The Dota 2 1-to-5 system, an introduction to farm priority

With the popularity of Dota AutoChess, there are people who are trying out the game for the first time. We've noticed this through increased traffic to some old, outdated, strategy threads. We don't want to present new users with bad/outdated information so we've made an updated guide to the 1-5 system.

What is the 1-5 system?

As the meta keeps changing with each and every patch there are very few constants in Dota 2. One of them is the 1-5 System that has become the standard in the Dota world. But what does it actually all encompass? Often the term is just thrown around without much elaboration and if you are wondering about the principles and guidelines to it, you have come to the right place.

Dota 2 has at its core 2 limited resources: Gold and Experience. The 1-5 System simply assigns priorities to each player/hero on the team to distribute the aforementioned resources. Subsequently the 1 position receives the lion’s share of it, while the position 5 has to contend himself with the leftover scraps.

Below we take a closer look at the positions and what they typically entail. Note that this guide was written to be general and the goal is not to fully explain every position and the item choices required for that position. It's an "introduction" after all.

Position 1

This position is the “hard carry” of your team. Often found in the safelane (but not exclusively) they are your typical win-condition and require a lot of items and levels to be effective at their job. While the trend has moved towards cores that can be active even in the early to mid game, the full power of these heroes is often only unlocked once they either hit a specific level-timing or get close to 3 “endgame”-items that allow them to wreck the opposition. How a team drafts their position 1 hero is also a very telling sign of the overall game plan as the differences between individual choices can be huge. While technically filling the same role by virtue of being the win-condition on their team, a draft around Spectre differs significantly from a draft focused on a Lone Druid as position 1.


In terms of item choices most position 1 heroes tend towards a balance of early farm accelerating items like a Battlefury or a Hand of Midas into heavy-hitting damage items with just enough defensive items to ensure their survival in fights. Item choices as position 1 can easily make or break a game depending on the situation so do not take the following list of common items as gospel.

Position 2

The second in priority was previously the playmaker-role in the lineup, though now the role has become more nuanced. Although in recent years the divide between positions 1 and 2 has started to blur by quite a bit, classically your midlaner will usually be the position 2 and set the tempo of your team’s play. Perhaps the most well-known stereotype of the playmaker-style that was prevalent until recent years is the Queen of Pain that wins her lane and proceeds to snowball and crush the opposition. With the rise of more farm-heavy mids in the meta, the position 2 role has changed quite significantly.

Back then you often saw a Midlaner rotate out of the lane and start ganking around the map as soon as he hit his first power spike by reaching level 6 much earlier than the sidelanes would allow you to. Now the play is more nuanced and influenced by overall draft and gameplan. As farming increased in importance the ganking and “space-creating” aspects of the position 2 got more and more relegated to active position 3s or 4s.

It has become far more important for your position 2 to keep up in farm in order to have a dual threat towards the opposition instead of just a single scaling core position 1 that then proceeds to get focused and shut down. That being said we have still seen position 2 take on a “sacrificial core” role in professional games, displayed most prominently by Team Liquid’s Matumbaman and OG’s Notail.

The hero and item pools of positions 1 and 2 have started to see a significant amount of overlap. It is now just as common to see a position 1 hero in the midlane as it is to see them in the safelane. This has led to top tier teams having position 1 and 2 players that are as comfortable in the midlane as they are the side-lanes. While both players could fill both roles, teams often have a clear preference for which player takes the position 1 role (Team Liquid’s Miracle- being the prime example).



The focus items for the position 2 heroes are usually items enabling you to seize map control and harry the opponents gameplan. Builds vary wildly depending on which hero is chosen for the position and also depending on which lane you find yourself in. However the choices all have in common that they enable your hero to be active around the map at a very early stage while also not losing out on the farming aspect.

Position 3

The third in the farm and experience priority position 3 players fill in a variety of different functions in a draft. In most cases they have crucial ultimates for teamfights and often serve as the initiator or “aura carrier” of the team, picking up items like Guardian Greaves, Pipe of Insight, or Crimson Guard. Usually making their home in the offlane, position 3 heroes are much more limited in farm and experience than positions 1 to 2 but they are commonly less reliant on those. Generally speaking once they hit level 6 and get a single key item (in most cases the Blink Dagger) they can become active around the map, leading the charge as they find pickoffs or initiate fights.

Depending on the choice of hero in some cases a position 3 will also be required to transition into a third source of damage in the later portions of the game and owed to that well-scaling position 3 heroes have been on the rise.



As already mentioned in most drafts they are the designated “aura carrier” and pick up the majority of the “teamfight”-items for their side, often after their choice of mobility or initiation items like a Blink Dagger. If the game transitions into a long haul slugfest it is also very common to see position 3 players start prioritising more offensive items such as pure damage or a Bloodthorn for example.

Position 4

As we move further down the list we arrive at the first of the support duo behind each team, the position 4. Gifted with more freedom to farm than his position 5 counterpart much of the early game and it’s rotations rest on this player. Winning the lanes or salvaging losses are the key tasks for the “playmaking support” and as such it is not uncommon to see new and different heroes arrive in this position during the meta as it has become ever more varied. Oftentimes the position 4 hero has a strong emphasis on lane dominance or gank/roam potential enabling him to throw his weight around early. The emergence of ever more greedier picks for the position 4 has made late game scaling into a part of the position 4 identity as well with flashy pros like Yapzor leading the charge.



For item choices a position 4 is obviously quite limited by the relatively low priority assigned to him, nevertheless a couple of key item pickups can enable his team to open up lethal timings and the current meta has seen ever more farm distributed to you. Generally speaking a position 4 will have 2-3 high cost items at the end of the game, very much so dependent on his hero. As varied as the choices are they usually fall into the two categories of enabling/empowering his hero or survival.

Common Items

Position 5

Last but certainly not least we have the position 5 support. Starved for farm and burdened by the duty to set the lion’s share of his gold aside for Wards and Detection it can be quite the struggle to farm up anything. Although we are very far from the days when position 5 supports only had brown boots and some Bracers at the end of the game, it is still uncommon to have more than 1-2 more expensive items when the throne falls. Owed to their role in the draft as the more defensive minded support, picks are often heroes who only need a minimum amount of levels and farm to work with, while still being effective in securing a lane for their position 1 or 2 player.



The characteristic of the position 5 also transfers to the item choices and are heavily focused on survival either of yourself or of your teammates. Besides slowly building up to such an item (like a Force Staff for example) the majority of a position 5’s gold will end up being invested into the vision war between teams. That not only includes Observer Wards for map control, but also Sentries and Dust for detection as well as Smoke of Deceit for aggressive maneuvers.

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