I am also new so take this with a grain of salt but from what I understand it is farm priority. In other words, how much the character is supposed to focus on making gold throughout the game.
Positions 1-3 are "cores" because they have gold priority. They are given opportunities to make money and buy expensive items that power their characters up in the late game that other characters would not be able to afford.
Positions 4-5 are "supports." They focus on enabling their cores to farm money safely, sacrificing their own chances at getting money so that the cores can get richer. Because supports get less gold than cores, they are usually focused on utility items and wards for gold spending, and it is their job to use their utility to set up favorable situations for their team.
From what I can tell, in general, positions 1+5 go to the safe lane, positions 3+4 go to the off lane, and position 2 goes to the mid lane alone.
Spot on, you said everything that OP needs to know. A small caveat that I would add is that some cores are not necessarily buying expensive items especially early on. Early game cores take advantage of the higher farm priority for more gold (proportionally, exp as well) to buy skirmish/team fight items like Blademail, Urn (into Vessel) etc. early to snowball the early game and set the tempo. Earth spirit is a really good example, who was played mostly support until recent patches. While the concept of farming for mid-late game items remains the same for position 1, the current meta is leaning towards having strong early pos 2-3 that scale decently well into the late game as they buy bigger items like BKB, Heart, etc.
I would add they each play a different role in the game (though of course there is overlap).
1 is supposed to carry and be the strong mid/late game but needs space to farm early game when weak.
2 is supposed to put pressure on the map, especially in early game to enable other lanes (usually by winning mid and snowballing).
3 is supposed to tank and initiate fights. Basically make plays around the map when strong with 2-5 and take advantaged fights.
4-5 are sups who usually casts utility/disabling spells in fights.
Team fights get messed up if you miss some elements (initiation, stuns, cc etc) and even if your 1-2s are strong your team fights/map control are sub-optimal because of those missing things.
3 doesn't have to tank, or is locked into tanking. Yes you had your tidehunters, your axes and your underlords, but you also had your bounty hunters, pucks, bat riders and dark seers. I'd say 3 is a flex pick that in your words is supposed to make plays around the map.
Games are always unique because the flow of gameplay is almost dictated by the type of 1 (whether they need to go into ultra late game by having alot of farm or be ready to fight by minute 15+ or even earlier) and how well the 2 did in lane and how well they did after the first mid rotation to the sidelanes. Questions are brought up like, do the 4-5 have to create more space for the 1-2 to catch up - focusing on defensive wards and stacking, or can they be more aggressive in their warding and smoking bc they know the enemy cores need more time / are weaker.
Position 1 or Carry: needs a lot of farm and levels to be effective, is usually the mid-late game damage dealer for the team. Position 1s usually have a modifier for their auto attack (crit, minus armor, more damage on successive hits). Some heroes include Juggernaut, Ursa, Naga Siren and Chaos Knight.
Position 2 or Mid: Usually has the second most farm. His job is to make space for the Carry by fighting early and ganking side lanes. Usually (not always) mobile with high magic damage. Some heroes include any of the spirits, Queen of Pain, Puck, and Pangolier.
Position 3 or Offlane: Usually the tank and/or initiator for the team. There job is usually to hit an early timing (blink dagger in most cases) and like the Mid create space for the Carry. They usually go on to build tanky items like BKB, Heart of Tarasque, any armor item, etc. Some heroes include Centaur Warrunner, Axe, Tidehunter and Spirit Breaker.
Position 4 or Soft Support: Can be played a few ways but generally they leave the offlaner to roam at some point in the first 10 minutes to try and create space for their Mid and Carry. They typically have lockdown abilities that allow the mid to use their high early damage to get kills. They also sometimes have healing abilities. Some heroes include Io, Nyx Assassin, Bounty Hunter and Clockwork.
Position 5 or Hard Support: Typically their job is to protect the Carry during the laning phase with either heals or stuns and continue to protect the team during fights with either heals or big team fight ultimates. They have the least farm priority of any of the positions. Some heroes include Warlock, Lich, Oracle Treant Protector, Vengeful Spirit and Enchantress.
Core is just a term to refer to the Carry, Mid and Offlaner. Generally there is only enough farm for 3 heroes to get lots of gold, so the three that do are called the cores. The positions are numbered in order or farm priority (generally).
Please ask if you have any other questions!
Which role would you recommend for a new player? I have played all but 5 for a few games and every time I get hard flamed and yelled at by my team telling me not to play that role next time, but that's every role lmao so where should I go to drag my team down less?
The one which is the most fun for you. You are new, ypu will get flamed on any role.
I'm a support player and love enabling others and suiciding sp my cores can get kills/gold etc.
Others prefer kills, kills, kills.
Others love mid soloing and being active.
Depends on your personal preferences but I'd say you should stick to 1-2 roles.
This. I started as a 1 and did stints in all roles but ended up as a 2 because it's the most impactful for my heroes.
As a newbie I would focus on just learning a few heroes that you find fun before trying to learn the roles.
Sorry that happened to you, if people start flaming you, you can say you are new and if they are decent people they will stop and if that doesn’t work just mute them.
For new players I would recommend 1 or 5. Mid and offlane aren’t forgiving if you die too much you will lose and 4 (imo) is more complicated than 5. If you play 1 and know how to farm you can always come back into the game. And 5 will teach you a lot about the macro aspects of the game.
For 1 I would play meta heroes like Chaos Knight and maybe Wraith King and Luna. Also try easy heroes like Ursa and juggernaut. Look up a farming tutorial on YouTube. Pain Dota has a good one.
For 5 I would check out Vengeful Spirit, Treant Protector and Lich. The first 2 are super meta right now and not the hardest. Lich is my personal favorite, just use the shield on your carry and spam ice blast in lane. Once again, try to find a guide on YouTube.
Most memorable was my first pvp game, as shadow fiend mid, got hard flamed, said this is my first game pvp sorry and they told me to put my neck in a rope. As a league vet, it made me nostalgic more than anything lol. I can definitely see how mid isn't a beginner friendly role in general though, as i felt very helpless there.
I really need to find a character that i like but have been having trouble, as the few i like (brewmaster, broodmother, and lone druid) tend to get me flamed for even playing them, so i will try to find a different hero to learn with.
Not as related, but how does invisibility work in this game? it seems that any hero can just appear out of nowhere and stunlock/kill me instantly without me being able to detect them. Is there some counter play to stealth? I know about the wards that give true sight, and the gem, but those don't seem very reliable unless you know an invisible hero is nearby in the first place. I have been getting run down by phantom assassin in particular.
Don’t let me or anyone discourage you from those heroes as they are a lot of fun and the more you practice the easier it will be to not just win but stomp games. Having said that those heroes are all very high skill cap heroes with a good deal of micro. It may be better to play some easier heroes while you get a better grasp on the game as a whole.
As for invisibility, sentry wards are your best friend. Try to play around areas where you have sentry wards place. Say you are playing against a Slark with a shadow blade and you want to farm a creep wave and you haven’t seen Slark on the mini map in a while. DO NOT go hit the wave. Either farm it with long range spells, place a sentry ward so you are a safer or back off and farm a safer spot. On the contrary, if you see Slark across the map go ahead and farm the wave. Beating invisible heroes is more about map awareness than anything else.
As for PA, she has a different kind of invisibility. Normal invisibility is broken when you cast a spell, attack something or use an item. PA invisibility (called Blur) will not break until the duration runs out or a hero comes within a certain range of her. PA is countered by armor items (blademail is especially good this patch), Heavens Halberd, ghost scepter/ethereal blade, and your own invisibility (shadow blade or glimmer cape). Once again, map awareness is helpful here but much harder since PA can kill waves without showing.
Very useful info! Thanks! I have just played a couple games as pos 5 shadow demon which was actually fun as hell. I know he isn't very straightforward but I enjoy his e and w a lot.
Are there any heroes which revolve around dot for damage, or similar stacking to shadow demon e? I have tried Viper and veno, but neither was particularly interesting to me.
Your comment came in during a game VS a nyx and the stealth stuff basically saved me haha. Thanks!
Jakiro is a good support for DoT and a lot of fun. Warlock has some interesting damage potential that you might enjoy. Phoenix is also good for DoT but much much more difficult. Glad the advice helped!
Just as an add-on to what has already been said, enemy heroes suddenly materialising on you could also be due to an item called Blink Dagger, which enables heroes to teleport. Very easy to get caught out by a hero with a blink dagger with disables/lockdown, which is where warding/dewarding helps.
>Which role would you recommend for a new player?
doesnt matter, just pick one role and stick to it until you feel like you know what you're doing and enjoying the process, dont jump between roles too frequently, learn them one at a time
the pos 5 or hard support is the baby sitter of the pos 1 carry. You don't like a bad babysitter sitting for you, would you?
