Hey r/learndota2,

Ever get so hyper-focused on your lane that you completely forget the power runes, or wonder if your item timings are actually on pace with high-MMR players?

I built GankMeDaddy, a lightweight system tray app that acts as your personal, real-time voice coach while you play. Instead of giving you generic advice, it uses STRATZ Pro match data as benchmarks, meaning you get actual pro-level item timings and CS targets dynamically adjusted for your game. The project was originally built as a personal tool for my mid lane gameplay, specifically for heroes like Kez, Shadow Fiend, and Void Spirit, but I've expanded it massively.

What it actually does:

• Live Voice Callouts: Reminders for rune timers, power spikes, creep score checkpoints, and even feedback when you die.
• 32 Heroes Supported (All 5 Roles): Includes custom, per-hero strategy modules depending on what you are playing.
• Dynamic Build-Path Detection: If you pivot from a physical to a magical build, the app detects it and filters its advice to match your actual trajectory.
• Pre-game Briefings: Gives you a quick rundown on enemy counters and draft strategy before the horn even sounds.
• High-Quality Offline TTS: Uses Piper neural TTS (with a OneCore fallback) and gives you easy volume control straight from the system tray.

100% Safe and Offline

I know the first question is always "Will this get me VAC banned?" No. The app runs entirely offline after the initial data fetch and reads data exclusively via Dota's official Game State Integration (GSI) by listening to localhost:3001. It doesn't read memory or inject anything into the game.

I need your help!

The project is completely free and open-source (GPLv3). I am looking for testers to try it out and give feedback.

If you think this is a cool project, I would massively appreciate a Star on GitHub! It really helps the project gain visibility.

Check it out / Download here: https://github.com/psikoma/GankMeDaddy

If you try it out and something feels off, please open an issue on GitHub. GLHF!

So, here’s the situation. I started playing a few days ago, I’ve only played two matches, and I’ve watched a wide variety of videos—guides, beginner tutorials, explanations of basic concepts, roles, and lane positions. I used to play League of Legends with some friends, so I already had some MOBA fundamentals, but Dota has been a completely different experience.

I’d like to know if there’s a quick way to tell which heroes are typically played in each position, or if there’s an in-game feature or website where I can easily check that. I’d also like to understand the main objectives of a match. For example, in League you have dragons, Rift Herald, and Baron Nashor. What are the equivalent objectives in Dota?

The map is still a bit confusing to me, especially the jungle areas. Since Dota doesn’t really have a dedicated jungler, who has priority over farming neutral camps?

I still have a lot of heroes and roles to try. So far I’ve only played as a carry in the safelane and offlane. I can hold my own during the laning stage, but after around the 10–20 minute mark I stop understanding why everyone starts moving through the jungle or fighting between lanes instead of simply continuing to push. I’d also like to know why, at the beginning of every match, both teams seem to fight over the river. I’ve seen this happen in both of my games, and at first I honestly thought everyone was just bots.

Sorry if I’ve said anything silly. I’m definitely not an expert at MOBAs, but I’d really like to understand this game better because I’m genuinely excited to learn

I would like if you can to give me some info about when is the right time to gank mid as a support. I understand that a good time is when the power runes are coming up. The thing that bothers me is that by ganking (as a 4) i stop putting pressure to enemy pos1 and (as a 5) i always tend to tp with gates and make a play to enemy 1 again.

Im around 3200mmr recently started playing ranked in particular and any other tip would be great

I recently played Undying support (pos 4) and my other support was a Chen (I don't have a wide support pool and my main was banned so that was probably mistake 1). Both chen and Undying want to go mek and eventually guardian greaves. Since I felt it was better on Chen to have Greaves, I only got as far as mana boots and didn't really go beyond that, but I really felt like my effectiveness was hindered heavily off lacking that. So what do you do in those scenarios?

Would it be end of the world to have 2 meks and just be able to heal twice in a fight?

