Simple questions, Simple answers.

[Malthe]

If you have a 'simple' question that isn't worth starting a new thread over, feel free to ask it here.
This thread is for both new players and old players alike, Dota is a game of exceptions and nobody has ever truly learned everything.

Helpful guides for new player:
Welcome to DotA2, you suck

Some helpful basic information:

Lanes, Last hitting, Denying, Pulling and stacking

Lanes:

DotA is composed of 3 lanes which people will utilize to gain both experience and gold.
We have the short lanes, the mid lane and the long lanes.

The short lane(Safe lane) are for the dire the top lane and for radiant the bottom lane.
Short lanes are known for having the creeps meet close to your own tower and having access to easy creep-pulling, keeping the lane forever in your favor, theoretically.
They also have your own jungle next to you, allowing junglers(if you have one) to support said lane with ganks.

The mid is the same for both teams.
The mid is known for being a lane where rune-control and experience matters more than any other lane, small advantages in this lane can snowball into kills on your opponent, this is why creep-blocking is important(Can get you to level 3 before your opponent does, theoretically).

The long lane(Hard lane) is the top for the radiant and for the dire the bottom lane.
They are known for having the creeps meet far away from your tower, creating a risky lane for yourself where you are vulnerable. They also have the enemy jungle near them, further increasing the risks of this lane.


Last hitting and denying:

Getting gold and experience is essential for a team and the easiest way to achieve this is from getting last hits.
Last hitting a creep is probably the most important skill in DotA, it comes from taking your time and then attacking a creep when you know that your attack will be the killing blow, in most lanes you have a 'farming' hero that will have the priority and be allowed to take the last hits, as it is ineffecient to have two players fight for last hits.
But of course it's not this simple, you will not only fight your own judgement regarding when to attack, in DotA we also have the concept of denying, which is very simply put killing off your own units so your enemy does not recieve any gold and reduced experience.
Melee heroes are not punished as heavily as ranged heroes when it comes to the reduced experience from denied units, to make up for the fact that they are melee.

Denying isn't important just for preventing the enemy from getting experience, being able to attack your own units when they are sub 50% HP allows you to hold the creep waves at an equilibrium near your own tower, thus giving you safe farm.


Creep pulling and stacking:

Creep pulling is the act of making your allies creeps fight the creeps in the jungle by aggroing jungle creeps and having them aggro your lane creeps. Thus denying your opponent of gold and experience whilst allowing a support to last hit jungle creeps for extra farm that would normally not be available to the support.
This is mostly done at the medium size camps near the short-lanes, but just pulling is not very effecient because a creep wave is stronger than a medium sized creep camp and they will eventually just return to the lane and push it in the favor of your opponent.
So how do we solve this?
With stacking, units in the jungle in DotA will respawn at their camps at X:00 outside of the first spawn timer which is 0:30.
They will only respawn if there are no other units near the camp, and thus, aggroing the creeps in the camp and pulling them away from their camps at the right timing will stack the camp, allowing for 2 set of medium-sized creeps in the jungle, this stack will be enough to kill an entire creep-wave.
Stacking can also be utilized by supports to stack big camps and ancient camps for a carry to farm later for increased gold-income.


For an easier and more visual explanation:

Spoiler

Roles and positions

In DotA you usually split the 5 heroes into 5 positions.
It goes from first position to fifth position.
And it's about how much farm/gold you want on that hero.
1st position is usually a carry type hero, that ends up 'carrying' you to victory with enough gold.
2nd position are usually heroes that go mid because they need both exp and gold to be effective in the mid-game.
3rd positions are usually either going to be jungling or in the 'hard lane'.
4th positions are usually either going to be jungling or with the carry or roaming the map to attempt to get kills.
5th positions are usually with the first position protecting him in the early game.

What lanes they go to and who does what can change from game to game though, but these are very general guidelines(A lot of good 5th position heroes used to be top tier 2nd position heroes, like shadow demon and shadow shaman).

lich and crystal maiden are very iconic 5th position heroes where wind-runner is great in the hard-lane and is a typical 3rd position although she has been seen utilized in the 4th position.


"Generic heroes" for the different positions:

1st:

Spoiler

• Anti-mage
• Luna
• Drow ranger
• Sniper
• Phantom Assassin
• N'aix

2nd:

Spoiler

• Queen of Pain
• Outworld devourer
• Tinker
• Templar assassin
• Brewmaster

3rd:

Spoiler

• Windrunner
• Beast master
• Dark seer
• Lone druid
• Bounty hunter

4th:

Spoiler

• Enchantress
• Chen
• Enigma
• Sand king
• Undying

5th:

Spoiler

• Crystal maiden
• Lich
• Vengeful spirit
• Venomancer
• Leshrac

Essentially it's how your team is planning to distribute gold and experience in your team, as such a 5th position should be capable of being useful even without much gold and will often have one-point-wonder skills that don't scale well but are amazing at level 1 already(Such as venomancer's poison gale slow.)