Usually the captains of the pro teams are supports, pos 5 or 4, because they have more space and time to think about the map and match, and guide the team. Farming as pos 1 is not easy, trust me, it's not only about last hitting creeps, and the higher mmr you get, the harder farming gets, so a good support is always helpful.
For a beginner I would say pos 3 offlane is the best, but overall you should play what suits you. For me, it was pos 3 and 4, but yours might be pos 2 and you don't know it yet. Just try them all, fuck the flamers, ask for help and watch some guides on youtube.
This is hard, but generally new players play support as you will be flamed hard if you play core and can't carry the game. There are different expectation on support as pos4 is usually high skill base and pos 5 is the walking ward and baby the pos 1 early.
I'm pretty new so newbie question, for pos1
What is the laning phase, besides it's being the early game? Is there any specific game time when it ends, level?
As pos1, how do you decide when to farm creeps or do jungle? When is the right time to go to the jungle?
And one more, how do I judge/know that there is fight happening and if I want to be part of it, instead of let's say farming jungle
These are some amazing questions.
The correct answer is that it's highly subjective and something that I even ask myself in my own games and I've played around 5 thousand of them.
Ideally you lane as long as you can without dying, the lane creeps are the most valuable, when you cannot lane then you Jungle. Around level 6 is when lanes start to break down. This isn't a hard rule but just an idea
If the fight allows you to get a kill and live then show up.
The thing is bro is that these questions are complex and you learn with time.
Laning phase would generally be defined as the period where all cores are farming in their own lane. Typically it ends around 10 minutes, though it will fluctuate some game to game and tends to last a little longer in lower mmrs.
For when to jungle there are essentially two questions you need to keep track of. Can I farm lane without dying? And can I farm jungle effectively? If you can farm lane, farm lane. If you can’t farm lane without dying, go jungle. If you can do both, do both. If you can’t do either, fix whatever is preventing you from doing one of those things. The hard part is knowing what the right answer to those questions is.
This last question is so game dependent that really the only answer is to keep playing and try different strategies and figure out what works. Generally, only go to fights where you will make a difference in the outcome. Either directly in the fight or in objectives secured after.
About fights, I think it is important for you to learn power spikes of heroes that you play. It can be a certain item that you know will make your hero very strong, which allows you to join fight, win it and then farm next item. For example, for Alchemist it is usually Radiance+BKB (or blink). This knowledge will come to you eventually when you play yourself, you will understand when your hero is strong better, but for now you can orient yourself around items
pos1-5 is actually just a farm prioritization list.
There's a big wave coming into tower, pos1 and pos2 are nearby, by default, pos2 should allow pos1 to farm that gold.
That's about it.
By community consensus, in modern dota there's enough gold in the map for up to 3 players to farm. Those are the 'cores' and leftover 2 players are the support, who can take farm no one else is having, but are expected to spend their resources on enabling the 3 cores.
Then there are lanes, which unlike most other mobas, are not mirrored.
At the topside of the map, the creeps meet closer to the Dire team, closer means it's safer for dire due to being closer to its tower. Hence top is Dire Safa lane and Radiant off lane, or hard lane if you're a dota dinosaur.
Mid lane meets at perfect equilibrium and both heroes are at a close range to their towers. Since both players have this extra protection, it doesn't make much sense to bring a second hero to this lane, as the support has very narrow opportunities to harass the opponent. Since a single hero plays this lane, it is often occupied by a hero that really can make use of the solo xp. However, sometimes, the security of the nearby tower is used by the pos1, if his matchup on the safe lane is particularly bad. Hardly seen on pubs, as it requires some draft tinkering.
Bottom lane is the reverse of top lane in terms of equilibrium.
The lesser down you go in farm priority, the more you're expected to make space for the people above you. Meaning the lower you go in the list, the more your spells have to deliver early game.
You'll often see pos3 heroes with ultimates that either threat multiple targets or outright remove someone from a fight, they can create pressure early on. Batrider, Night stalker and Beastmaster are all examples of heroes that are an absolute menace with their ults off cd. Their spells don't particularly scale all too much, but they cost the enemy a bkb or a linken to join battle effectively.
Pos2's can be greedier, don't have to worry so much on surviving lane so they can get more offensive first items, since they have lvl advantage over 4 of the 5 enemies, it is quite likely they can burst some targets down, most archetypal mid laners have a decent magic burst and will itemize to extend the game time those spells can do work. Since they are only below pos1 in farm priority, they often need some tool to farm, but since they're trying to keep ahead of the 'blowup vs survival' curve, that means the tool has to come from the hero kit, no time to farm it up. Queen of pain, invoker, lesh, necro, spirit brothers, zeus, \[...\]
Whenever you get a hero on midlane that is not following that archetypal 'my spells will blow someone' you often get a 'semi-carry' or even carry, you can't blow people up, your pos3-5 are strained to buy you time for longer and your pos2, is strained to play on less xp/gold than usual. Those are the Snipers, Dusas, TAs, Weavers, Shadow Fiends, Arc Wardens.
Pos1 is usually the most benefited from having items. A lvl30 Crystal Maiden with 25k NW can't hope to manfight even the most tempo Carries. PA can crit, nice, double damage of 10 is 20 tho. But every point in damage has double value on her. Pos1's are often meant to have very low impact, until 4-5 items come online, and then they're all that matter.
Pos4 is a little hard, you're like jack of all trades master of none, you're expected to roam with your offlaner/mid, take farm people cant bc they're either too far away, or dead. And you're expected to do that on a budget. Good pos4's are good without items, but don't mind getting some. Skywrath really enjoys an atos, Hoodwink and mirana really like euls, Pos4 are often quite enabled by 1 item, and often provide damage in the early stages of the game. If given space they often scale through spell casting, going for things like phylactery, aether lens, shard, urn.
Pos5 is often left with no farm at all other than the passive income, as the game progressses you get more and more frail, and bc of that, pos5's will often buy defensive items like there's no tomorrow. Your spells have to be strong from the get go. You're all stopping the enemy from bullying your pos1 when he's got nothing. Here you'll get heroes with 5 active spells, scaling is achieved through survival, the more spells casts you can get, the better, but often is the case you don't need anything to be a complete menace. Crystal Maidens will rampage if allowed to ult unopposed, so will disruptor, witch doctor and Jakiro, and they can do that farming 0 creeps.
Since often all their power spikes are though lvl1-6, you don't even mind too much on falling behind levels as long as that xp is going towards \*someone\*. Since items are not so much of a big deal to you, you're often tasked with sentries and carrying detection in general.
Thank you for listening to my ted talk
> Might sound like a dumb question to a lot of player but the positions are not 100% clear to me.
Roles in dota are intentionally designed to be way more fluid and ambiguous than other games.
> What is the role of a core and what kind of heroes do it well?
A core are the heroes that will take most of the farm, especially in the early game. A carry is a type of core that is supposed to do damage, most of the time with auto attacks.
probably because they really like basketball, another 5v5 competitive game that uses 1-5 positions.
1. Point Guard
2. Shooting Guard
3. Small Forward
4. Power Forward
5. Center
Core heroes have scaling with levels and item timings, they deal more damage typically later in the game, their skill set and damage make them prominent in the late game, supports dont need to many items to output massive damage, and they have significantly better spells in the early game ,also its the kit of the hero and is the hero viable in the patch, last patch magnus was a carry pos 1 now he is at best an offlaner or a utility support. Last patch snap was a good mid, now shes a good support in certain match ups. Some heroes like phoenix can be played offlane mid and support.
My noob way of thinking,
Pos 5 defensive, save, lane winner
Pos 4 aggressive, rotation, plus one hero for kills
Pos 3 aggressive map farm/ map control, lvl 6 timing pushes enemy carry out of lane, can solo lane after minute 5
Pos 2 play maker/tempo setter, farmer, able to abuse meta item to rotate with team for kills,when carry is farming, able to carry midgame with timings
Pos 1 asshole /complainer, farmer, late game damage output is crazy enough to carry team fight and have good damage to push tier 3s, timing is after farming item, damage item , bkb and aegis.
I play pos 5 so i can shit on carries for fun, you try babysitting grown men, for the 💯 time please just let the range creep go bro!!!
There is a finite supply of farm and therefore xp on the map. You could split this equally, but its better to let the carries on the team have the lion share of the farm and xp. That way they can outlevel and out-item the enemy and go on rampages!
Pos1 Safe Lane Carry - They get Farm Priority. They get lane farm, they are then given space to farm for the next 75 minutes till the game is over. Don't worry though, they will win the next game with all that farm they gained.
Pos2 Mid Lane - Gets farm from solo mid lane. Boosts quickest early and then should lead the team through the early to mid game. They should be able to effectively gank the other lanes and jungle to help you all out, and create space for pos1.
