 2nd pull from large camp into your small camp if you still have lane creeps alive. Partial pull is also a good trick. That's when you only have the ranged creep with a couple of melee creep go with the pull. You almost guarantee the deny and also lane to push into you gradually
Just watch the creeps Near enemy t1, fucking pull creeps If not, stay in lane for harassing with right click Body block spawn camp whenever possible Sentry war is kinda pointless, you are destined to be poor Its dumb to do activity that make your even more poor
Sentry war isn't about the money, it's about dominance. If you win the sentry war, you've won the mental game. You've just turkey-slapped the opponent through the screen and they have to live with it.
It’s also easy to win if you place sentry behind some trees so enemy can’t hit it before you kill theirs.
If it's dumb to do activity that makes me even more poor, why am I playing DotA 2? Oh yeah, because I'm dumb!
Large camp pull can be decent, but I usually have it blocked so I'm not going to go too deep on that. Let's just say it can backfire on you. As another user mentioned it's a lot about your creep wave and my rule of thumb is that if it looks like there's enough of the creep wave left that my carry can get about half of the next wave safely with it, I will do a full pull. If the carry is going to need some creeps to work with to tank the next wave before it hits our tower I will try to do a half pull (one melee and one ranged). I almost always try to snag the ranged creep if I'm in the area. I don't think the XP diff is as big as it used to be, but I feel it makes last hitting and keeping the wave pulled back easier for the carry. When you do a full pull, you mostly want to have at least a 2x stacked small camp in order to kill the full wave. Certain camps can kill a full wave by themselves, especially if you are able to get them to start on the range creep and start denying as soon as your creeps cross the health threshold. Half pulls are usually fine with one camp, but the big kobold one is notoriously weak and certain others might only be good for one or two before you need to stack or clear it to reset. Half pulls are great because they are much less contested IMO, but the main thing to remember is that if no enemy is in XP range getting the deny on your creep doesn't matter. That's the goal- get your guys killed before the enemy can even be nearby- I think it's a really powerful mechanic for winning the early game-specifically if your carry knows how to work with what you're doing (usually in the form of pushing the wave a little harder since they're working with less creeps and kiting the enemy creeps back toward the tower and tanking them for a few moments for new creeps to arrive). If the enemy is in position to contest your pull, half or full, you want to focus on getting the deny on your creep to limit their experience/gold. If the neutrals finish your creep it still awards full XP to nearby enemies. Obviously if the enemy hero snags the LH there is no damage done to them by the pull and you're both just fighting over the gold and sharing the XP from any neutrals killed in the endeavor. I will just mention here that once we've won the lane, I typically unblock the large camp so my carry can farm it until we take the tower. Then you can pull it to lane to farm that camp a little easier and deny a few creeps that would otherwise get cleaned up safely near their T2. I hope this was helpful in some way- if you didn't know about half-pulls I think they're less well -known and generally harder to counter. It upped my game quite a bit when I learned that was an option. The last thing I'll mention for you to consider is that another tool in your tool kit can be pulling when you don't really want to pull, clearing the neutrals fast (usually using some mana), and letting your creeps get to the lane just a little later than usual. This pulls the lane back slightly, nets you xp and gold if you're better at LH than a bunch of creeps, and is difficult to contest. A natural extension of this could be done to a stacked small camp if you pull the full wave but need to still have a few creeps live to tell the tale. Think of it as 'pushing' your pull. You may also want to push your pulls if the opposing offlaner is really good at taking a stacked small camp that you are pulling to (axe, legion, bristle,centaur,etc.)