5 Pro Tips to Make You a Better Support in Dota 2

Being a support sometimes can be can be overwhelming. Many new players, especially who don't know the importance of the role, only thinks support hero main job is only to buy wards and couriers. 

No, they are not. Support has a lot of responsibility on their shoulder beside buying wards and courier. A good support can change the situation from losing to winning as long as they do their job. In this article, we are going to give you five tips to make you a better support player in Dota 2.

Survive

Most of the support heroes in Dota 2 is weak and have a small amount of HP. So correctly positioning your hero during every phase of the game is essential. To survive, you have to balance between keeping close to your tower so you can cower behind the tower if the situation needed, while staying in EXP range of enemy creep line. Not only that, you also have to stay close to the hero you are supporting and make enemy heroes uncomfortable in farming EXP and gold on your lane by harassing them.

Spend your money on healing items such as salve, and do not hesitate to give it to those who need it. It's much better to the team if your carry uses your salve worth 100 gold, instead of he dies and you lose team EXP and precious gold.

Make sure you don't die prematurely, or some may say "feeding", in team-fights. Make sure you use all of your skills (and correctly used) or even survive until your skill is needed before the inevitable happens. Since support role income is low, or even non-existent, avoid dying too much is the best way to maintain your gold income. If you survive team fights, you will get a nice gold bonus for supporting and more EXP!

Last Hitting, Denies, and Harass

It's not true that because you pick a support hero makes you can't farm at all. You still need gold to buy wards, regeneration items, and boots. But make sure you do not intentionally fight last hits with your carry. If you really have to because you are so close to the item you need to buy, ask the carry permission to farm one or two creeps. A good carry will understand you.

Denying and harassing are the two basic skills in DotA 2. Denying is last hitting your own creeps before your enemies do so the enemies gold and EXP gain are reduced. Ideally, you last hit all of your own creeps to maximized this deficit while you make sure your carry get all of his/her last hits.

Harassing is the act of hitting enemy heroes with your skills or attacks so they will take some damage and get driven back so they are out of EXP range. Successful harass will make your carry farm comfortably and your enemies level lagged behind.

Warding

Able to see the enemy movement is important to avoid getting ganked. That's why wards are essential to your team survival throughout the match. It's your job as a support to place wards in strategic places to be able to see where are your enemies.

At the very beginning of the match, if you see the other support already purchased courier, then it's your job to buy wards. While Sentry wards are situational, depends on whether you up against invisible heroes, Observer Wards are an important part of every game.

Initially, you put an Observer Wards at the river that overlook both runes. By setting wards here, your team can see if the enemy team is planning on ganking and make strategies to counter or avoid it. This wards placement also useful for your midlaner to see if a rune has spawned and to judge whether it's safe or not to pick it up.

Wards run out every six minutes and they need to be replaced immediately. Rule of thumb: buy wards after you able to buy boots and buy wards again at 15 minutes, 30 minutes and 45 minutes.

Communication

Good communication between your team is important if you want to win the game. Basically, you can press enter and input your chat or press alt + left click to ping your teammate of a danger or something else. But there is some easy way to communicate with your party members. Here are some of them:

Missing: When an opponent hero is suddenly missing from your vision, it could mean a lot of things; maybe he went back to base to refill his HP, or buying items in secret shop, or more importantly, planning a gank. 

When this happens, it's is important to tell your teammate in other lanes that one of enemy heroes is missing. Simply press alt + left click on the portrait of the missing hero to inform your team in team chat. You'll get a nice message like you described instead of the general lane one. If the heroes said missing is back on your lane, that you can inform your team as well by pressing ctrl + alt and click the hero portrait.

Cooldowns and gold needed to buy an item: While pressing alt + clicking on an enemy hero portrait will inform your team that an enemy hero is missing, alt + clicking on your skill will inform your team whether one of your skill is on cooldown and how many seconds left before the cooldown is complete. This will make sure that your needed skill to stun, silence or heal your teammate is can be used when your team planning to do a gank. Alt + clicking on one of the items in the shop also will inform your team on how many golds you needed before you can buy that item.

Other: Basic text chat can also be used to create a simple communication; such as "go?" to check if everyone is ready, or "go!" to command your team to attack. Scouting information is also important to be shared with your team. If you know that one of your enemy ultimate skill is in cooldown, tell your team about it so you can plan on a gank or team fight. Other things that are important to share is whether the enemy picks up an invisibility or double damage rune, or one of the enemies is purchased key items so you can approach carefully in battle.

Ganking

Offensive Ganking

Supporting heroes plays important role in most ganks. Even though you don't do massive damage and get the kills, your skills will help your teammate by healing them, disabling your target, provide a buff for your team or debuff for the enemy team. That's why it is important for you to understand your hero ability and how it will function when aiding your allies in ganks.

Defensive Ganking

When your team is ganked, then your role is reversed. Wards usually take out the surprise factor and now your skills can be used to make enemy gank fails. Usually, ganks happens on early to mid game, that's why it's important for you to bring TP in your inventory. When different lanes are being ganked and you think it's safe to leave your carry, TP in to save your teammate.

7 Most Anticipated Video Game Release in August 2017

2017 is the best year for gamers. There are a lot of triple AAA titles going to be released this year along with loads of unique indie games. Starts with Resident Evil 7 and ends with the more big hits such as Destiny 2 and Call of Duty: WW2, return of massive franchises such as Mass Effects and console exclusive like Detroit: Become Human, what a time to be a gamer, don't you agree?

