A Beginner’s Guide to Dota 2 – Part 3.5: Situational Items

Clothes make the man, or so they say, and while that’s not strictly true in Dota 2 – both because lots of the heroes aren’t “men” so much as they are “floating radioactive lizard-penises” or “spirits of vengeance bound to this plane by pure rage”, and because the actual clothing options are entirely cosmetic – it’s certainly true that your items have a big impact on how well you’ll do.

Items can turn a game around. One carry wrecking your day? Scythe of Vyse can shut them down long enough for you to burst them down, take out the rest of the team, or retreat. A team of heavy physical damagers? Ghost Scepter turns them into kittens. Insane magic damage or far too many stuns? Linken’s Sphere or Black King Bar are your friends.

This screen helpfully shows both the Quick Buy panel below the Shop button, and also shows which three items build into a Force Staff. Remember: just left-click an item in the shop to see what builds into it.

One thing you really, really need to know is something I closed with last week: big items are made from little items. Aghanim’s Scepter costs a grand total of 4200 gold, but you should not save up 4200 gold and buy it in one go. It’s made up of four other items – a Point Booster, an Ogre Club, a Blade of Alacrity, and a Staff of Wizardry. If you have all four of these items at once, they will immediately transform into Aghanim’s Scepter.

In short: instead of saving up huge amounts of gold for the big expensive items, and risking losing it on death, you can buy the individual items that build into it separately. It’s the exact same price, it gives you bonus stats and abilities faster, and it means there’s less chance of losing a huge wodge of gold to a gank. All you have to do is left-click on an item in the shop to see what makes it up.

Oh yes. And shift-click items in the shop window to add all of their components to your quick buy panel in the bottom-right of the user interface.

Hello!

You know, I honestly thought – and hoped – I could through this week’s article without you popping up.

Nope. You subconsciously hate yourself far too much for that.

Brilliant. Fine, then. Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper; I am not afraid.

Just in case this pops up, my quest is to get a full night’s sleep at some point.

WHAT… are some of the more common items that people should know about?

There are a few that should really be bought at the start of every game. The first – and one of the most crucial for oh-so-many reasons – is the Animal Courier (150 gold).

This little beastie is responsible for one thing: ferrying items from the team’s fountain up to the team members in the lanes. With the tap of one button, he’ll pick up any items you have at the fountain and then trot along to you.

The Courier is essential for a number of reasons, the most obvious and most important being that it means team members don’t need to waste time running back to the fountain in order to get their items. He can also be used to visit the Secret Shop for you and buy items there, which is – again – very handy. Particularly if he’s upgraded to a Flying Courier (220 gold, plus the 150 for Animal Courier) which gives him a speed boost and means he can fly over terrain.

Observer wards have a pretty good vision range, as shown by this one placed a little way southeast of Dire’s Tier 1 middle tower.

The others are Observer Wards (150 gold). There are a limited number of these available at any given time (only one set of two can be purchased at the beginning of the game, and someone should buy them) but they provide a team with wide-ranging vision of a region. They’re useful marking out the spots runes spawn, making sure that the enemy team can’t take on Roshan without you knowing about it, making sure no-one’s sneaking up behind you, or even just keeping tabs on the enemy team. And when placed, they’re invisible.

There are also Sentry Wards (200 gold) which don’t provide much general vision, butdo detect anything invisible in the region. As such, they can be used for protection against stealthed or otherwise hidden heroes, as well as to find and destroy enemy wards. These don’t tend to be picked up early on (except in specific circumstances).

We’ll cover Observer Wards (and good locations for them) in more detail in next week’s guide.

Generally, at the start of any given game, the support players (who need less gold to remain useful) should spend at least part of their starting cash on buying a Courier, buying a set of Observer Wards, and – after a few minutes – upgrading the Courier to Flying.

How about common early-game items for non-support players?

Oh so many. I’ll go into more shortly, but there are two things you’ll regularly see players starting with. The first are Tangos (90 gold), which provide a bit of health regeneration if you, uh, use them to eat a tree.

what

Just bear with it, okay? Use a Tango in your inventory on a tree, get back around 100 health over the next 16 seconds. They come with three charges, so they’re cheap and effective, and the healing persists even if you get hit (which isn’t true of more powerful healing items like Healing Salves). You should pretty much always buy a set of Tangos with your starting gold – they’re really good for healing up damage from enemies harassing you, and they’ll let you stay in your lane longer without having to waste time running back to base.

