General Discussion

General DiscussionA guide on Partial Information

A guide on Partial Information in General Discussion
Glimmer of Dawn

    So let's talk partial information. Partial information is the idea that the game only shows you so much of what is happening. The biggest factor of this in Dota is warding game, what you can see and what you can't see. Other kinds of partial information you can be in direct control of, like checking enemy items and looking at the minimap to reason where people are.

    Part 1:

    Items.

    At a most basic level, you can check things like the availability of TPs on enemy heroes. Knowing that enemy heroes don't have TP (especially on supports during the early game) is crucial to understanding the viability of a gank. E.g. both enemy supports TP'd bottom, now we can dive mid.

    At an intermediate level, understanding what items people are building in advance and pinging them out, understanding which new aggressive, mobility or defensive item and ability is going to be added to enemy team soon, and itemising accordingly for yourself. E.g. This is an orchid game vs this is not an orchid game because people want to buy eul's, manta and bkb too early.

    Aggressive item timings like Orchid and Shadow Blade need to be nullified by defensive measures. Buying dust and preplacing sentries against an early Shadow Blade, or starting to buy Glimmer Cape, Eul's or Manta earlier if you spot an Orchid buildup. Similarly with defensive items, buying dust vs Glimmer, being aware that they have Eul's or Manta is important to understanding how to use your own items and chain of initiation properly. Knowing what people are capable of doing in fights is important to knowing how to take fights.

    Mobility items are a middle ground. They both allow ganking and escape, so against an expected blink timing supports should position themselves behind cores they want to safeguard against obvious gank attempts, if you want to take the fight. Also, knowing they have a Blink or FS allows you to understand their escape potential.

    At the expert level, understanding how well a hero is doing by understanding how much farm they currently have. Being able to estimate their net worth based on what they've seen a hero do and what they are carrying. Being able to estimate whether they have bought out or saving for BB. These heroes become high priority gank targets.

    Understanding the enemy hero's power spikes and how their items interact for synergy and how much that affects certain potentials like Escape on Puck, Split push and Kill potential on Arc Warden. Knowing clinch specific items that will deal with an enemy problem before it gets too big (e.g. Lotus Orb vs Orchid Nullifier). This will allow you to understand their gank priority, and to hide when they aren't showing on the map.

    Being able to estimate which heroes have a strong timing coming up and unreliable gold to attack. Being able to reliably avoid an item timing gank or countergank these reliably. Knowing when to show on a lane and when to back off, knowing when to group up and when to split up.

    I'm sure there's more but you get the idea, there's a lot you can read just from checking enemy items.

    Aimstrong

      Part 2

      pick gyro and win game

      flourishing new leaf

        You don't need wards, it's like playing football, you just need to focus and send passes/scores with eyes closed after a turn or dribble

        LegendaryHD

          So after 10 win streaks I just lost a game today and I think my mistake is that I rarely roaming or helping other hero.
          Can you give me tips and tricks how to roaming effectively? I just don't think when I'm mid I need to roaming a lot since I have to protect my tower and getting more gold/xp, or maybe can you watch my previous game and tell me where did I do wrong?

          Glimmer of Dawn

            1. If you’re winning lane you generally can stay. Pressure tower and kill enemy mid.

            2. If he leaves, say that he’s missing and take tower.

            3. If you have lategame and are a huge carry like arc probably stay.

            4. If you are losing lane prettyn hard it is better to jungle a bit or help team.

            5. If they have huge snowball hero like alch safelane that’s the main time you’ll want to gank as mid even if you are winning mid.

            LegendaryHD

              Alright thanks for the answer.

              Another question xD, when OG vs Liquid and Topson as Pugna vs w33 as TA they both didn't care about hitting each other instead this Pugna go into enemy high ground and last hitting while skill 2 TA and TA didn't even trying to hit Pugna and just focus on last hitting I know that she has split attack that can also hit Pugna if she hit the creeps but I've seen a lot of pros doing that or smurf doing that.

              When I try to do that the enemy just keeps hitting me and the result is I'm on low health they didn't care about the creep and just keeps hitting me.

              So my question is how do you explain this situation and strategy why I can't do the same thing as the pros?

              JDF8

                sometimes u just play against a dog that doesnt care for cs and only denies/trades. you just play a bit further back so you don't eat too much damage and end up losing later from hp

                for split specifically there are situations where they cant hit back. 1 you pull creeps up towards u, then hit. 2 your creeps are chasing and you attack for deny

                Questo commento è stato modificato
                LucaManny

                  Its ok. Use your gold you get from cs to buy regen.

                  Except when u playing vs wr, she didnt care abouy creep at all and just casually diving u at 6 :)))

                  LucaManny

                    @OP
                    I'm actually very impressed everytime reading your guide in this forum. Lot of time i learned something new which i didnet get anywhere because most yt video or other guide is made for <4k mmr i think. Didnt expect that because our mmr difference is like only 500 at best but i learn something for u. Thanks bro, its even out your sins for spamming wr i guess

                    kowareta

                      ^ true, best hero in dota
                      just rush javelin and run at ppl, u dont even need boots, last hits or brain.