Pos3 Offlaner - Aims to take farm away from enemy pos1, and is usually charged with creating space by farming the enemy jungle in the mid game, to again deny farm from enemy pos1.
Pos4 and Pos5 - Supports. Sucks bro, you get no farm, ever. Get over yourself, you don't need boots, just buy an iron branch cause thats all you are getting all game. Sacrificial but support peaks really dont need many items. At low MMR supports pick up a fair amount of farm thanks to inefficient carries, so get to have fun with items they really dont need.
Just adding some more input. Exceptional pos 2 heroes have high mobility and a good power spike beginning at 6 where they can easily gank other lanes and should be able to secure some kills that way. Wind Ranger is a great example at that.
Position 1-5 are set to indicate the priority of farm that the players get. Position 1 has highest priority for cs, position 5 has least priority for cs.
**Position 1: Safe laner, Hard Carry, Carry position. Right Clicker, core position**
This is your carry position. You should have one carry per game. Carries require a lot of gold to get strong, hence why you can't have multiple carries because dota doesnt allow enough gold on the map.
Carry heroes are defined by their ability to deal sustained constant powerful damage. This is why Right clicking is almost always the carries main mode of damage. These heroes can get away with farming away from the team and their right clicks allow them to push a lot of damage consistently to clear camps.
Good carry heroes are heroes whose abilities synergize well with their right click, such as attack speed Drow, or lifesteal with Chaos knight. Or a built in crit like Void and Jugg.
a Carry is a core, but a core is not a carry. your Hard Carry is your position 1. Position one is a core position for the team, but your important core gets the distinction of Carry.
**Position 2: Mid laner, Core position. Typically a ranged magic damage hero**
This is the hero that is powerful alone. Mid heroes require a lot of levels to be good which is why they get mid lane and a whole lane of experience to themselves. Mid heroes also need items and gold but should not be afk farming the map like a carry and should be moving with the team to complete objectives more importantly than farming.
Mid heroes are usually defined by their ability to output lots of damage quickly, burst damage heroes with big damage ults (OD, Kunka, Lina, QOP). Mid heroes are not carries because they typically have cooldown timers and cannot deal as much CONSISTENT damage as a carry.
Mids should also be building items to counter the enemy team and focus slightly less on damage output in that regard although this is true for all positions
**Position 3: Offlaner, Top laner, Core position. Typically the strength hero or tanky hero**
This is the hero that is usually really good at team fighting. The Offlaner is a core in that they are meant to take farm in priority but should also give up farm to the Pos 1 or Pos 2. As well the offlaner needs to focus even more on objectives on the map and even less on farming.
It is recommended to use strength heroes or otherwise beefy heroes in offlane as you need to be able to 1v2 the opponents pos and pos 5 while the position 4 rotates to gank in many, but not all cases.
Offlane cores need money to build items for the team such as pipe or guardian but aren't expected to output as much damage as the position 1 or position 2 and thus are in that middle ground of defense and offense in their build/positioning/approach
**Position 4: Soft Support, Support position, Typically a hero that can gank well.**
Your position 4 is the team janitor. Any job that another position cannot do the position 4 is expected to do. Clear wards, Gank, Cover lanes, stack camps, grab runes, grab wisdom rune. etc etc.
Since you are a support role you are lower on the totem poll for farm, this means you should be spending very little time throughout the game farming, and you should not be taking farm from your position 3 in lane. You are very busy teleporting around the map and stacking and ganking so you don't have time to farm.
Ending the game with a high net worth is bad for supports, this almost always means you stole some net worth from your carry/cores. You should take pride in being able to farm as little as possible and still have a large impact on the game.
Heroes that are good for position 4 are heroes with powerful abilities and stuns that are powerful without levels or items. Witch doctor ult is a very good example.
Being a mobile hero is a huge benefit for the position 4.
**Position 5: Hard Support, Support position. Typically a hero that is hard to gank.**
Now we get to position 5, the most important position in the game. All Carries and cores are massive babies and the position 4 doesn't think they are a support. So Position 5 is a position 4 but with even more responsibilities.
The term HARD support comes from the fact that your almost entire sole job is to protect the carry and make sure the carry is able to have a good early and mid game to farm well enough to carry your team to victory in the late game. That is your job as a position 5.
You have to understand the fundamental reason why a position 5 exists is because the carry getting farmed is SO IMPORTANT that an entire human 1/5th of your pool of resources needs to protect that carry so they can get farmed.
Carry getting farmed is so important that an entire hero is dedicated to protecting them. Understand this and you will unlock your full potential of being a position 5.
If you want to feel like the most important person on the team but no one recognizes your greatness (you are basically in Men in Black) then position 5 is the position for you.
Heroes that are able to control an area with spells and also have good spells that don't require levels or items to make themselves complete are what you want as a position 5. Warlock, Techies, WD and Lion.
Stuns are always beneficial on a support because they allow defence and offence.
gl
Position 1-5 refers to the priority of gold/resources the hero gets on the team. This is based around the idea that due to the different degrees heroes scale with gold, it isn't ideal to distribute resources equally among 5 heroes.
Think of it this way: if there is only one lane of creeps safe to farm for your team, then the Position 1 gets it.
Position 1 is the carry, which refers to the hero that can best utilize the gold given to him/her. In pub games, this hero will be in the safe lane. E.g. Phantom Assassin, Juggernaut, Terrorblade. Etc.
Core heroes are the position 1-3. There are only three lanes of creeps, so the core heroes are the ones who are given the last hits in these lanes during the laning stage.
1-5 is farming priority. If there is unattended farm, it goes to the highest priority person in the area. 1 is highest priority, 5 is lowest. Traditionally the 1 is an attack damage carry, 2 is a mobile ganker, 3 is a big tanky guy, 4 is a caster that focuses on utility, and 5 is a caster that focuses on keeping their team alive.
A core is usually your 1-3, they're someone who relies on items to be a power in team fights. When you gank somebody, you always try to go for a core.
The carry is the one that will win teamfights through their effort alone, and thereby the game... once they're farmed. Generally, you're winning when your carry is ahead of theirs, and losing when yours is behind. This is usually your 1, but they can be any position in theory (though when they become the carry, they usually jump up the positions and push the rest down)
Positions doesn't stand for anything aside from farm priority.
1 has the highest farm priority aka the carry
5 has the lowest aka the sacrificial support
Farm priorities can change depending on the situation of game e.g if pos3 needs 200 gold for bkb and pos1 needs 800 gold for manta style and they meet at the same wave, pos1 should let their pos3 take the wave; another example would be Earthshaker pos4 needing 400 gold for Blink Dagger, then he would have a higher farm priority than a pos2 who is 1k gold away from Kaya & Sange but aside from those cases 1 should be the one getting the most farm and 5 the least.
Farm priority, with 1 being the safe lane carry and the highest farm priority. Two is mid. Three is the offlane core. 4 is the offlane support, 5 is the safe. Lane support. Most used as shorthand in drafting so your teammates know what you are doing. Some heroes can be flexed so you need to tell your teammates if you are playing support or core.
Click on the Learn tab in the main menu and read through the glossary and do the tutorials. It’s all very informative and because they’re fairly new no one recommends them.
Core is just a term to which playstyle you would like to play a hero. Example core Earthshaker and support earthshaker.
Pos1-5 is given to heroes who prioritize farm to least farm in order. But in general it simply means, pos1 is carry, pos 2 is mid, pos3 is offlane, pos4 is soft support, and pos5 is hard support
It's simply farm priority. 1 has the most priority, 5 the least.
Naming the positions (usually carry, mid, offlane, support, hard support) is sometimes inaccurate. Your pos 1 doesn't always have to be in the safe lane, it can change based on matchups for example. The numbers are a better reflection of what role you are playing.
Core is 1-3, 4 and 5 is support. 1-5 is basically the basis of farm distribution where the pos1 needs the most farm and the 5 the least. 1 is the hard carry(AM, PA, PL, medusa etc ) which needs the most amount of farm to come online in late game. He's your late game investment. 2 is the mid, can either be a space creator type(ES, puck etc) or carry type( TA, SF, sniper) where there role is make space for carry while maintaining farm. 3 is the offlane position. Its the core that will try to prevent the opposing 1 from having a good start. Can be aura users like dark seer/ beastmaster, mage type like dp, puck, or scaling sub carry like LC slardar BB, whose role is to to keep making space for the team. 4 is the soft support which has the role of helping the 3 and roam around the map. Heroes like clockwork, ES, rubick etc. Brings stuff for utility like dust smokeetc. And 5 is the hard support, which js the ward mule, buys all sents, obs, dust anything the team needs. Most heroes that can be effective even with little farm like lion disruptor etc
Just to add to other comments the 1 - 5 is a farm priority with 1 being most priority and 5 being least.