The second item common to almost all stats is the Iron Branch (53 gold) which nets you +1 to all stats. Not the most effective items in the world, but considering the price, they’re really good for getting a few early stat boosts with your leftover gold and you can build them into a remarkably useful Magic Wand a bit later on. Because they’re +1 to all stats, this also means that squishy casters can get a bigger health bar without buying a strength item, while durable melee-types can increase the size of their mana pool without buying an intelligence item.

Two other items we’ll cover quickly are the Bottle (600 gold) and the Boots of Speed (450 gold, also known as “brown boots”). The Bottle is another healing item with three charges, only these charges restore 135 health and 70 mana, and they fill up whenever you visit your fountain or grab a rune. Grabbing a rune while carrying a Bottle will also “store” the rune, so that you can activate it whenever you like.

The hell is a rune?

Yeah, I haven’t really talked about them yet. Every two minutes, a rune will spawn in one of two locations on the river, helpfully marked on the map below:

X marks the rune spawn spots.

There are five types of rune: Double Damage (doubles auto-attack damage), Haste (increases movement speed to maximum), Illusion (creates a pair of weak duplicates of your hero), Invisibility (makes you invisible), and Regeneration (restores up to around 3000 health and 2000 mana). These spots on the river are commonly warded so that the player in the middle lane knows where the rune has spawned, and can pick it up (to refill their Bottle, say, as Bottles are more common on mid-lane heroes) or at least stop the opponent from getting it.

Right. So: boots?

Brown boots are what pretty much every hero will wind up getting as one of their earliest items that isn’t an actual starting item.

Why don’t players get them as starting items?

Mostly because, at level 1, stats and health regeneration are far more important than base movement speed, as are other components that you’ll build into future items. Boots can be grabbed from the sideshops on the top and bottom lanes, so they’re not nearly so much of a priority as anything that lets you harass/stay alive/last hit creeps early on. Brown boots quite literally do only one thing: increase movement speed.

Now, this does become useful after a few levels when you might need to run away from a gank attempt, or chase an escaping low-health foe, and the Boots of Speed themselves can be upgraded into all sorts of other, more useful boots. Phase Boots make you move really fast and give you an extra boost to speed every eight seconds. Arcane Boots let you restore mana to yourself and nearby allies once every minute. Power Treads give you a big fat stat boost. Etc.

Any others?

Stout Shield (250 gold) and Quelling Blade (225 gold) deserve mentions. Stout Shield give you a 60% chance to block a certain amount of damage (more if you’re melee than if you’re ranged), which is great if you’re being harassed by enemies or are duking it out with creeps in the jungle. Quelling Blade, on the other hand, lets you destroy a tree… or gives you bonus damage against non-heroes. Which makes it a lot easier to last hit if you’re not great at doing that, or – again – helps your jungling. These generally are starting items for a few heroes, particularly those who need farm but are susceptible to harassment, but most can (and should) skip them unless you really need the help surviving harassment or last-hitting.

Also, there’s one thing we really, really need to talk about. Voice in my head, would you jump in so that I’ve got a nice, bold headline for this?

Huh?

This is actually someone porting in with Boots of Travel rather than a Town Portal, but the Town Portal animation is basically the same.

Thanks! Town Portal Scrolls: have a Town Portal Scroll on you at basically all times(except at the very beginning of the match).

I cannot stress this enough. It’s destroyed on use, but a Town Portal Scroll (135 gold) lets you teleport to any friendly structure with a cooldown of 60 seconds. If a tower is under attack, you can appear there to defend it within a few seconds. If you get caught out and need to get back to base quickly, you can appear back there to heal up very quickly. They’re amazing for manoeuvrability. They will save towers. They willcontribute significantly to wins. Carry Town Portal Scrolls, or at least be very near to a shop that sells them if you’re likely to have to move lane in a hurry.

Okay, so second question. WHAT… is –

This isn’t your second question. This is your seventh, and I’m even being kind and not treating “what” or “huh?” as questions.

WHAT… are some of the more common items later on, smartarse?

