Carry

Carry Heroes are the heroes who would get most shares of the gold and experience in the game. The reason for this would be their task in coming team battles. That task is to be killing machines. They are the ones who would inflict the highest amount of damage they could in team battles. This is the main reason why they are called 'Carry' (because they carry the team to victory).

Support

by the name itself, they support the Carry heroes. They provide safety for the Carry heroes, they make killing easy for Carry heroes and they disrupt the opponents to have more farm than their carry heroes.

Tanker

A tanker is a type of Carry hero in which his farming and leveling aims to be equipped with high HP and Armor. His role in a clash is to take all the dangerous skills to prevent his team mates from dying instantly. He can also serve as bait. Good teams won’t attack tanks at once in battles; instead they try to kill other heroes. This reason needs this tank to also improve inflicting damage. Radiance works perfectly for tanks so they won’t be easily ignored.

Examples of Tanker-Carry Heroes: 

•  Bristle back
•  Centaur Warchief
•  Trent Protector
•  Skeleton King
•  Gorgon

Semi-carry

A Semi-carry hero is a type of carry which is useful early game. It would have good nukes or disable skill that helps a lot in dominating the game early. After doing great in early game, they don’t lose their power till late game. They can still stand up to carry the team having the necessary items.

Examples of Semi-carry heroes:  

•  Shadow Fiend
•  Rogue Knight
•  Queen of Pain
•  Priestess of the Moon
•  Night Stalker

Hardcore Carry

these are the heroes who are definitely useless early game. They don't have disables that are good enough to dominate early game. They rely much on normal attack. However, if they happened to got farmed up, they can kill anyone who stands in their ways beating even most of the semi-carry heroes. With their high DPS and attack damage (some includes bash), enemy heroes won't last for 3 seconds getting focused by these heroes. This is the reason why they are ganked a lot early game and pro team end the game before their time comes.

Examples of Hardcore-Carry Heroes:

•  Spectre
•  Phantom Assassin
•  Faceless Void
•  Anti-Mage
•  Terrorblade

Ganker

Many are confused about this. Ganker heroes aren't only for supports. Carry heroes also gank. In fact, these heroes are more effective gankers. They can kill alone.

Examples of Ganker-Carry heroes:

•  Demon Witch
•  Storm Spirit
•  Clockwerk
•  Tinker
•  Fairie Dragon

Babysitters

these are the heroes who stay on their lane to protect a carry hero. They often have healing skills, mana regeneration skills, mana sucking skills for opponents, nukers to harass the opponents and other skills that will protect the carry hero.

Examples of Babysitters:

•  Warlock
•  Dazzle
•  Ezalor
•  Omniknight
•  Nortrom

Roamers

these are the type of support heroes that move a lot around the map to help carry heroes kill their enemies on their lane. They often have disabling skills to make killing easier and to assure that the gank won’t end up to a chasing round.

Examples of Roamers:

•  Vengeful Spirit
•  Crystal Maiden
•  Rogue Knight
•  Witch Doctor
•  Venomancer

Initiators

these are the heroes meant to surprise the opponents in team fights. They have good AOE spells that are viable in clashes. 'Initiator' is the term used to describe them because before they are often used as the starter of the fight. This term makes it confusing because AOE spells like ravage can also be used as back up skill. They can either choose to initiate or enter while the fight is going. If I'm going to give it a name it would be "Clashers"(rofl). These heroes may be supports or not but most of them are supports that's why they lie under support category.


Examples of Initiators:

•  Enigma
•  Earthshaker
•  Leviathan
•  Magnus (example of non-support initiator)
•  Tauren Chieftain

Pushers

It’s quite easy to understand that their role is to push. They have skills that make them capable of clearing up enemy creeps fast or summon units that can tank and damage the opponent’s tower. Again, these heroes may or may not be supports.

•  Holy Knight
•  Prophet
•  Tormented Soul
•  Enigma
•  Shadow Shaman

Dying means you waste your farmed gold and you waste time at the tavern instead of dying. Learn how to play safe. ZSMJ, one of the legendary farmers, will stay away from creeps if he doesn't see the gankers on the map. He knows how crucial it is if you'll be killed in the game.

Drills will improve your timing when will you attack the creep that will guarantee sure gold. One drill is playing in single player mode and try to have 100 creep kills (kills + deny) in 10 minutes - doing this often will make you have high accuracy of getting a fast farm in real games. Another drill is playing single player against 5 AI's. AI's are programmed to have perfect last hit and deny. If you can farm against 5 AI's effectively, it would be easy for you to farm against any human player. This is one drill our best farmer, iGk.DESO, is doing often.

you should measure the time the damage is done after you click the creep. Heroes like Krobelus and Lina have slower animation that you need to attack the creep earlier than usual. Kardel is different, where after clicking the enemy creep the damage is done in very less time. Melee heroes are easier because you only need to observe their hitting animation while Range heroes need to consider their distance and animation of the attack.