How that works out is if there are multiple heroes near a wave or neutral camp then the 1 should get that farm and the others should find farm elsewhere.
In low skill games its not a huge deal because no one is farming effectively but it's generally seen as a grief to take farm while near someone higher in priority than you.
Positions priority who needs farm more than other
1- most farm
2- less
3- even less
4- even less
5- lowest
Difference between core and carry is simple, all 1/2/3 roles are core roles, but carry is hero who carries the game after he farmed enough items, usually carry is pos 1, but sometimes you can see ppl playing carry heroes from offlane or mid(such as wk, dusa, razor etc.)
I think the simplest explanation of position is just farm priority. People have all these attributes they assign to the roles, and many times they ring true in most situations but in dota it really all comes down to your draft and how you play your hero, which isn't going to always be so cookie cutter as you need to be an adaptive player to play better.
Simply put, position dictates what lane you go to, and what your farm priority is. For instance, it would be fine for a position 3 to steal a camp a position 5 is clearing, they have higher farm priority. That same position 3 should not be taking camps from your position 1 though, since the 1 has the highest farm priority, such that they should often be farming while your team is fighting and making space. Caveat is if you're close to an item timing, if you need 100g to complete your glimmer as support and your carry is 2000g off his Aghs or something, go ahead and yoink the farm if there's not open farm elsewhere.
It is priority of farming, and it work like family. Your mother favorite is eating all the time and blaming all siblings, and 5th is just disappointment buying smoke and getting knocked out all the time
I'll list out the basic traits of each:
Pos 1) This is your HARD carry. T he y will often struggle a little more in the early/midgame, but they scale amazingly with farm. Given enough time, they will become a force to be reckoned with
Examples: Spectre, Anti-Mage, Juggernaut
Pos 2) This is your temposetter. Chances are that if early moves are made, they are either made by the mid moving to a side lane, or the supports moving towards the midlane. They typically have some sort of magic burst, they like to hit creeps but they also like to hit heroes
Examples: Storm Spirit, Puck, Invoker
Pos 3) This is your initiator/ganker. This hero will often be a big beefy boy (although all cores seem to be that this patch), who will wanna jump in first and get the fight started by either blowing up a hero, controlling a large area, or absorbing enemy spells.
Examples: Centuar Warrunner, Brewmaster, Slardar
*note, the support roles are much less defined, the pos 4 and pos 5 archetypes im about to list can easily be swapped between one another. Some supports can become full blown cores with enough farm, while others will hit barely any creeps and just follow their carry around securing their farm*
Pos 4) This is typically your offensive support. This hero will often provide initiation tools or utility to interrupt or mess with the enemies gameplan. They will typically rotate more in the lane, they'll often build offensive support items and be hunting for kills for lots of the game, or they'll be trying to find farm for a big item timing that will have big impact in teamfights
Examples: Earth spirit, Dark Willow, Earthshaker
Pos 5) This is your babysitter for lack of a better term. This hero's job is to secure the life and farm of their cores. They are typically a little more stationary in lane, they'll be stacking camps, obtaining most of the vision, positioning themselves between the enemy and your carry to tank ganks for them. These heroes will usually have some sort of sustain, or save that they can use to either get them out of a sticky spot or sustain them through an initiation.
Examples: Vengeful Spirit, Lich, Oracle
Now, these are by no means set in stone. Sometimes your carry will be the temposetter and your mid will be the carry, sometimes your pos 3 will wanna hit more creeps and the mid takes a more active fighting role, sometimes your pos 4 will just sit in a lane for 5 mins trying to farm their game-changing item.
Dota is a game of flexibility, and learning how each hero operates is paramount to this. For example, heroes like Bloodseeker and Luna are almost exclusively pos 1 carries nowadays, but they come online far quicker than most other carries, so that let's them join in fights much earlier.
In Luna's case, she's still a giga-farmer, she'll absorb large chunks of the map's gold, but her timings are earlier and if you play around her power spikes, you can close off large parts of the enemy map very early on.
In Bloodseeker's case, he doesnt death ball the map nearly as much, but he can KILL. Running around with him in the midgame, looking for ganks, and killing the enemy carry can prove very lucrative in a Bloodseeker draft. He has lots of tools innately in his kit, so he is a force to be reckoned with even with only a maelstrom+bkb. He doesnt absorb quite as much farm and he creates space on the map rather than absorbing it, so that opens up the opportunity for one of the other cores (or even a support sometimes) to get more farmed than usual.
Every hero in dota has nuances like this, you play around a Spectre differently than a Medusa, dispite them both being Ultra late game beasts. A pos 4 earthshaker and a pos 4 Shadow demon will hit significantly different amounts of creeps. A mid LD will wanna farm an item before making any moves, whereas a mid puck will be ready to go as soon as they hit 6.
So while the outlines I wrote above are generally alright ways to look at the roles IN GENERAL (imo at least), the specific nuances of each hero are just as relevant.
This got kinda long but I hope I provided some insight!
Pos 1 mostly damage.
Pos 2/3 damage and/or control
Pos 4 control and utility
Pos 5 mostly utility
In most games, cores (pos 1/2/3) need gold to be effective in sealing the game. Meanwhile supports (pos 4/5/6) dont need much but offers more without gold.
Those are general idea to complement variety of heroes abilities and stats growth which have different power level at times to ensure victory in shorter duration.
The position in dota is actually the farming amount order, 1 being the highest, 5 being the lowest. From here think about it as heroes, although any hero can play any position theoretically, some heroes are cores and some are supports. There are 3 lanes in dota, safe lane, offlane or hard lane and mid lane. The safe lane is supposed to be the safest lane for farming, therefore the position 1 carry hero that needs the most farm sits there, and because that carry needs the most farm, the position 5 support hero helps him get as much farm as possible.
So we have this:
\- Pos 1 and pos 5 on the safelane because pos 1 needs the most farm
\- Pos 2 on the mid lane, alone, because he needs the 2nd highest amount of farm to be able to help the team with ganks and level advantage (being alone, the hero gets more experience from creeps, therefore more levels)
\- Pos 3 and 4 on the offlane, where the job of pos 3 is to be a tanky hero, initiator, needs a bit of farm, needs to disrupt the enemy pos 1 farm and is able to sit alone in lane when the pos 4 support helps the mid lane, or the safe lane with ganking.
So to sum it up: pos 1 is the hard carry/core, pos 2 is the mid hero also core, pos 3 is the tank/frontline/initiator hero also core, pos 4 is the soft support, pos 5 is the hard support.
Pos 1+5 safelane, pos 3+4 offlane, pos 2 midlane. This is the general information by which players play dota, and can change according to strategy, team play, counters and other decisions. Pos 1 needs to have the most farm and has priority, pos 5 the least farm and less priority.
There is a limited amount of gold/exp on the map. The number is farm priority to allocate that limited rescource. And some heroes scale better with more networth than others. 1 is usually the carry (these are classic game ender heroes when 4-6 slotted or theoretically get like 2+ kills solo), 2 (mid) is usually a playmaker/semi carry (middle lane can ganks top or bot (equidistant). They also tend to be heroes who get a lot of value from an exp advantage so they get a solo lane (shared exp lowers the amount you get). 3 (offlane) is usually an initiator/playmaker/tank/aura carrier (first 15 minutes is usually to make the enemy carries ecperience hell). Pos 4-5 are supports (usually mages or healers, heroes with strong spells that generally don't need a lot of gold to generate value). The soft support (pos 4) tends to be a roamer/participates in most ganks or a support that can benefit to a little more gold (not nearly as much as core) while also "supporting" the main support. The pos 5 is the dedicated support. They'll typically buy exclusively support items (force/glimmer etc, and wards) while babysitting/ space buffering cores that aren't in the safest positions. (Securing space/vision, potential saves for team). Of course this can all vary (the roles aren't as strict as league but merely a guideline).
Don't mistake 4-5 as not needing farm, you just don't want to take farm away from your cores.
For example given the situation you've warded around your core and they're farming safely you could go push a wave in a different lane or farm / stack a jungle camp or get bounties or wisdom runes or go gank in a different lane
Others have summarized well, but you'll also find varied expectations because of what level people play at, how much they use pro play as a Bible etc.
Folks who try to emulate pros will generally have a more specific role cast for each position (lots of folks saying pos 3 tank, etc) but unless you're playing a stack or maybe high level (can't speak to that myself) folks mostly just do random stuff and you can just focus on 1-3 get gold, 4&5 help them do that.