There’s an apparent binary in the replays I’ve been studying where either the Invoker player either does the conventional meteor hammer bkb octarine playstyle and plays responsibly for farm (most pro POV) or it’s a high MMR pub game and shit goes off the rails in terms of item and skill point diversity

I understand most of the reasoning in build variability; things like orchid rush into puck, 8/2/8 skill order because Sumiya is boosting a 7k account and people keep feeding him trying to catch waves he’s using 3x forge spirits to push while he hides, urn wex tempo builds, shiva vs gleipnir, etc. I’m at 250 games played in divine mmr, I have a decent idea of the hero

Except for when players make the decision to play blink dagger. It’s usually purchased quite late and in games where the Invoker already has an overwhelming lead; the logical friction to me is that it doesn’t seem to create new kill avenues the player wouldn’t already have in the situations it’s most built in, your entire kit is effective from long ranges, and you typically don’t want to be in the centre of a fight

So what gives? Can someone explain the use cases for blink dagger on Invoker? Clearly some much better players than me see value in it that I’m missing haha

Match 8906974609 - Overview - DOTABUFF - Dota 2 Stats

I am the Spectre. I felt like the end game I got too far up and got killed, and that lost the game I think. Any comments on how we could have won there?

Just to be clear, while I’m not a veteran per se, I’m not new to the game either (2200 hours and counting). I’m a ranked enjoyer and have most of my games in ranked. Up until recent times, I just understood ranked as +-25 MMR if 100% confidence, and higher gain/loss relative to confidence.

This IS true for most of the part. But recently I decided to uncalibrate my rank at ~400 MMR and recalibrated at around 600. But since recalibration I’ve been noticing my rank going up exponentially. For every 1/1 W/L, I was gaining around 50 mmr. I just shoved it off as a weird recalibration tweak and expected it to even out as my confidence increased.

But the even-ing never happened!? I’m currently at 100% confidence, I JUST won a game and gained 60 mmr, without doubling. I played 6 games yesterday, winning 3 and losing 3. Ended up gaining 52 mmr. I play in a party of 3, my other party mates have an even gain/lose ratio, or at the very most gain 2-5 mmr for every 1/1 W/L.

I’m currently sitting at 1500 MMR just 1.5 months after recalibration. I mean eh I’m not complaining, in fact I’m very content with whats happening but I really want to get to the bottom of this. Has this happened to anyone else??

And for the record, while I do feel my personal skill and tactical thinking has definitely improved in recent times (i have been making active calls, thinking from the enemy’s perspective, using smokes, placing and utilizing deep wards, coordinating with my team, and in general have gained a layer of strategic thinking), that should just result in a higher win rate, not gaining 50 mmr and losing only 30?

Some additional information: My party consists of ranks guardian 5 (me), crusader 5, and archon 5 (which is quite funny come to think of it). On stratz, most of my recent ranked games are crusader 5 - early archon Tier. We often have a few legends, but mostly all archons/crusaders in my games.
Main pos 5 but play 4 with my party (afaik there isn’t even a big difference in both positions at my rank because it’s always me in the end who wards)

6% extra spell amp while rearm is on cooldown + the mana 21% mana cost reduction seems very good.

But perhaps something else could be (situationally) much better?

I'm about to hit ancient and I mainly play 4 and 5 and as I keep ranking up I'm having a harder and harder time keeping my wards up, I'm trying to do not so obvious spots, but it gets tough! I've been trying to hold some for team fights as well.

It’s a side project I’ve been working on.
Yea it’s vibe coded.
Yes this is the first season.
Us east server. Its for players under 5k mmr
Still working on the best day of the week to play the league games.
We have 19 players signed up so far.
If you do join please share match data in Dota, site uses open Dota to get league games and info for the draft for captains and in-house games.
It’s heavily tested and I think it brings a lot of value/features other leagues don’t.
I’m looking for at least 30 honest players that want to join this community and play some good Dota to kick off the first season.

So I fully admit I'm not the best player. But, what rank does my team stop making real bad decisions in lane. Basic stuff, like if the creep wave is stacked and pushing towards our tower, and the enemy has a level on us, maybe don't engage them till it evens out?

Or stop rage diving after a death. The number of times I've seen my carry get killed, tp back to lane and DIVE right into a two stun Vengeful Spirt and Earthshaker before I can do anything as CM is infuriating. Like, we don't have to win, just not lose when your Phantom Assassin.