Well, there are a few I want to go into – Blink Dagger lets you teleport a short distance if you haven’t been attacked in the last three seconds; Shadow Blade lets you turn invisible and gives bonus damage on an attack that ends your stealth; Blademail returns the damage you receive back to your attacks – but I should probably talk about a few of the more important items.

And there are a few items of fair importance to most teams. You’ll generally see Vladimir’s Offering (2050 gold) and Mekansm (2306) turn up in most games – Mek heals everyone around on use, and generally raises health regen with its aura, and Vlad’s gives you (and all allies nearby) a degree of lifesteal on your hits, amongst other things.

That sounds amazing. Why doesn’t everyone buy this as their first item?

Because it is both expensive and terrible in the early game. Do not rush to buy Vlad’s, people. The damage it gives and the health it steals are based on a percentage of your total damage, and early on, basically every hero does next to no bloody damage. It’s also worth noting that because it’s an aura, the aura affects all allies around you too – which means that there’s little reason for, say, a hard carry to get it. There are much, much better items they can get, and a support can pick it up later on if it’s really needed.

Equally, the aura doesn’t stack. If someone else on your team has already bought one, do not buy another, because that equates to a waste of 2050 gold in every single teamfight that both of you are in.

We didn’t actually need Mek to save us from Omniknight’s barrage here. Possibly because there were four of us and one of him. And because Omniknight is largely used to heal people rather than murder entire teams.

You pretty much just mentioned Vlad’s so that you could tell people not to buy it, didn’t you?

It’s a useful item in some situations and it’s often worth picking up, but a fairly common beginner mistake is to rush to buy Vlad’s as soon as possible because, clearly, a bonus to damage and lifesteal is a game-winning combination… if you forget that it gives 15% extra damage and 16% lifesteal, which equates to exactly Sod All for the early game. As this is a beginner’s guide, I want to make sure that this does not happen to you.

So what about Mechanism? You spelled that wrong, by the way.

It’s called Mekansm, and you spelled it wrong. This is worth grabbing (on a support hero), because the health regen aura is fantastic and so is the ability to heal all allies around you for 250 health at the push of a button. 250hp on everyone, plus 4 extra hp regen a second, equates to quite a lot of bonus health. Again, we’ll likely talk about this more next week when I delve into support heroes.

We’re running on a bit and there are just over seven billion items in Dota 2, so I’ll only talk about a couple more before we wrap up with some generalities. The first is Black King Bar (3900 gold), more commonly known as BKB. Other than giving you bonus strength and bonus damage, this little wonder has one other useful effect: when you activate it, you get a few seconds (4 to 10, decreasing each time you use it) of magic immunity.

Very, very few abilities work against someone using BKB. All the magic damage from the enemy team? All the stuns they have? All the disables that lock you in place and preventing you from hitting them? BKB laughs at these. Of course, it also means that your Dazzle won’t be able to heal you, but for the most part the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

The last item I want to talk about is a bit of a bizarre one, but it tickled me when I started out and I suspect it’ll do the same for you. That’s Aghanim’s Scepter, and besides offering a bunch of useful stat boosts, it improves the ultimate ability of a load of heroes.

I want it.

I’m not surprised. With this, Clockwerk’s Hookshot can be used every 12 seconds, instead of every 40. Pudge’s Dismember does extra damage based on his Strength. Shadow Shaman’s Serpent Wards do nearly double damage. Warlock summons two golems instead of one. Etc.

And yet, for some strange reason, I can feel a “but” floating through the breeze…

But I’d still caution you about using it, because – while this might seem like a must-have – it’s pretty situational on most heroes. Yes, Windrunner could use it so that she can Focus Fire every 15 seconds, but in most circumstances she’d be better off with items that raise her damage, or manoeuvrability, or even just something that’ll help the team out more. Crystal Maiden’s Freezing Field will do more damage and have a bigger slow, but considering that thing’s nearly impossible to use without dying anyway, in most cases she’d be better served getting basically anything else at all.

Enchantress is working towards an early Hand of Midas here, because it lets you insta-kill any creep and get 190 gold in return, as well as 2.5x the normal XP. Hand of Midas: turning flesh into money and levels, one jungle camp at a time.

Any general advice?

