EPTFirstly, I'd like to say I'm really thankful to be surrounded by great teammates. I really see how far we've come along in terms of friendship and trust when I look at my friend's team (explained below). I really have come to develop an appreciation for my team because of this bird's eye view perspective of competitive DotA and it's complications. I'm splitting this into multiple parts because there is simply too much information.
Recently I was asked by an old friend to coach his team a bit. For the purposes of this blog I'll refer to my friend as "Bob". I reluctantly agreed, to keep a long story short. His team seems to be somewhat mid-skilled and going through a lot of the struggles every newly-organized DotA squad experiences. I'd like to share my perspective as a DotA insider. The many intricacies of creating a well-balanced team are often overshadowed by the successes of established teams. Our team underwent a great deal of adversity and have emerged a stronger team due to perseverance.
DotA is a hard competitive game for many reasons. Outside of being mechanically sound, one must assemble a relatively large group of teammates to place his or her trust in. Each and every person counts in such a way that no one should be a weak link. As the old saying goes, "you're as strong as your weakest player". It's totally true in the realm of DotA. Having an all-star player will never make a team. Time has proven that even putting 5 all-star players together will not produce consistent results.
What is it about arranging teammates that makes it so difficult? "Surely 5 high-skilled players with a host of experience with the game should form a great team", some would say. DotA is such a dynamic game that requires many different masteries of skill and knowledge. One aspect of team composition is roles.
Roles are extremely important to a teams success. Roles solidify the focus of each player and assigns them a certain amount of burden to be responsible for. Each core player is responsible for carrying their weight for their intended position. The "weight" I stated in the previous sentence refers to knowledge and mechanics. Each player must be a master of his trade. Whether it be support, sidelane, solo middle, or carry. Every role has to follow a different mentality and possess enough knowledge to maximize efficiency of input and output. I will list the DotA 2 roles below. Please note that the numbers 1-5 refer to the amount of resources allocated to each player in succession to the next (1 being the most resources and 5 being the least).
Roles are divided in to 5 numerical categories (1 through 5).
1. Hard Carry (Takes the most amount of resources [Gold, Experience, Kills])
2. Semi-Carry (Simple as the second most farmed hero)
3. Utility Player (Plays sidelane usually and picks up team-oriented items and makes due with minimal farm)
4. Secondary Support (Most commonly referred to as the Captain's position, usually plays initiatiors, teamfight heroes and disruptors. Also aids the Hard Support [5] with map control through ward coverage and ganking attempts)
5. Hard Support (Least farm of all, tends to be early game-oriented heroes. Buys and places the majority of map control wards and completely sacrifices farm for all roles)
These are the rough outlines with very vague descriptions.
Perhaps I'll update this in the future. More parts are sure to come about what actually goes into the inner workings of a solid DotA 2 team.
-Fluff