Like what do I do? Am I supposed to just play carry heroes? It is so disheartening to be playing, my lane does fine, maybe get a kill or two, keep farming creeps, and to watch the other lane feed 5 kills to the enemy sniper in 7 minutes. What's the strategy to get into ranks where these dumb decisions aren't being made?

Hello [r/learndota2](r/learndota2). I climbed to Immortal about 3 years ago, the slow way. Most of what got me there came from players better than me pointing out things I couldn't see myself. That idea became Neural Edge AI, an esports coaching platform that officially launched this week — and to celebrate, I'm doing 20 free coaching sessions the old-fashioned way: human to human.

The offer: a free 30-minute (we can run longer if time permits) 1-on-1 session in voice chat. We'll go through one of your recent replays together — drafting, laning, itemization, decision-making, etc., that's actually holding you back at your rank. Any rank welcome, Herald to Divine especially.

The catch (there's exactly one): in the last 5–10 minutes we run your game through Neural Edge AI together and I will show you what you will get now and in the future. That's the whole deal — no signup required, no card, nothing to buy.

How to book: grab a slot here → https://cal.com/gansaikhan-shur-kkyxld/30-min-dota-coaching-session

There's exactly 20 slots available. First come, first served through the booking link. When the calendar shows no slots left, that's it — but if this goes well, I'll likely run another round, so comment or contact me on discord if you missed out.

Pick a time, drop your Discord username + rank + role in the form, and you'll get the voice channel invite in the confirmation email.

edit: 9 slots left

A couple months ago I asked this sub for match IDs because I was manually running a replay thing I was building. A few of you actually sent games, and the feedback was basically that the lane was the part worth getting right first.

So I stopped trying to explain the whole match. Right now it only looks at 0:00–10:00.

https://fogsight.gg

Give it a recent match ID, pick your hero, and it pulls the replay. It shows who it thinks was in your lane, gold/XP/farm at 10 minutes, hero and spell damage, early items, and then tries to give you one thing to do differently next lane. You don't need an account.

I was Guardian when I started building this and I'm Archon 4 now (dotabuff proof)

Building it forced me to actually think about what having a good lane means, which for most of the heroes I play apparently comes down to: shut up, die less, and farm. I'm not claiming the site gave me MMR, but I do think that part has helped.

Full disclosure: the write-up uses a very limited "AI". It has the replay data to work from, but it can still be confidently wrong about what happened or why. Getting a machine to understand 40 minutes of Dota without making shit up is harder than I expected. Hence the lane focus. This tool is not a replacement for a proper match review by an experienced coach, but it my hope is it can help people nail their fundamentals.

Use a recent normal/ranked game. Turbo isn't handled properly yet.

If you try it, tell me the first important thing it gets wrong. Wrong lane? Bad interpretation? Useless advice for the next game? That's the stuff I need.

tl;dr: paste a match ID, get a lane report, tell me what it gets wrong

Hey everyone I made a video about breaking down some map reading, using the EWC finals between PARI and BetBoom as an example. There's one small detail that turned this game from a 1k net worth lead to a 7k swing in under a minute.

Link: https://youtu.be/yk3r9vRtuOM

Thanks everyone

I still see this happening all the time during my coaching sessions. You are laning against a Primal Beast, Broodmother, or Underlord, and they intentionally stand directly on top of the dying creep. You try to secure the last hit, but you end up clicking their massive hitbox instead and I had many people on my streams complain about that as well and being unsure how to deal with this.

I know this Dota Labs feature has been out for a while, but a surprisingly huge number of players still aren't using it.

The solution: You just need to enable the Dota Labs modifier key that prioritizes non-hero units. When you hold this bind, your clicks go straight through the enemy models, guaranteeing you hit the creep underneath them. (You can also set a toggle version if it works better for u then holding a key.

I made a quick 60 second video on exactly how to set this up and what it looks like in game if you prefer to see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sJOouOluHW0

Hope this helps some of you secure those highly contested ranged creeps.

GL HF in your pubs, GymCarryDota.

Have a great week, everyone.

