Defense of the Ancients | Skill, Luck, Teamwork

DotA is a team game that can be won based on skill, luck, and perhaps most importantly, teamwork. How much each character grows stronger will depend on how adept the player is controlling his or her own character. There are some characters that, when played well, can dominate the game and change the tide of battle.

Making a character stronger entails presence of mind. You have to be able to take in a lot of information and multi task. While last-hitting the creeps to earn gold and denying your own creeps to prevent your opponent from gaining gold and experience, you have to be aware of your life, the skills of your opponents and how much damage they can do to you, and at the same time keep track of the mini map in case anyone from the other team is planning a surprise attack. Also, making sure to notify your allies when an enemy disappears from the map will help to save their lives.

Before engaging in battle, check the life of your enemy, then do a bit of calculation for how much damage your spells can deal and make sure you have the right amount of mana for that. Take into consideration that heroes have 25% natural spell resistance, so if your spell has a 300 damage, then it will only deal 225 damage to a normal hero. Heroes such as Viper, Pudge, and Magina have increased spell resistance skills, so they take even less damage from spells.

Sometimes, it just happens that you have the best stats, items, and levels on your team, and sometimes, you're the one with the most number of deaths. Unless you're really good at DotA, you can't really ensure that you're the one on top.

Having a strong player on your side can greatly affect the game you play. When you're sure that you can rely on your team mates, you can take risks and still get a good chance of success. Even when playing with team mates that you've never met before, sometimes it just happens. There are times when even if your team mates have just played for the first time, you act as one, as if you have one mind. When someone signals, the others follow. When there's a battle, they know when to take risks and when they should escape. A team like that is really formidable.