Other than “use the quick buy keys” and “buy component items rather than saving up huge amounts of money to get a big item in one go”? Well, my suggestion would be toread the item text. A lot of guides will tell you that you should be getting Armlet of Mordiggian or Hand of Midas or Scythe of Vyse on certain heroes, but any item with an active ability is borderline useless if you don’t know what it does. If a guide tells you to build Hand of Midas, make sure you know what Hand of Midas does.

Building the right items is only one part of it – knowing why you’re building them, what they do, and when to use them is another. Much of that will come with time, but you might as well give yourself a headstart by checking up on these things and figuring out why you’re getting them.

Hand of Midas sounds interesting, and I’m pretty sure you mentioned that off-hand towards the end of last week’s article. What does that do?

Hand of Midas is something for everyone! Have you ever been bashing creeps, and wishing that you could not only bash creeps faster, but get more money and experience for bashing creeps? Well, Hand of Midas is for you!

Why are you talking like an infomercial?

Hand of Midas gives you a whopping +30 boost to your attack speed! And not only that, it has an active ability that gives you 190 gold from a creep – any creep* – as well as double experience from that creep! Clearing creep camps has never been easier than with Hand of Midas!

Um.

Now, how long do you think the cooldown on that ability would be? Three minutes? Two minutes? No! It’s a mere 90 seconds! They said it couldn’t be done, but we did it!

Look at that amazing camp-to-gold action! Just click, GOLD! Click, GOLD!

…um…

And when it comes to price, we must’ve gone crazy. On the high street, lesser products will cost you 4000 gold, but because we get our Gloves of Haste direct from wholesalers we can offer it to you for… not 3000 gold. Not 2000 gold. 1900 gold! And because of the 190 gold, every 90 seconds**, it pays for itself within 15 minutes of purchase! We’ll have it shipped out to you by Flying Courier*** as soon as you place your order. There’s absolutely no reason not to buy a Hand of Midas today****!

* Note: Does not work on Ancients.

** Note: We are not responsible for you not noticing that cooldown has ended, or being too far away from creeps to use the ability at the end of cooldown, or losing gold due to ganks or teamfights when other items would’ve been a lot more useful, and thus we do not guarantee that it will pay for itself within 15 minutes.

*** Note: Flying Courier not available when playing with shitty supports.

**** Note: Hand of Midas is a terrible, cost-inefficient item unless you’re a hard carry that desperately needs gold and are fairly well-protected in lane, or are jungling and thus are unlikely to be attacked, harassed, or involved in fights when basically any other item would be a lot more useful.

What’s wrong with you?

What?

You went all creepy and weird, like those over-enthusiastic people on TV that very clearly hate themselves and their life decisions.

You just described me, except that I’m not over-enthusiastic or on TV. What the hell are you talking about, anyway?

Look, can we talk about another item now? And can you be a lot less creepy about it?

Alright. Hand of Midas is first on the list, so —

ANYTHING BUT THAT.

Uh? Okay… well, Dagon is an item that lots of people really like, but I genuinely wouldn’t recommend it to most.

Isn’t Dagon a Lovecraftian sea beast?

As well as an actual fertility god, yes. But in this case it’s a stick that shoots death.

Which is sort of fitting for a fertility god, if you think about it too hard.

Get out. Dagon (2720 gold) gives you +3 strength, +3 agility, +9 damage, and +16 intelligence. Upgrading it causes it to give an extra +2 intelligence, up to a maximum of 24 total. So, in short, you can upgrade it up to level 5.

But what does it do? You mentioned shooting death. I like shooting death.

It can also inflict a hideous amount of burst damage, instantly. At level 1, it can do 400 damage – instantly – every 35 seconds. At level 5, it can do 800 damage every 15 seconds.

Lina’s Laguna Blade is one of the prettiest damn spells in the game.

Ye gods.

Quite. Although a level 5 Dagon costs 7720 gold. Lots of people simply love this item because, hey, free burst damage! The problem is that most other items are more useful for most classes.

More useful than doing 800 damage every 15 seconds?

Let me put it this way – that same money could buy you a Divine Rapier, and a Javelin. You’d be doing an extra 321 damage with every attack, with a chance to doeven more. Equally, Dagon’s damage is lowered by magic resistance (I think), so it’s not quite 800 damage. Even if you forget about Divine Rapier, you could grab a Mjolnir or Abyssal Blade and still have cash left over.