I wanted to get your thoughts on the best hotkey layout for skills and active items. Is there a specific setup that optimizes reaction times and minimizes delays, allowing for more precise and organized plays—especially considering the number of active items in Dota?

Haven’t played WR for a while, today spent 4,2k gold on the item vs fat centaur and spectre carry and honestly wondered why I have not spent the money on Silver Edge instead :)

EDIT: I think I get it. it’s meant to be an endgame 6-slot extra that helps you move faster? duh.

EDIT2: its a kite item that’s used to ult while keeping windrun as a save. noted.

Hello guys. I've been trying to learn Techies. Doesn't seem like a hard hero but I have an abysmal win rate(~25%) with them. I have a question about early game itemization whether to buy tranquil or arcan boots/ null talisman or bracers, to buy or not to buy soul ring ?? Later on kaya, lens, or support items. At what point do I buy aghs/aghs shard. And also what's the skill build in lane. How do you get farm on this hero(sever mana issues I either have mana to place mines or farm not for both). I appreciate the help

I 2k offlane player and I do not remember when I lost my lane, I guess, 3 and 4 pos players are stronger than 1 and 5 ones, my heroes pool is every top offlane heroes excluding timbersaw, beastmaster and batrider. I feel pressure by drow ranger and arc warden with aggressive support but do not losing my lane. In other matchup I staying on the lane calmly and winning even. Razor, centaur warrunner, death prophet and night stalker 99% win (in other words: needed rotation from another lanes or enemy carry leave the lane or tower is destroyed)

My questions are:

Is it all about low mmr situation (2k)?

Is it all about my skills?

Is is all about every carry is in the situation in all panks?

Thx in advance

P.s my id (https://www.dotabuff.com/players/1486738553/matches)

Hi guys

I have been playing since early 2014, with some breaks here and there but I have been playing a bit more in the past 4 years. While the length of the time I have played have helped with my mechanical skill, which I would say is decent, I think my decision making and efficiency in playing have not evolved much in the years. I have generally been stuck at the Archon rank and unable to cross Legend 1 several times already. I understand that sometimes we just get bad teammates but I'd like to think I am responsible for most of my losses. I play mid most of the time, and been swapping between roles the past few months just to get a feel for them, though there are weeks where I just play turbo just to destress or experiment builds.

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/1253563009

I would like to ask for advice on how I can be a better midplayer, where I can outclass the opponent and capitalize, or recover from bad laning. What should my priorities be based on time? How do I react to situations? Would appreciate responses highly

Thanks guys!

I played one game and I need some help so I can understand basic new things and then I'll figure out the details as I go.

Things I've never played with:

Neutrals that need crafting

Everything new to the map. All the current timings that matter on a macro level (two pits, runes, etc.)

The portals.

What's going on around the edge of the map (I just didn't go outside lanes but I know there's things out there).

Basically, what are the mistakes I'll be making because I don't know things have changed?

For context, my Pos1 (Riki) did pretty well early on in the laning phase. - I warlock, think- I did a decent job of keeping him alive and making sure he got a lot of farm. Some fights we took were okay, out of position by me often, but still struggle to find the right itemization. How do I go about what types of items to go for given certain enemy hero picks?

Match ID: 8904951791

I used to play a lot of dota when I was a kid. Farmed like 2500 hours, and even managed to get a decent MMR at the time (5000). But the thing is, I never really had any explicit macro knowledge, I just played by guts and did some hero specific strats. For example, split pushing/pick offs with furion/tinker, or full roaming with sup 4 pudge…

Then, I played a lot of league in the last years, and I learned a lot of specific concepts and strategies. I ended up returning to Dota because the game simply is more interesting.

But I feel my knowledge don’t translate very well. I’m playing mid and my usual gameplan is to focus on farm, rune/vision control in the first levels. I try to stack ancients and big camp on the triangle every game and try to take the tower. Often the supports appear mid to defend and my teammates complain that I don’t roam.

I usually only roam when there’s both a powerful rune and my tp is up.

The problem is, once the lane phase ends, I feel REALLY lost. Where should I be? I feel I can’t keep a balance of farming and fighting on the mid/late game. Either I’m farming and not helping, or fighting and not farming. I also feel that I’m competing for resources with my teammates.