One easy way to last hit effectively is looking at the mage. Among all the creeps fighting, the mage usually have the highest damage. Mage will hit the enemy creep in constant rate so it will be easy for you to decide when to attack. After the mage attacks and you know it'll be one blow before the creep die, it's time for you to click it. This is effective but in some cases, it's not like when you have 2 or more mages, or you have a catapult that does more damage than the mage. In this case you have to consider the rate of hp reduction of the creep.

Neutral Creeps gives you enough amount of gold that Enigma can farm a dagger in 8mins. Thus, on the average, neutral creeping can give you 268 gold in one minute. Neutral Creeping also gives you additional safety from gankers. If you have wards, it'll be harder for you to be killed.

If you dominate a lane, chances are you'll get a good farming time because enemy won't be there to harass you. Thus, if you happen to kill enemy heroes there also are additional gold to make you have your items quicker.

Wasting gold, like buying TP and using them to teleport on a tower but it's not that urgent to use it, slows down the rate of your farming. Example, when your creeps are far away from your tower. You can walk to your tower and when you reach your tower chances are the enemy creeps are just reaching your tower along with you. You saved 135 gold from impatient teleportation. TP is vital to the game but you should use it wisely, like backing up a team mate. You'll need 3-4 creeps to farm 135 gold again. Thus you'll be delayed in farming.

don’t rely on spamming spells to farm. Spamming spells helps you push not farm. Yes, you can kill the creeps by spamming spells. Spam spells when needed like if you have to choose over 2 or 3 creeps having their hp deteriorate at constant rate. There you can use your AOE spell. Spamming AOE spells makes you go back to the fountain back and forth because you won’t be ready if any clash happens if you don't have mana.

Map optimization is important to have your luxury items. Burning (EH.Gigabyte.AAA), another pro farmer, farmed a lot by moving all over the map where there is creeps. This was when they were waiting for the opponents to come out and make some error. Search for the creeps; don't make them come to you, because they won’t.

Mainly a support is a hero that takes care or, from the name itself, supports the whole team, most especially the carries. Supports are the ones that are in-charge for the overall team defense and map control.

Now most people's knowledge of a support hero's job is only limited to providing the courier, roaming and warding when in truth a support needs to do more than that. Here is a list of what a support user must do for
His/her team:

• Providing the courier  + 
• Warding/Dewarding  / 
• Roaming/Ganking
• Babysitting
• Team fight Setting/Initiation
• Lane Harassment
• Team Defense
• and last but not the least and also the most important: Overall Map Control

When choosing a support one must take the following abilities or spells into consideration:

• Single Target/Area Disables
• Global/AOE Beneficial Aura
• Healing Spells
• Movement Reduction Spells
• Burst Damage Nukes
• Status Reduction Spells
• Team fight Oriented Abilities

A support user greatly relies on their own movements on partially on the items on their inventory. Supports usually go for items that add beef or STR type items for survivability, wards and town portal scrolls. A good support player should be able to survive a whole team fight and get the tide of the battle in favor for their team. Here is a sample item core build for a support player:

•  Power Treads (for strength)
•  Ring of Basilius
•  Urn of Shadows
•  Bracer

• Sentinel Warding:
• Scourge Warding:

Yet another vital skill that any support user should posses, proper knowledge on when and how to roam gives a very good advantage favoring your team. Plus partnered with warding and dewarding skills, total map control could be achieved without any hassles.

Ganking or roaming styles will be discussed in lesson 4.

• Go roam or do ganks at night, during this time most heroes and units visions are lessened making it easy for you to find blind spots behind heroes for surprise kills.
• Ninja moves is a must, use the fog, this is your best friend when roaming, proper utilization and abuse of the fog-of-war in-game is an advantage both in attacking and backing out.
• Do it fast, a good gank should last for no more than 10 seconds to reduce the chance of enemy counterattacks
• Stun lock like a pro, mind the duration of your disables, plan your moves on who throws the stun first, who throws in next and when you would or they throw the stun.
• Hero block, after stunning, quickly run forward and block your enemy's lane so that your ally could deal a good amount of DPS.
• Timing is everything, here's a tip, wait for the next creep wave to get near to the enemy so that he would not have any vision or whatsoever from behind him, also take a look at your own creep wave to anticipate on where the enemy wave is currently located.
• Be careful when tower diving, don't directly attack or right-click on your opponent when your diving for them inside the tower, try moving in advance to where he is running and then throw some spells or nukes, doing this reduces the chance of the tower and the creeps going agro on you thus reducing incoming damage that could possibly be taken from both the tower and the creeps.
• Bring potions, if you want to be a solid, hardcore, roamer/ganker having potions in your inventory ensures continuous ganks without having to go back to the fountain to often but also be mindful on how much you're spend for pots for you might not be able to stack up for your core items which are badly needed during mid-game.
• Anticipation and mind games, try to think ahead of your enemy, try to guess where he would be going or what move will he be doing next.