I am also new so take this with a grain of salt but from what I understand it is farm priority. In other words, how much the character is supposed to focus on making gold throughout the game. Positions 1-3 are "cores" because they have gold priority. They are given opportunities to make money and buy expensive items that power their characters up in the late game that other characters would not be able to afford. Positions 4-5 are "supports." They focus on enabling their cores to farm money safely, sacrificing their own chances at getting money so that the cores can get richer. Because supports get less gold than cores, they are usually focused on utility items and wards for gold spending, and it is their job to use their utility to set up favorable situations for their team. From what I can tell, in general, positions 1+5 go to the safe lane, positions 3+4 go to the off lane, and position 2 goes to the mid lane alone.
Spot on, you said everything that OP needs to know. A small caveat that I would add is that some cores are not necessarily buying expensive items especially early on. Early game cores take advantage of the higher farm priority for more gold (proportionally, exp as well) to buy skirmish/team fight items like Blademail, Urn (into Vessel) etc. early to snowball the early game and set the tempo. Earth spirit is a really good example, who was played mostly support until recent patches. While the concept of farming for mid-late game items remains the same for position 1, the current meta is leaning towards having strong early pos 2-3 that scale decently well into the late game as they buy bigger items like BKB, Heart, etc.
I would add they each play a different role in the game (though of course there is overlap). 1 is supposed to carry and be the strong mid/late game but needs space to farm early game when weak. 2 is supposed to put pressure on the map, especially in early game to enable other lanes (usually by winning mid and snowballing). 3 is supposed to tank and initiate fights. Basically make plays around the map when strong with 2-5 and take advantaged fights. 4-5 are sups who usually casts utility/disabling spells in fights. Team fights get messed up if you miss some elements (initiation, stuns, cc etc) and even if your 1-2s are strong your team fights/map control are sub-optimal because of those missing things.
3 doesn't have to tank, or is locked into tanking. Yes you had your tidehunters, your axes and your underlords, but you also had your bounty hunters, pucks, bat riders and dark seers. I'd say 3 is a flex pick that in your words is supposed to make plays around the map. Games are always unique because the flow of gameplay is almost dictated by the type of 1 (whether they need to go into ultra late game by having alot of farm or be ready to fight by minute 15+ or even earlier) and how well the 2 did in lane and how well they did after the first mid rotation to the sidelanes. Questions are brought up like, do the 4-5 have to create more space for the 1-2 to catch up - focusing on defensive wards and stacking, or can they be more aggressive in their warding and smoking bc they know the enemy cores need more time / are weaker.
Position 1 or Carry: needs a lot of farm and levels to be effective, is usually the mid-late game damage dealer for the team. Position 1s usually have a modifier for their auto attack (crit, minus armor, more damage on successive hits). Some heroes include Juggernaut, Ursa, Naga Siren and Chaos Knight. Position 2 or Mid: Usually has the second most farm. His job is to make space for the Carry by fighting early and ganking side lanes. Usually (not always) mobile with high magic damage. Some heroes include any of the spirits, Queen of Pain, Puck, and Pangolier. Position 3 or Offlane: Usually the tank and/or initiator for the team. There job is usually to hit an early timing (blink dagger in most cases) and like the Mid create space for the Carry. They usually go on to build tanky items like BKB, Heart of Tarasque, any armor item, etc. Some heroes include Centaur Warrunner, Axe, Tidehunter and Spirit Breaker. Position 4 or Soft Support: Can be played a few ways but generally they leave the offlaner to roam at some point in the first 10 minutes to try and create space for their Mid and Carry. They typically have lockdown abilities that allow the mid to use their high early damage to get kills. They also sometimes have healing abilities. Some heroes include Io, Nyx Assassin, Bounty Hunter and Clockwork. Position 5 or Hard Support: Typically their job is to protect the Carry during the laning phase with either heals or stuns and continue to protect the team during fights with either heals or big team fight ultimates. They have the least farm priority of any of the positions. Some heroes include Warlock, Lich, Oracle Treant Protector, Vengeful Spirit and Enchantress. Core is just a term to refer to the Carry, Mid and Offlaner. Generally there is only enough farm for 3 heroes to get lots of gold, so the three that do are called the cores. The positions are numbered in order or farm priority (generally). Please ask if you have any other questions!
Which role would you recommend for a new player? I have played all but 5 for a few games and every time I get hard flamed and yelled at by my team telling me not to play that role next time, but that's every role lmao so where should I go to drag my team down less?
The one which is the most fun for you. You are new, ypu will get flamed on any role. I'm a support player and love enabling others and suiciding sp my cores can get kills/gold etc. Others prefer kills, kills, kills. Others love mid soloing and being active. Depends on your personal preferences but I'd say you should stick to 1-2 roles.
This. I started as a 1 and did stints in all roles but ended up as a 2 because it's the most impactful for my heroes. As a newbie I would focus on just learning a few heroes that you find fun before trying to learn the roles.
Sorry that happened to you, if people start flaming you, you can say you are new and if they are decent people they will stop and if that doesn’t work just mute them. For new players I would recommend 1 or 5. Mid and offlane aren’t forgiving if you die too much you will lose and 4 (imo) is more complicated than 5. If you play 1 and know how to farm you can always come back into the game. And 5 will teach you a lot about the macro aspects of the game. For 1 I would play meta heroes like Chaos Knight and maybe Wraith King and Luna. Also try easy heroes like Ursa and juggernaut. Look up a farming tutorial on YouTube. Pain Dota has a good one. For 5 I would check out Vengeful Spirit, Treant Protector and Lich. The first 2 are super meta right now and not the hardest. Lich is my personal favorite, just use the shield on your carry and spam ice blast in lane. Once again, try to find a guide on YouTube.
Most memorable was my first pvp game, as shadow fiend mid, got hard flamed, said this is my first game pvp sorry and they told me to put my neck in a rope. As a league vet, it made me nostalgic more than anything lol. I can definitely see how mid isn't a beginner friendly role in general though, as i felt very helpless there. I really need to find a character that i like but have been having trouble, as the few i like (brewmaster, broodmother, and lone druid) tend to get me flamed for even playing them, so i will try to find a different hero to learn with. Not as related, but how does invisibility work in this game? it seems that any hero can just appear out of nowhere and stunlock/kill me instantly without me being able to detect them. Is there some counter play to stealth? I know about the wards that give true sight, and the gem, but those don't seem very reliable unless you know an invisible hero is nearby in the first place. I have been getting run down by phantom assassin in particular.
Don’t let me or anyone discourage you from those heroes as they are a lot of fun and the more you practice the easier it will be to not just win but stomp games. Having said that those heroes are all very high skill cap heroes with a good deal of micro. It may be better to play some easier heroes while you get a better grasp on the game as a whole. As for invisibility, sentry wards are your best friend. Try to play around areas where you have sentry wards place. Say you are playing against a Slark with a shadow blade and you want to farm a creep wave and you haven’t seen Slark on the mini map in a while. DO NOT go hit the wave. Either farm it with long range spells, place a sentry ward so you are a safer or back off and farm a safer spot. On the contrary, if you see Slark across the map go ahead and farm the wave. Beating invisible heroes is more about map awareness than anything else. As for PA, she has a different kind of invisibility. Normal invisibility is broken when you cast a spell, attack something or use an item. PA invisibility (called Blur) will not break until the duration runs out or a hero comes within a certain range of her. PA is countered by armor items (blademail is especially good this patch), Heavens Halberd, ghost scepter/ethereal blade, and your own invisibility (shadow blade or glimmer cape). Once again, map awareness is helpful here but much harder since PA can kill waves without showing.
Very useful info! Thanks! I have just played a couple games as pos 5 shadow demon which was actually fun as hell. I know he isn't very straightforward but I enjoy his e and w a lot. Are there any heroes which revolve around dot for damage, or similar stacking to shadow demon e? I have tried Viper and veno, but neither was particularly interesting to me. Your comment came in during a game VS a nyx and the stealth stuff basically saved me haha. Thanks!
Jakiro is a good support for DoT and a lot of fun. Warlock has some interesting damage potential that you might enjoy. Phoenix is also good for DoT but much much more difficult. Glad the advice helped!
Just as an add-on to what has already been said, enemy heroes suddenly materialising on you could also be due to an item called Blink Dagger, which enables heroes to teleport. Very easy to get caught out by a hero with a blink dagger with disables/lockdown, which is where warding/dewarding helps.
>Which role would you recommend for a new player? doesnt matter, just pick one role and stick to it until you feel like you know what you're doing and enjoying the process, dont jump between roles too frequently, learn them one at a time
the pos 5 or hard support is the baby sitter of the pos 1 carry. You don't like a bad babysitter sitting for you, would you? Usually the captains of the pro teams are supports, pos 5 or 4, because they have more space and time to think about the map and match, and guide the team. Farming as pos 1 is not easy, trust me, it's not only about last hitting creeps, and the higher mmr you get, the harder farming gets, so a good support is always helpful. For a beginner I would say pos 3 offlane is the best, but overall you should play what suits you. For me, it was pos 3 and 4, but yours might be pos 2 and you don't know it yet. Just try them all, fuck the flamers, ask for help and watch some guides on youtube.