My favorite picks mid are SF, Keeper, Viper and Death Prophet. I also enjoy playing Spectre HC and pudge/techies sup 4.

hey folks, wanted to share that i finnaly have beaten dota tutorial :)

stratz link: https://stratz.com/players/381818771?excludeTurbo=true&duration=MONTH&durationAmount=12

some random numbers

i have started form approximately 1900 mmr and reached 5642 mmr in 7.5 months, it took me 810 games on maining mostly position 5 with almost 60% wr

role selection

i have selected pos 5 as subjectively, its the most impactfull role in a game if you know what you are doing and ready to take responsiblity in your hands

i hated playing offlane (back when pos 5 required a token to actually play it) - because of how bad your pos 4 is griefing almost every lane, the same reason i also dont even started to play pos 1

and on pos 5 i actually enjoy being kinda the poorest kid in the block, as if you get your items you can become a real killing machine from a position that usually considered a "ward placer"

personal experience through ranks

well, its pretty straightforward, from guardian up to divine rank - people are actually trying to win and communicate accordingly even though they play game a little bit suboptimal

the clown fiesta - started when i reached divine, people there are just obnoxious and impossible to play with, i have 12k behaviour score and it was hell to babysit those crybabies, people could really just break items/go down mid/abandon/stay afk is something is wrong in their opinion

the worst bracket was actually divine 4/5 - people there are mostly tilters that fell of immortal or straight up acc buyers, supporting there was actually a mental torment that required me to adapt

thing that actually helped me adapt and finish my grind without exhausting myself (long advice list)

0) play the game only when you feel good and actually want to play it - ask yourself if you gonna feel upset if you lose, if the answer is yes - dont start ranked, its important, not losing mmr is also a progress 😅

1) play less games - really thats it, i have fallen of from 5380 to 5080, from tilting losestreak when i registered 9 games in a row to get back some mmr, and lost all of them lol

what helped me - i started utilising bo3 (best of three) system, i usually aimed to win first game of the day and then straight up closed the game (and play second game if only i am in the good mood). why?

a) as you may lose the second game, and if you tilt queue to 3d game and also lose - you finish with 1-2, which is -25 mmr for you and your day is ruined and time wasted

b) if you lose the second game and if you decide the 3d game and win - you finish with 2-1, which is bacially the same as 1-0 in terms of mmr progression, basically you wasted time for the same result output

c) RARELY, you may actually win 2nd game in a row in the same session - which is huge W, and you progressed in +50 mmr to your next rank

d) you lost the first game, and lost second game - negative outcome and -50mmr

so as you may see, there is no particular reason to have long sessions over trying to win first one, so try it out if you stuck and frustrated - it may help

2) play supports that can kill people - as a dedicated oracle main, i just completely straight up dropped playing him on divine 3-4 bracket, he is still viable pick sometimes, but if only somehow you have got 2nd pick and as pos 5 you 99% blind picking - he is just not worth it (the same goes for dazzle/abaddon)

usually those type of characters fun to pull of when you just screw enemy comp with saves, but lets be honest, on low immortal-high divine, you cores playing even worse than in 2k mmr, so basically as a team multiplier - if you multiply 0 impact core player by 100x save support its still 0 in the end :)

play supports that have lots of damage or stuns, for me it was pudge/lich/grimstroke/dirsuptor - they all have something to kill people before or after bkb, or just straight up disable its purpose at all

the most good thing about them, they scale really good into late, and carry fights solo if executed correctly, those supports are really good in solo pubs, trust me :)

3) buy save items if ONLY they also benefit you - or in some rare exceptions, if your carry is competent and actually can profit from having glimmer/force on you (1 in 10 games at most)

if you rush save items blindly just to be "good" support - you just hurt your economy and tempo, when i stopped doing that and started bying blink/shard/aghanim on lich, or blink/hex on grimstroke my winrate skyrocketed to the point, that when i fell of from 5380 to 5080, i gained everything and more and reached immortal in a few weeks after
(you can check my match history and timings, if you want a reference)

remember, your cores are useless most of the times - its your responsibility to setup or do kills if your want to win the game

glimmer on an accbuyer wont do shit, but killing all people for them, so they can just hit the throne in pve mode - its the most impact you can do as a pos 5 support (i won many 1% win chance games, i know what i am talking about)

learn to use your head and to detect when to buy correct items - you will win 10x more games.