That’s not to say Dagon isn’t useful, but it’s certainly not as useful as a lot of newbies think. By the late game, a strength hero with a bit of farm will have at least a few thousand HP – so it’s not quite as effective against the big targets – and, frankly, if you’ve managed to farm 7720 gold, chances are you should’ve been buying other items again.

It’s mostly useful – surprise! – situationally. It’s great for taking out squishy targets, or supplementing other burst; I wouldn’t normally recommend it on Lion or Lina, but if provides a nice extra push to their high-damage Laguna Blade or Finger of Death spells. Nyx Assassin can make good use of it to supplement his own instant damage for stealthy ganks before a target can even react. Necrolyte can use it to push people below the instant-kill threshold of his ultimate. But if you’re picking it up because “omg damage”, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

This is getting long, so we’ll deal with one more item and then close this out.

Alright. Of the remaining items – Orchid Malevolence and Scythe of Vyse, I guess – which is generally more useful?

Bah. I’d probably say Scythe of Vyse, but I really, really like Orchid Malevolence. Can I talk about both? I’ll be quick, honest.

Oh, go on, then.

Huzzah. Okay, so both of these are generally items you’d want on intelligence heroes, and probably supports, at that – although a semi-carry could make use of Orchid, as could a ganker.

Orchid Malevolence (4125 gold) gives +25 intelligence, +150% mana regen, +30 damage, +30 attack speed, and has a truly evil active ability: you use it on an enemy hero and they’re not only silenced for 5 seconds, but they take an extra 30% damage. That thing has a cooldown of 18 seconds. On an intelligence hero (or someone with a low mana pool, even) it’s a phenomenal item for increasing damage, and for picking off lone targets.

Personally, I like it on Windrunner. It synergises well with Focus Fire – her ability that massively ups her attack speed against one target, at the cost of doing reduced damage – and it’s fantastic for picking off annoying heroes with blink abilities like Puck, Queen of Pain, or Anti-Mage.

Scythe of Vyse (5675 gold), on the other hand, is an unbelievably versatile disable. This offers +10 strength, +10 agility, +35 intelligence, and +150% mana regeneration… and its active ability turns the target hero into a critter for 3.5 seconds. They just… can’t do anything. They move incredibly slowly. They can’t attack. They can’t use abilities. It pretty much knocks one hero out of the fight for as long as it lasts. This has a cooldown of 35 seconds, but it completely shuts down a hero for that duration. You can use it on a heavy-duty type who’ll ruin your day, so that you can quickly take out a teammate or two, or you can knock out an irritating healer for a little while. Also: half of the characters refer to it as a Sheepstick, which is just great.

Again: situational. These items are costly, and you’ll want to pick one based on what you’ve got and what you’re up against. If they’ve got loads of enemies with blinks, or ability-based stealth, then Orchid Malevolence can give you a chance to kill them – ifyou already have enough stuns and disables to keep them from running away or just outright killing you first. On the other hand, Scythe of Vyse can pretty much lockanyone down for a healthy period of time.

So, rather than give actual advice, you’re really just saying “You shouldn’t buy any of these without thinking about it first?”

Depressingly, yes. A lot of Dota 2 comes down to knowing what to do and when – when to engage, when to pull back, when to sacrifice yourself for the carry, when you’re not going to be able to make it. This is as true of items as anything else. There’s no better teacher than experience (although experience and a mentor can’t hurt).

The best I can really do, here, is give you reasons as to why items are good and bad, and hope that you can figure out for yourself when they’re worth the cash as opposed to other items. What I will say is that – as with Vlad’s, and Mek – some of these are things that you’ll almost certainly want someone to get, even if it’s not you. Scythe of Vyse is useful in basically every game, but it’s a question of who picks it up and when.

What I’m trying to do is give an idea of standard newbie mistakes, as well as vaguely introduce you to the sort of thought processes you’ll need to get better. You’re not meant to memorise this item list, nor are you meant to take everything I say verbatim; I have no doubt that at least one person reading this will – within a week – get into a game in which a Dagon could probably have saved the day. But to actually get goodat Dota 2, you need to be able to figure out when items are necessary rather than just following a standard build guide.