Time flies so quickly and here we are in July already. We already have a lot of beautiful games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and Nier: Automata. But hey, that's only half of the fun prepared for us this year. In August, video games developers are about to release a bunch of epic titles.

In total, there are going to be 33 new games and DLC release coming in August. But we are not going to talk about each and every one of them in this article. Right now, we are going to give you the 7 most anticipated video game in August. Which one of them is the one you waiting for?

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (PC, PS4: August 8th)

Hellblade is a story of Senua, a female Celtic warrior and her journey into hell. Ninja Theory as the game developer stated that the hell previously mentioned is her own manifestation of mental illness. As you play the game, you will see Senua's experiencing hallucinations and psychosis.

Instead of how Ninja Theory describes the game, it is not a horror game. On Hellblade's trailer video we can see Senua's adventure into a beautiful and mystical woodland, solving esoteric puzzles and fighting mythical creatures in an epic one-on-one combat.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is scheduled to release on PC and PS4 on August 8th.

LawBreakers (PC, PS4: August 15th)

The game designer, Cliff Bleszinski (previously known as the Gears of War lead designer), stated that LawBreakers is distinctly different from Overwatch, even though a lot of players saying that the game is has a lot in common with its main competitor. Boss Key Production, the game developer, said that LawBreakers is going to launch for PC and PS4. But if you have PS4 Pro, then you will play the game with improved graphics and smoother performance. One more reason for you to buy the Pro version of PS4.

LawBreakers is a fast-paced shooter game that makes you performing high-speed aerial maneuvers, precision aiming, and gravity-manipulating stunts. It's a role-based shooter so you can pick a distinct play style from other players in your team and work together to dominate a deathmatch bouts. Boss Key Production has held one-month closed beta back in April 2017. In August, you can purchase the game and compete other players in open beta.

LawBreakers is coming to PC and PS4 on August 15th.

Matterfall (PS4, August 15th)

This game failed to mentioned by Sony at their E3 showcase. No one knows why Sony does that, but we do know that this is one hell of a beautiful game. Matterfall developed by Housemarque whose previously made a bunch of quality games such as Super Stardust, Outland, Resogun, and Alienation.

The developer maintained their distinctive feature; a gloriously beautiful affair with sensational colorful explosions. In Matterfall, the main hero is struggling to escape a devastated world infected by Smart Matter, a deadly alien race. Your only way to survive the struggle is by shoot your way out of it.

Matterfall is a side-scrolling shooter game exclusive for Sony Playstation 4. It's coming on August 15th this year.

Cities Skylines (PS4, August 15th)

After a successful launch on PC back in 2015 and Xbox One in 2017, the Cities Skylines developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive make its way to PlayStation 4 this summer. As we already know, Cities Skylines sold 1 million copy in its first month then spread its wings to Xbox One in April 2017.

For PS4 version, Cities Skylines will include their first expansion, After Dark. This will adds tourism and nightlife to your city. As for the game's other expansions such as Snowfall, Mass Transit, and Natural Disasters, Colossal Order didn't mention their inclusion in PS4 version release. The port is optimized to play on a controller, and being handled by Tantalus Media, the one that did for Xbox One Port.

Cities Skylines is coming to PS4 on August 15th, 2017.

Uncharted: the Lost Legacy (PS4, August 22nd)

Yes, this is not a new game, but a DLC for Uncharted 4 previously released on PS4. But this DLC is worth mentioning in this article because it features a whole new story. That's why Uncharted: the Lost Legacy said to be a stand alone DLC of its main game.

In the Lost Legacy, we embark on an adventure with Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross in India's Western Ghats mountain in search of the lost cities of Hoysala Empire. But their adventure goes sideways pretty quickly. Gunfights and fistfights are unavoidable and both Chloe and Nadine relentlessly pursued by a vehicle with a mounted machine gun. They're also run into ruthless warmonger, Asav.

Uncharted: the Lost Legacy is coming to PS4 on August 22nd, 2017.

Hello Neighbor (PC, Xbox One, August 29th)

Hello Neighbor is a game where you sneak into your neighbor's house because you think that your neighbor hiding a terrible secret in the basement of their house. The main concept is pretty simple, but don't expect that this is going to be an easy game. Because it's more complex than you think.

The AI in this game will learn your every move. If you constantly sneak your way into their house from the front: they will put cameras there. But if you keep going from the backyard window. expect a bear trap waiting for you after a while. But the most tense part of the game is when you infiltrate the neighbor house. Because it's his house, he knows it better than you are, which makes the chases inside the house between you and your neighbor very hectic.

Hello Neighbor scheduled to release on PC and Xbox One on August 29th, 2017.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm - Episode One (PC, Xbox One, PS4, August 31st)

Back in 2015, Life is Strange is a hugely popular episodic gaming, all thanks to its focus on narrative storytelling that pulls us as the players from one story segment to another. The game story revolves around a young lady named Max, whose unexpectedly received a power to rewind time.

In E3 2017, Square Enix with the new developer for the game, Deck Nine Games, announced a prequel for the game, Life is Strange: Before the Storm. But in this game, you don't play as Max, but the fan-favorite character Chloe Price. Before the Storm story spotlight her years prior to supporting role in the first title. With Max her power is gone, the story becomes more linear.

In this game, Chloe meets Rachel Amber for the first time. This is when their friendship started and form its shape into what we've known in the first Life is Strange.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm is coming to PS4, PC, and Xbox One in August 31st, 2017.