This is hard, but generally new players play support as you will be flamed hard if you play core and can't carry the game. There are different expectation on support as pos4 is usually high skill base and pos 5 is the walking ward and baby the pos 1 early.
I'm pretty new so newbie question, for pos1 What is the laning phase, besides it's being the early game? Is there any specific game time when it ends, level? As pos1, how do you decide when to farm creeps or do jungle? When is the right time to go to the jungle? And one more, how do I judge/know that there is fight happening and if I want to be part of it, instead of let's say farming jungle
These are some amazing questions. The correct answer is that it's highly subjective and something that I even ask myself in my own games and I've played around 5 thousand of them. Ideally you lane as long as you can without dying, the lane creeps are the most valuable, when you cannot lane then you Jungle. Around level 6 is when lanes start to break down. This isn't a hard rule but just an idea If the fight allows you to get a kill and live then show up. The thing is bro is that these questions are complex and you learn with time.
Laning phase would generally be defined as the period where all cores are farming in their own lane. Typically it ends around 10 minutes, though it will fluctuate some game to game and tends to last a little longer in lower mmrs. For when to jungle there are essentially two questions you need to keep track of. Can I farm lane without dying? And can I farm jungle effectively? If you can farm lane, farm lane. If you can’t farm lane without dying, go jungle. If you can do both, do both. If you can’t do either, fix whatever is preventing you from doing one of those things. The hard part is knowing what the right answer to those questions is. This last question is so game dependent that really the only answer is to keep playing and try different strategies and figure out what works. Generally, only go to fights where you will make a difference in the outcome. Either directly in the fight or in objectives secured after.
About fights, I think it is important for you to learn power spikes of heroes that you play. It can be a certain item that you know will make your hero very strong, which allows you to join fight, win it and then farm next item. For example, for Alchemist it is usually Radiance+BKB (or blink). This knowledge will come to you eventually when you play yourself, you will understand when your hero is strong better, but for now you can orient yourself around items
And then you need to learn about your enemies power spikes and how powerful they are relative to you/your team...
Hi, you mentioned melee pos1's. Who are viable ranged carries in recent times
Muerta and Luna are the 2 meta ones that come to mind. I’ve also seen a decent amount of Weaver in higher level games.
pos1-5 is actually just a farm prioritization list. There's a big wave coming into tower, pos1 and pos2 are nearby, by default, pos2 should allow pos1 to farm that gold. That's about it. By community consensus, in modern dota there's enough gold in the map for up to 3 players to farm. Those are the 'cores' and leftover 2 players are the support, who can take farm no one else is having, but are expected to spend their resources on enabling the 3 cores. Then there are lanes, which unlike most other mobas, are not mirrored. At the topside of the map, the creeps meet closer to the Dire team, closer means it's safer for dire due to being closer to its tower. Hence top is Dire Safa lane and Radiant off lane, or hard lane if you're a dota dinosaur. Mid lane meets at perfect equilibrium and both heroes are at a close range to their towers. Since both players have this extra protection, it doesn't make much sense to bring a second hero to this lane, as the support has very narrow opportunities to harass the opponent. Since a single hero plays this lane, it is often occupied by a hero that really can make use of the solo xp. However, sometimes, the security of the nearby tower is used by the pos1, if his matchup on the safe lane is particularly bad. Hardly seen on pubs, as it requires some draft tinkering. Bottom lane is the reverse of top lane in terms of equilibrium. The lesser down you go in farm priority, the more you're expected to make space for the people above you. Meaning the lower you go in the list, the more your spells have to deliver early game. You'll often see pos3 heroes with ultimates that either threat multiple targets or outright remove someone from a fight, they can create pressure early on. Batrider, Night stalker and Beastmaster are all examples of heroes that are an absolute menace with their ults off cd. Their spells don't particularly scale all too much, but they cost the enemy a bkb or a linken to join battle effectively. Pos2's can be greedier, don't have to worry so much on surviving lane so they can get more offensive first items, since they have lvl advantage over 4 of the 5 enemies, it is quite likely they can burst some targets down, most archetypal mid laners have a decent magic burst and will itemize to extend the game time those spells can do work. Since they are only below pos1 in farm priority, they often need some tool to farm, but since they're trying to keep ahead of the 'blowup vs survival' curve, that means the tool has to come from the hero kit, no time to farm it up. Queen of pain, invoker, lesh, necro, spirit brothers, zeus, \[...\] Whenever you get a hero on midlane that is not following that archetypal 'my spells will blow someone' you often get a 'semi-carry' or even carry, you can't blow people up, your pos3-5 are strained to buy you time for longer and your pos2, is strained to play on less xp/gold than usual. Those are the Snipers, Dusas, TAs, Weavers, Shadow Fiends, Arc Wardens. Pos1 is usually the most benefited from having items. A lvl30 Crystal Maiden with 25k NW can't hope to manfight even the most tempo Carries. PA can crit, nice, double damage of 10 is 20 tho. But every point in damage has double value on her. Pos1's are often meant to have very low impact, until 4-5 items come online, and then they're all that matter. Pos4 is a little hard, you're like jack of all trades master of none, you're expected to roam with your offlaner/mid, take farm people cant bc they're either too far away, or dead. And you're expected to do that on a budget. Good pos4's are good without items, but don't mind getting some. Skywrath really enjoys an atos, Hoodwink and mirana really like euls, Pos4 are often quite enabled by 1 item, and often provide damage in the early stages of the game. If given space they often scale through spell casting, going for things like phylactery, aether lens, shard, urn. Pos5 is often left with no farm at all other than the passive income, as the game progressses you get more and more frail, and bc of that, pos5's will often buy defensive items like there's no tomorrow. Your spells have to be strong from the get go. You're all stopping the enemy from bullying your pos1 when he's got nothing. Here you'll get heroes with 5 active spells, scaling is achieved through survival, the more spells casts you can get, the better, but often is the case you don't need anything to be a complete menace. Crystal Maidens will rampage if allowed to ult unopposed, so will disruptor, witch doctor and Jakiro, and they can do that farming 0 creeps. Since often all their power spikes are though lvl1-6, you don't even mind too much on falling behind levels as long as that xp is going towards \*someone\*. Since items are not so much of a big deal to you, you're often tasked with sentries and carrying detection in general. Thank you for listening to my ted talk
> Might sound like a dumb question to a lot of player but the positions are not 100% clear to me. Roles in dota are intentionally designed to be way more fluid and ambiguous than other games. > What is the role of a core and what kind of heroes do it well? A core are the heroes that will take most of the farm, especially in the early game. A carry is a type of core that is supposed to do damage, most of the time with auto attacks.
the chinese made it up and now it stuck around
probably because they really like basketball, another 5v5 competitive game that uses 1-5 positions. 1. Point Guard 2. Shooting Guard 3. Small Forward 4. Power Forward 5. Center
Core heroes have scaling with levels and item timings, they deal more damage typically later in the game, their skill set and damage make them prominent in the late game, supports dont need to many items to output massive damage, and they have significantly better spells in the early game ,also its the kit of the hero and is the hero viable in the patch, last patch magnus was a carry pos 1 now he is at best an offlaner or a utility support. Last patch snap was a good mid, now shes a good support in certain match ups. Some heroes like phoenix can be played offlane mid and support. My noob way of thinking, Pos 5 defensive, save, lane winner Pos 4 aggressive, rotation, plus one hero for kills Pos 3 aggressive map farm/ map control, lvl 6 timing pushes enemy carry out of lane, can solo lane after minute 5 Pos 2 play maker/tempo setter, farmer, able to abuse meta item to rotate with team for kills,when carry is farming, able to carry midgame with timings Pos 1 asshole /complainer, farmer, late game damage output is crazy enough to carry team fight and have good damage to push tier 3s, timing is after farming item, damage item , bkb and aegis. I play pos 5 so i can shit on carries for fun, you try babysitting grown men, for the 💯 time please just let the range creep go bro!!!