More ganking and supporting lessons will be discussed in lesson 5.

This is the act of protecting your lane mates to ensure a safe farm for them, Babysitting is best and mostly done for heroes that are totally fragile on the early game phase or don't have any escape mechanism skill whatsoever like:

•  Sniper
•  Shadow Fiend
•  Spectre
•  Troll
•  Mortred
•  Medusa
•  Luna
•  Pugna
•  Gyrocopter

Vigoss: awarded as the best ganker of the year 2008

Ganking is one of the most important tools in winning DotA Games. Thus, there are different ganking styles that will make you sneaky and unpredictable. It is important that you have proper coordination with your team mates if you are going for ganks. Pro players are too careful that they don't often die from getting ganged up. Observer wards are too cheap and placing them in ganking areas is the best counter for Ganks. So, a variety of ganking style is recommended for being unpredictable. 


Backstabbing

The most basic ganking style is backstabbing. It's when you hide in fogs and appear behind enemies while they are farming. This is done well if you have perfect timing of using skills and I recommend having a gank mate because sole gankers cannot assure kills. Having disables like stun and slow makes it easier to kill heroes. This is the reason why gankers usually have this kind of skills. Beware because this type of ganking is easily countered by observer wards. Study your prey. Know if they have wards basing from the prey's actions. If they usually stay farming and then retreat totally when you got near them, most likely they have wards.

Trapping

Trapping is a kind of ganking where as you stay on the opponents retreating area and stun/slow them to death. An example is ganking mid lane. One ganker would appear behind the prey to disable him. A good player won’t retreat directly to the tower because the ganker can have more normal attacks on him and end up having a cheap death. Thus, the ganker will retreat going the other way - in this case, upwards, where the 2 heroes can't attack him. Now, here comes another ganker to finish him off. Another good use of trapping is when you gank heroes with escape mechanisms, like leap of Mirana, waveform of Morphling, Blink of Akasha, Orb of Puck, Sucuchi of Nerubian Weaver, etc. Good prediction will make it easy for you to gank these heroes by trapping. 

Go and Teleport

This is done by making the allied heroes on the lane use their disables to make the opponents stay near while you are teleporting to gank. An example for mid lane would be having a Storm Spirit use his electric vortex on his opponent while you are teleporting at his tower. You can use your disables after teleporting to aid the Storm Spirit kill the prey. Be sure to do this with good timing. Disabling the opponent hero too early would make the ganker waste gold for tp because the prey would be gone when he arrived. There are limited heroes at mid which you can use this ganking style. The heroes with perfect disables, like Puck, Raijin, Rexxar, Bane Elemental, Viper, are the one suited with the Go and Teleport at mid lane. When it comes to the trilane, this can be executed easier. Most heroes at trilane have disables thus making it easier to have the opponents stay near the tower when the ganker arrived from teleporting.

Charge!!!

This ganking style is named charge because this is a ganking style where you run towards your opponent infront of him. This can be executed at night time the vision of the opponent is smaller thus making it possible to gank him by charging. This requires quickness of both your hero and your hands. Good players with fast reactions will retreat after seeing one hero charging towards him. Appear from fog then disable him at once to make fleeing from you not possible.

Teleport and Go

Furion, spectre and wisp are the only heroes that can do this. Teleport from opponent's blind spot then gang him up. In spectre's case you, there is no need for blind spot for he teleports directly beside his prey. Spectre is not a ganker but can be used to gank sometimes, particularly if he already is farmed up. 

Swap and Bam

Vengeful Spirit reaching level 6 can have a special style of ganking with his swap. You can walk in front of your opponent where it is fog then swap-stun him to set a kill for your allied hero.

Invisibility

Invisibility has great advantage in ganking. You can be sneaky without having to consider the fog of war. Getting into good position, you can whack the opponents by surprise. May it be invisibility from rune, invisibility skills (wind walk, moonlight shadow), or lothars edge, you can gank opponents easily if they don't have true sight vision.

Blink and Go

Blink is like invisibility too where you can appear beside opponents in an instant though blink still needs to consider fog of war. Heroes with disable can use blink to stun/slow a prey so allied heroes can charge towards the prey for dinner.

Bait

Bait is one of my favorite ganking style where you can wipe out 3 heroes in no time. One hero, a carry would be better, will be creeping while the gankers will wait hidden in fogs. When 2 or 3 opponents come to gank the bait, they will be stuck in one place because they are going for the kill. Now, you're going to execute your plan and kill the gankers. I, sometimes, call this ganking the gankers.