[Words]

In safe lane, playing support you can stack and pull. Should I only pull when it's stacked? I just did it in a game but I noticed that I'd miss stacks because enemies were harassing me or trying to block it so I had to harass them out and miss the stack but if I pull without stacking first there would be two waves pushing their tower. Oh, and if I should only pull when it's stacked and I miss 1 stack, what can I do that minute before I can try to stack again?

[Malthe]

In safe lane, playing support you can stack and pull. Should I only pull when it's stacked? I just did it in a game but I noticed that I'd miss stacks because enemies were harassing me or trying to block it so I had to harass them out and miss the stack but if I pull without stacking first there would be two waves pushing their tower.

If you aren't able to stack you should do what is called a double pull.
As radiant this includes cutting down the trees behind the medium camp near your tower, this allows you to pull the creeps from the medium camp near the rune to the creeps as the creeps from the other medium camp are about to die.
It's a bit harder but removes the whole stacking aspect and if you attack just enough allows you to clear both camps with nearly every pull which gives loadsa experience and cash.
For dire it's a bit harder but basically includes pulling the hard camp near the radiant top tower to your own medium camp near your own tower. I'm not sure at exactly what times to pull since they changed the 'leash' timer on creeps. But it should still be fully doable.

And if you're completely prevented from pulling you should stay in lane and protect your carry as support or if your carry is fine on his own or the lane is completely pineappleed, go roam. This is something too many supports don't realize in pubs, if your carry is pomegranate, don't waste time supporting him. Go find the best player on your team and help him, gank for him, ward his lane.
If your mid laner is your best player by far, go help him and make sure he can snowball, pubs in dota are a completely different can of worms than professional games.
Or if your off-laner is doing great, go help him and make sure he does even better, if your jungler is at the right level to gank grab a smoke and gank with him.

Pulling is nice if your lane is passive and your carry is fine on his own and the off-laner can't stay in lane, but preventing the off-laner from getting experience is far more important. And if it's a 2v2 lane you generally shouldn't pull as it leaves you very vulnerable. You can still stack occasionally though, just incase your lane gets pushed.

Woops went on a rant, but yea.
Generally only pull when it's stacked unless you're going to push a tower or you can double-pull.

Oh and radiant can even pull the big camp near rune towards the medium camp at the rune for a triple pull if you got two creepwaves at a camp for some reason.

[Vanderlust]

In safe lane, playing support you can stack and pull. Should I only pull when it's stacked? I just did it in a game but I noticed that I'd miss stacks because enemies were harassing me or trying to block it so I had to harass them out and miss the stack but if I pull without stacking first there would be two waves pushing their tower. Oh, and if I should only pull when it's stacked and I miss 1 stack, what can I do that minute before I can try to stack again?

Don't single pull unless you wanna push the lane, because that's what that does. Always stack or yes, double pull. Double pulling to the hard camp is actually better exp/gold, so you should learn to do it when you can. The timing for that, I just eyeball because it really dependson the camp and how the creeps interacted with the medium camp when you pulled. Just pull earlier than later.

In between stacks you should be sapping some exp in the lane or zoning out your lane enemies. If they are messing with your pull they aren't getting exp and letting your carry freefarm so that's fine. Also them messing with your pull puts THEM out of position, not you. So, you can call for a TP or for your lane partner to come f 'em up if they keep being bold.

[Words]

Did they make any changes to stash?
Courier was bringing something to me while I was dead, inventory was full and instead of leaving it in stash it just dropped it in fountain.
I'm not sure but it seemed to happen to a guy who, while dead, bought a tp in base and instead of going to stash it just dropped in fountain.
It's scared the hell out of me because I didn't notice at first, I was like where the pineapple is my item/ gold? It just happened to Eternal Envy, while playing vs Na'vi.
I don't know if I'm being pessimistic but I can already see people "trolling" and stealing/destroying items that end up in fountain.
I hope it's just a bug.

[Chew]

Wanna learn to play with Tusk.
What do? What skils first? Lane?

[Words]

Wanna learn to play with Tusk.
What do? What skils first? Lane?

Tusk is a very versatile hero that can be played as initiator/utility/support or semi-carry.
If you're playing him as support/utility, level Ice Shards and Snowball first (prioritizing the stun) and lane with a carry that get a lot done while enemy is stunned. Move around the map and find an enemy who's out of position to gank him. If you're lv6 you might be able to gank squishy heroes by yourself. If your carry is getting harassed badly you can use Ice Shards to make them back.
If you want to play him as semi-carry he can do ok-ish in mid or fine in any other lane as long as he has support. Skills are basically the same, the only thing that change are items.
Most important thing to remember while playing Tusk is that the moment your opponent is in a bad position he's stunned and dead. I have my finger on W at all times so that I'm always ready to stun. The other important thing to remember is that your ulti does more damage when enemy is below 50% hp.
It's up to you how to play him, if you're more comfortable as utility or semi-carry.