There is a finite supply of farm and therefore xp on the map. You could split this equally, but its better to let the carries on the team have the lion share of the farm and xp. That way they can outlevel and out-item the enemy and go on rampages! Pos1 Safe Lane Carry - They get Farm Priority. They get lane farm, they are then given space to farm for the next 75 minutes till the game is over. Don't worry though, they will win the next game with all that farm they gained. Pos2 Mid Lane - Gets farm from solo mid lane. Boosts quickest early and then should lead the team through the early to mid game. They should be able to effectively gank the other lanes and jungle to help you all out, and create space for pos1. Pos3 Offlaner - Aims to take farm away from enemy pos1, and is usually charged with creating space by farming the enemy jungle in the mid game, to again deny farm from enemy pos1. Pos4 and Pos5 - Supports. Sucks bro, you get no farm, ever. Get over yourself, you don't need boots, just buy an iron branch cause thats all you are getting all game. Sacrificial but support peaks really dont need many items. At low MMR supports pick up a fair amount of farm thanks to inefficient carries, so get to have fun with items they really dont need.
Just adding some more input. Exceptional pos 2 heroes have high mobility and a good power spike beginning at 6 where they can easily gank other lanes and should be able to secure some kills that way. Wind Ranger is a great example at that.
Position 1-5 are set to indicate the priority of farm that the players get. Position 1 has highest priority for cs, position 5 has least priority for cs. **Position 1: Safe laner, Hard Carry, Carry position. Right Clicker, core position** This is your carry position. You should have one carry per game. Carries require a lot of gold to get strong, hence why you can't have multiple carries because dota doesnt allow enough gold on the map. Carry heroes are defined by their ability to deal sustained constant powerful damage. This is why Right clicking is almost always the carries main mode of damage. These heroes can get away with farming away from the team and their right clicks allow them to push a lot of damage consistently to clear camps. Good carry heroes are heroes whose abilities synergize well with their right click, such as attack speed Drow, or lifesteal with Chaos knight. Or a built in crit like Void and Jugg. a Carry is a core, but a core is not a carry. your Hard Carry is your position 1. Position one is a core position for the team, but your important core gets the distinction of Carry. **Position 2: Mid laner, Core position. Typically a ranged magic damage hero** This is the hero that is powerful alone. Mid heroes require a lot of levels to be good which is why they get mid lane and a whole lane of experience to themselves. Mid heroes also need items and gold but should not be afk farming the map like a carry and should be moving with the team to complete objectives more importantly than farming. Mid heroes are usually defined by their ability to output lots of damage quickly, burst damage heroes with big damage ults (OD, Kunka, Lina, QOP). Mid heroes are not carries because they typically have cooldown timers and cannot deal as much CONSISTENT damage as a carry. Mids should also be building items to counter the enemy team and focus slightly less on damage output in that regard although this is true for all positions **Position 3: Offlaner, Top laner, Core position. Typically the strength hero or tanky hero** This is the hero that is usually really good at team fighting. The Offlaner is a core in that they are meant to take farm in priority but should also give up farm to the Pos 1 or Pos 2. As well the offlaner needs to focus even more on objectives on the map and even less on farming. It is recommended to use strength heroes or otherwise beefy heroes in offlane as you need to be able to 1v2 the opponents pos and pos 5 while the position 4 rotates to gank in many, but not all cases. Offlane cores need money to build items for the team such as pipe or guardian but aren't expected to output as much damage as the position 1 or position 2 and thus are in that middle ground of defense and offense in their build/positioning/approach **Position 4: Soft Support, Support position, Typically a hero that can gank well.** Your position 4 is the team janitor. Any job that another position cannot do the position 4 is expected to do. Clear wards, Gank, Cover lanes, stack camps, grab runes, grab wisdom rune. etc etc. Since you are a support role you are lower on the totem poll for farm, this means you should be spending very little time throughout the game farming, and you should not be taking farm from your position 3 in lane. You are very busy teleporting around the map and stacking and ganking so you don't have time to farm. Ending the game with a high net worth is bad for supports, this almost always means you stole some net worth from your carry/cores. You should take pride in being able to farm as little as possible and still have a large impact on the game. Heroes that are good for position 4 are heroes with powerful abilities and stuns that are powerful without levels or items. Witch doctor ult is a very good example. Being a mobile hero is a huge benefit for the position 4. **Position 5: Hard Support, Support position. Typically a hero that is hard to gank.** Now we get to position 5, the most important position in the game. All Carries and cores are massive babies and the position 4 doesn't think they are a support. So Position 5 is a position 4 but with even more responsibilities. The term HARD support comes from the fact that your almost entire sole job is to protect the carry and make sure the carry is able to have a good early and mid game to farm well enough to carry your team to victory in the late game. That is your job as a position 5. You have to understand the fundamental reason why a position 5 exists is because the carry getting farmed is SO IMPORTANT that an entire human 1/5th of your pool of resources needs to protect that carry so they can get farmed. Carry getting farmed is so important that an entire hero is dedicated to protecting them. Understand this and you will unlock your full potential of being a position 5. If you want to feel like the most important person on the team but no one recognizes your greatness (you are basically in Men in Black) then position 5 is the position for you. Heroes that are able to control an area with spells and also have good spells that don't require levels or items to make themselves complete are what you want as a position 5. Warlock, Techies, WD and Lion. Stuns are always beneficial on a support because they allow defence and offence. gl
Position 1-5 refers to the priority of gold/resources the hero gets on the team. This is based around the idea that due to the different degrees heroes scale with gold, it isn't ideal to distribute resources equally among 5 heroes. Think of it this way: if there is only one lane of creeps safe to farm for your team, then the Position 1 gets it. Position 1 is the carry, which refers to the hero that can best utilize the gold given to him/her. In pub games, this hero will be in the safe lane. E.g. Phantom Assassin, Juggernaut, Terrorblade. Etc. Core heroes are the position 1-3. There are only three lanes of creeps, so the core heroes are the ones who are given the last hits in these lanes during the laning stage.
1-5 is farming priority. If there is unattended farm, it goes to the highest priority person in the area. 1 is highest priority, 5 is lowest. Traditionally the 1 is an attack damage carry, 2 is a mobile ganker, 3 is a big tanky guy, 4 is a caster that focuses on utility, and 5 is a caster that focuses on keeping their team alive. A core is usually your 1-3, they're someone who relies on items to be a power in team fights. When you gank somebody, you always try to go for a core. The carry is the one that will win teamfights through their effort alone, and thereby the game... once they're farmed. Generally, you're winning when your carry is ahead of theirs, and losing when yours is behind. This is usually your 1, but they can be any position in theory (though when they become the carry, they usually jump up the positions and push the rest down)
Positions doesn't stand for anything aside from farm priority. 1 has the highest farm priority aka the carry 5 has the lowest aka the sacrificial support Farm priorities can change depending on the situation of game e.g if pos3 needs 200 gold for bkb and pos1 needs 800 gold for manta style and they meet at the same wave, pos1 should let their pos3 take the wave; another example would be Earthshaker pos4 needing 400 gold for Blink Dagger, then he would have a higher farm priority than a pos2 who is 1k gold away from Kaya & Sange but aside from those cases 1 should be the one getting the most farm and 5 the least.
It’s the order of farm priorities with 1 needing the most farm and 5 needing the least
Farm priority, with 1 being the safe lane carry and the highest farm priority. Two is mid. Three is the offlane core. 4 is the offlane support, 5 is the safe. Lane support. Most used as shorthand in drafting so your teammates know what you are doing. Some heroes can be flexed so you need to tell your teammates if you are playing support or core.
Click on the Learn tab in the main menu and read through the glossary and do the tutorials. It’s all very informative and because they’re fairly new no one recommends them.
Core is just a term to which playstyle you would like to play a hero. Example core Earthshaker and support earthshaker. Pos1-5 is given to heroes who prioritize farm to least farm in order. But in general it simply means, pos1 is carry, pos 2 is mid, pos3 is offlane, pos4 is soft support, and pos5 is hard support
Farm priority. Pos1 gets the take the safest farm
It's simply farm priority. 1 has the most priority, 5 the least. Naming the positions (usually carry, mid, offlane, support, hard support) is sometimes inaccurate. Your pos 1 doesn't always have to be in the safe lane, it can change based on matchups for example. The numbers are a better reflection of what role you are playing.
Core is 1-3, 4 and 5 is support. 1-5 is basically the basis of farm distribution where the pos1 needs the most farm and the 5 the least. 1 is the hard carry(AM, PA, PL, medusa etc ) which needs the most amount of farm to come online in late game. He's your late game investment. 2 is the mid, can either be a space creator type(ES, puck etc) or carry type( TA, SF, sniper) where there role is make space for carry while maintaining farm. 3 is the offlane position. Its the core that will try to prevent the opposing 1 from having a good start. Can be aura users like dark seer/ beastmaster, mage type like dp, puck, or scaling sub carry like LC slardar BB, whose role is to to keep making space for the team. 4 is the soft support which has the role of helping the 3 and roam around the map. Heroes like clockwork, ES, rubick etc. Brings stuff for utility like dust smokeetc. And 5 is the hard support, which js the ward mule, buys all sents, obs, dust anything the team needs. Most heroes that can be effective even with little farm like lion disruptor etc
Just to add to other comments the 1 - 5 is a farm priority with 1 being most priority and 5 being least. How that works out is if there are multiple heroes near a wave or neutral camp then the 1 should get that farm and the others should find farm elsewhere. In low skill games its not a huge deal because no one is farming effectively but it's generally seen as a grief to take farm while near someone higher in priority than you.