4) buy regen A LOT - number 3 advice works the best if you actually invest into lane to actually win it, you need to buy 3-4 sets of hp/mana regen per lane, rule of thumb, you usually look to be topped up up to 80% hp and at least 50% mana

my go to build recently is to straight up skip stick (if only you dont play specific match ups where stick would be beneficial) - is to go 2 fairies + 3 mangoes, it alllows to spam skills much more and actually take the pressure of your carry

usually enemy pos 4 is the same useless griefer as your pos 4 - and they rarelly invest as much in regen as you, you need to abuse it and boot him out of the lane ASAP, so you can leave your carry 1v1 vs enemy offlaner and be annyoing elsewhere (exception is - if only screwing over enemy off laner is more profitable, than leaving the lane, for instance enemy necro pos 3)

(off-topic - i really suggest trying build with stick and without to find out which suits your playstyle best, as in my opinion early sticks, most of the time are just a bait item, and its better to get mana regen and hp regen)

dont forget, its easier to win game with bad core with items, than with core without items - its as simple as it is

5) farm - yep, seriously, as pos 5, you need to learn to farm, that your core does not or afraid to.

rule of thumb here - push waves and farm their jungle camps, but remember if you take jungle camps on your side of the map, where there are objectively 0 risk for your carry to farm - you harmstring your carry to actually get items, which is something you should avoid, as your carry is the guy that actually will hit buildings

6) learn from mistakes, you are not perfect - the best part

if you learn to watch your replays correctly and get correct lessons from them, so you can actually replicate them in the next game - you will improve and gain ranks.

be humble and accept - that you are the same bot as your teammates on your rank, it makes things easier

7) dont afraid to die - at some point you as pos 5 NEED to reveal that smoke gank from enemy or jump first with blink and throw important spells to allow enemy team to crucify you

there will be a lot of games, where your whole team is straight up wasting oxygen and are bunch of morons that just stand and wait for things to happen, but if you play good initiator heroes - like lich or grimstroke, you can setup kills and let enemy waste some of their long cooldown bkbs or spells to survive on you

remember, dota is not a linear game with objective to have a good k/d/a, it does not matter what kda you have if your ancient has fallen :)

in the end game is called, defence of the ancients, not defence of kda - so if you see a possibility to trade your buyback or save your team from lose with your items and spells, do it.

8) mental change - you can't control other people, accept it, control things that you can control and it will save your nerves

i always played till the end even when my retarded cores has been whining to end the game - i did not communicate with them at all, as it is a waste of your time and your behaviour score tbh

learn to encourage people around you if you want to gain mmr - yep, some games are just test of your mental more than your actual skill to press butons, i have won coutless games where we should have gave up, but i refused and we managed to win

(maybe its also can say about my masochistic tendencies - but i my inner fire burned brighter when i knew that enemies screwed up a highground siege, and so called "easy game" suddenly is not that easy 🔥)

to sum up, you already start against 5 enemies, dont create more enemies in your team

9) learn to correctly move in map - it was kinda the hardest part for me, but i simplified it to the most simple system

system called - "on which side of the map i can screw up enemy team the most, or which enemy character needed to be tortured till their ancient is fallen"

in that way generally you will have a pretty much good idea where to place deep wards or where to help your pos 4 and pos 3 to setup a smoke gank, or for instance, when to control runes, so enemy storm/sf/qop/lina could not benefit from it :)

also alternative working method - annoy the weakest mental player in enemy team the most, and they can actually throw the game for you, which is also fun :)

summary

in general, why i prefer dota over lol - its that this game does not have an objectively correct way to play it :)

its only have a set of instructions that may make your experience there easier, you can comeback almost any game and thats the most rewarding experience there

+ i made lots of good dota friend during climb, which is actually fun, so yeah, enjoy the game and dont stress

peace on planet earth!