                      LegendaryHD

                        Alright guys I'm about to find a match hopefully I will win next game omegalul.

                        KUKULAMIN KA BUT THE K IS...

                          Part 3

                          Pick lina pos4 and destroy trees

                          Glimmer of Dawn

                            @Desephviasco

                            Thanks :) I've always been a theorist and a nerdchild at heart so that's always been a strength of mine. I wrote my first comprehensive guide in DOW2 and that was good since I relied less on my micro and APM and more on my thinking. As I'm getting older my reflexes and APM are probably just going to decline so it's good that I'm thinking about the game so I can keep climbing. I'm glad you've been able to find my posts helpful. :D And hell, I've mostly been doing her as a 5, I think she's severely underrated as a support. But then again I've been enjoying other positioning heroes like Oracle and SD which are far more meta.

                            Gonna try to do a Part 2 now.

                            Glimmer of Dawn

                              Part 2:

                              Minimap and where heroes could be.

                              First thing I would recommend to all players is to change the options to show hero portraits by default. It makes it so much easier to identify a hero when they flash up on minimap rather than a coloured arrow, if they are walk in and out of vision.

                              A. Warding

                              Good warding game is the most obvious and most important way to get information on where enemy heroes are and where they aren't. It allows you to see where they are now and where they are going to go and setup for a fight. Since it's about partial information, two wards is much more impactful than one ward, because even though you double up the vision, you get more than double the amount of information in general.

                              For example, you can see the entirety of their jungle and no one is there. They are probably in your jungle, or smoking, or sitting in their base, dependent on the game state. Without the information from wards it's really hard to guess where they are.

                              Furthermore, sentries are a huge part of the vision game. At lower levels most supports would only buy sentries against invis heroes or to deward a common ward spot, but this is underutilising sentries. A spread of random sentries gives your teammates peace of mind, because:

                              1) They can feel safe that they are not walking through a warded location, making them safer from ganks as well as making your teammates' ganks easier to land,
                              2) They can farm and be sure there isn't an invis hero stalking them,
                              3) You gain information about where their wards could be, making future dewards easier,
                              4) High level warding often involves mind games. Sometimes you use observer sentry pairs, sometimes you put the observer ward off centre from the sentry so that they come and deward only your sentry,
                              5) Your own invis heroes can walk into that space with the peace of mind they aren't being detected.

                              There's probably other aspects I could list but you can probably figure them out. The point is, as a 5 I almost always buy out sentries until there are no more, then that is generally the signal to buy a gem unless a gem is needed earlier.

                              The best counter to semi effective vision is to smoke. Make sure to sentry smoke spots before smoking, and generally only place wards when the smoke breaks rather than during the smoke, if the smoke is a legit attempt to gank. If your ward gets spotted by an observer sentry pair, your cover is blown and the gank probability goes down a huge amount.

                              B. Where heroes could be

                              The importance of knowing where heroes could be is super important to the game. It determines how aggressive you can be for ganks and objectives, and their countergank potential. Depending on who has early vs late, and who has good tower push, simply dragging the enemy team around can make space even if you don't end up taking a fight.

                              A good example of this is if you have an Alchemist strat, often the team with the Alch is happy to make space just by grouping up as 4 and threatening an objective, bringing out enemy TPs then walking away. Meanwhile Alch just got 1+ min of uncontested farm and they aren't ganking him. Another example is that you'll see good players immediately go for kills on their own lanes when TPs have been used on supports to the other lane.

                              If you know where heroes could be and what they are capable of, you can often just dodge away from ganks before they arrive (go back or to the safe part of jungle), or have backup hiding in the trees in order to create a favourable countergank.

                              For supports the principle of knowing where heroes are are even more important, for multiple reasons. All players should be watching the minimap but as a support you have more time and freedom to do so, so you should make it your job to call out what heroes you see and things like no tp on heroes.

                              Furthermore as a support you only have a few advantages over a core, and the most important one is that you rarely have to show on the map. If you imagine a hero like WR, sitting in the trees makes it easy to trade hits with anyone standing in lane, makes it hard for them to predict when I'm backing off to pull, so they can't just go on my carry whenever. It also makes it easier to land shackles (side on, harder to dodge because it's coming out of fog). It also makes it hard for them to just go on me first and bully me out of lane unless they have a huge amount of magic nuke.

                              As a support one of the biggest skillsets and advantages you can use is to know what they can see, and what your team can see.

                              Mid to late game the use of TPs and heroes showing on the map who can't join a fight is often the biggest trigger of effective smokes or favourable teamfights, for example you see a TP on enemy base when they were pushing, time to get a 5v4 fight outside your base.

                              As always, these skills are most important on supports because you don't have gold to fall back on, but they are also very useful to improve your core play.