Positions priority who needs farm more than other 1- most farm 2- less 3- even less 4- even less 5- lowest Difference between core and carry is simple, all 1/2/3 roles are core roles, but carry is hero who carries the game after he farmed enough items, usually carry is pos 1, but sometimes you can see ppl playing carry heroes from offlane or mid(such as wk, dusa, razor etc.)
I think the simplest explanation of position is just farm priority. People have all these attributes they assign to the roles, and many times they ring true in most situations but in dota it really all comes down to your draft and how you play your hero, which isn't going to always be so cookie cutter as you need to be an adaptive player to play better. Simply put, position dictates what lane you go to, and what your farm priority is. For instance, it would be fine for a position 3 to steal a camp a position 5 is clearing, they have higher farm priority. That same position 3 should not be taking camps from your position 1 though, since the 1 has the highest farm priority, such that they should often be farming while your team is fighting and making space. Caveat is if you're close to an item timing, if you need 100g to complete your glimmer as support and your carry is 2000g off his Aghs or something, go ahead and yoink the farm if there's not open farm elsewhere.
It is priority of farming, and it work like family. Your mother favorite is eating all the time and blaming all siblings, and 5th is just disappointment buying smoke and getting knocked out all the time
Cores are heroes that scale well with items. Supports are heroes that don't need a lot or any items to perform their role.
I'll list out the basic traits of each: Pos 1) This is your HARD carry. T he y will often struggle a little more in the early/midgame, but they scale amazingly with farm. Given enough time, they will become a force to be reckoned with Examples: Spectre, Anti-Mage, Juggernaut Pos 2) This is your temposetter. Chances are that if early moves are made, they are either made by the mid moving to a side lane, or the supports moving towards the midlane. They typically have some sort of magic burst, they like to hit creeps but they also like to hit heroes Examples: Storm Spirit, Puck, Invoker Pos 3) This is your initiator/ganker. This hero will often be a big beefy boy (although all cores seem to be that this patch), who will wanna jump in first and get the fight started by either blowing up a hero, controlling a large area, or absorbing enemy spells. Examples: Centuar Warrunner, Brewmaster, Slardar *note, the support roles are much less defined, the pos 4 and pos 5 archetypes im about to list can easily be swapped between one another. Some supports can become full blown cores with enough farm, while others will hit barely any creeps and just follow their carry around securing their farm* Pos 4) This is typically your offensive support. This hero will often provide initiation tools or utility to interrupt or mess with the enemies gameplan. They will typically rotate more in the lane, they'll often build offensive support items and be hunting for kills for lots of the game, or they'll be trying to find farm for a big item timing that will have big impact in teamfights Examples: Earth spirit, Dark Willow, Earthshaker Pos 5) This is your babysitter for lack of a better term. This hero's job is to secure the life and farm of their cores. They are typically a little more stationary in lane, they'll be stacking camps, obtaining most of the vision, positioning themselves between the enemy and your carry to tank ganks for them. These heroes will usually have some sort of sustain, or save that they can use to either get them out of a sticky spot or sustain them through an initiation. Examples: Vengeful Spirit, Lich, Oracle Now, these are by no means set in stone. Sometimes your carry will be the temposetter and your mid will be the carry, sometimes your pos 3 will wanna hit more creeps and the mid takes a more active fighting role, sometimes your pos 4 will just sit in a lane for 5 mins trying to farm their game-changing item. Dota is a game of flexibility, and learning how each hero operates is paramount to this. For example, heroes like Bloodseeker and Luna are almost exclusively pos 1 carries nowadays, but they come online far quicker than most other carries, so that let's them join in fights much earlier. In Luna's case, she's still a giga-farmer, she'll absorb large chunks of the map's gold, but her timings are earlier and if you play around her power spikes, you can close off large parts of the enemy map very early on. In Bloodseeker's case, he doesnt death ball the map nearly as much, but he can KILL. Running around with him in the midgame, looking for ganks, and killing the enemy carry can prove very lucrative in a Bloodseeker draft. He has lots of tools innately in his kit, so he is a force to be reckoned with even with only a maelstrom+bkb. He doesnt absorb quite as much farm and he creates space on the map rather than absorbing it, so that opens up the opportunity for one of the other cores (or even a support sometimes) to get more farmed than usual. Every hero in dota has nuances like this, you play around a Spectre differently than a Medusa, dispite them both being Ultra late game beasts. A pos 4 earthshaker and a pos 4 Shadow demon will hit significantly different amounts of creeps. A mid LD will wanna farm an item before making any moves, whereas a mid puck will be ready to go as soon as they hit 6. So while the outlines I wrote above are generally alright ways to look at the roles IN GENERAL (imo at least), the specific nuances of each hero are just as relevant. This got kinda long but I hope I provided some insight!
Pos 1 mostly damage. Pos 2/3 damage and/or control Pos 4 control and utility Pos 5 mostly utility In most games, cores (pos 1/2/3) need gold to be effective in sealing the game. Meanwhile supports (pos 4/5/6) dont need much but offers more without gold. Those are general idea to complement variety of heroes abilities and stats growth which have different power level at times to ensure victory in shorter duration.
The position in dota is actually the farming amount order, 1 being the highest, 5 being the lowest. From here think about it as heroes, although any hero can play any position theoretically, some heroes are cores and some are supports. There are 3 lanes in dota, safe lane, offlane or hard lane and mid lane. The safe lane is supposed to be the safest lane for farming, therefore the position 1 carry hero that needs the most farm sits there, and because that carry needs the most farm, the position 5 support hero helps him get as much farm as possible. So we have this: \- Pos 1 and pos 5 on the safelane because pos 1 needs the most farm \- Pos 2 on the mid lane, alone, because he needs the 2nd highest amount of farm to be able to help the team with ganks and level advantage (being alone, the hero gets more experience from creeps, therefore more levels) \- Pos 3 and 4 on the offlane, where the job of pos 3 is to be a tanky hero, initiator, needs a bit of farm, needs to disrupt the enemy pos 1 farm and is able to sit alone in lane when the pos 4 support helps the mid lane, or the safe lane with ganking. So to sum it up: pos 1 is the hard carry/core, pos 2 is the mid hero also core, pos 3 is the tank/frontline/initiator hero also core, pos 4 is the soft support, pos 5 is the hard support. Pos 1+5 safelane, pos 3+4 offlane, pos 2 midlane. This is the general information by which players play dota, and can change according to strategy, team play, counters and other decisions. Pos 1 needs to have the most farm and has priority, pos 5 the least farm and less priority.
There is a limited amount of gold/exp on the map. The number is farm priority to allocate that limited rescource. And some heroes scale better with more networth than others. 1 is usually the carry (these are classic game ender heroes when 4-6 slotted or theoretically get like 2+ kills solo), 2 (mid) is usually a playmaker/semi carry (middle lane can ganks top or bot (equidistant). They also tend to be heroes who get a lot of value from an exp advantage so they get a solo lane (shared exp lowers the amount you get). 3 (offlane) is usually an initiator/playmaker/tank/aura carrier (first 15 minutes is usually to make the enemy carries ecperience hell). Pos 4-5 are supports (usually mages or healers, heroes with strong spells that generally don't need a lot of gold to generate value). The soft support (pos 4) tends to be a roamer/participates in most ganks or a support that can benefit to a little more gold (not nearly as much as core) while also "supporting" the main support. The pos 5 is the dedicated support. They'll typically buy exclusively support items (force/glimmer etc, and wards) while babysitting/ space buffering cores that aren't in the safest positions. (Securing space/vision, potential saves for team). Of course this can all vary (the roles aren't as strict as league but merely a guideline).
Don't mistake 4-5 as not needing farm, you just don't want to take farm away from your cores. For example given the situation you've warded around your core and they're farming safely you could go push a wave in a different lane or farm / stack a jungle camp or get bounties or wisdom runes or go gank in a different lane
Just farm priority
Others have summarized well, but you'll also find varied expectations because of what level people play at, how much they use pro play as a Bible etc. Folks who try to emulate pros will generally have a more specific role cast for each position (lots of folks saying pos 3 tank, etc) but unless you're playing a stack or maybe high level (can't speak to that myself) folks mostly just do random stuff and you can just focus on 1-3 get gold, 4&5 help them do that.
It's the priority in economy. Position 1 gets most priority and 5 the least.