Dota guideline – The High Ground

While snowballing your way from a good early game into an easy win seems like the easy thing to do, there is always the enemy’s high ground that more often than not represents a giant obstacle to the project.

Today we will learn you how to get you and your team up there, smart and efficiently

Setting the stage

We have all encountered it many times. After a well executed laning stage you build that farm advantage, translate this into objectives allowing you to take map control. Through an elaborate warding plan your vision has spread out through your opponents forests like foreign pests infiltrating every pore in their home. Combined with a relentless assault of precision ganks you enacted upon your opponents, they are now forced back into the only position they still feel safe, cowering behind their tier 3 towers like rats trapped in a cage they fear any incursion you make into their small territory.

Even simple creep waves seem to get blasted by their nuclear bombardment and wards get stripped of their souls before you can even see who was responsible. Their earlier losses have made your opponents battle-hardened and determined to hold strong in their last fortress of hope.

Nonetheless, you feel confident that with the collected strength of your well endowed teammates you should be able to break the beggar’s fortress. But when you do, it seems like you were severely mistaken. As a malicious medley of spells originating from places of darkness strike you and your teammates, causing screens to turn grey. While the humiliating defeat and its meaning try to penetrate your giddy attitude, your opponents suddenly find themselves a road to potential victory.

Unable to learn from your previous mistakes, you and your teammates attempt to climb this high ground time and time again only to be defeated time and time again. Like monkeys trying to climb a buttered tree your primal desires blind you while, just like the monkeys, your lead starts to slip away. Until eventually those rats and beggars turn into capybaras and assistant-managers capable enough to destroy you and your monkey business. And with one fell swoop they make their way past all your defences, bashing down upon your throne. While you see your hopes and dreams melt away before your eyes, those same ocular organs focus down upon four small letters. Four small letters that one of your opponents just shared in an attempt to communicate his oh so important message to you. “GG EZ”

A holy blessing

To subvert this horrendous fate one needs to properly prepare for the challenge of assaulting the high ground. For starters you should never underestimate the preposterous power that is housed within the aegis of the immortal. This prized possession of the magnificent Roshan is the key to completing a successful high ground assault. Simply bestow Roshan’s blessing upon a core that has decent survivability and can properly damage towers. This will allow your sacred warrior to walk towards the heights of the enemy tier 3 tower, and start deconstructing it. For when the enemy decides to batter down upon your holy champion, you can immediately avenge this beating with a counter initiation brought about by your team, giving you a prime position to start off a teamfight with.

While your tower destructor core will be reborn through the power of the aegis, still allowing them to fully contribute to the fight. This way you can win the teamfight, resulting in one of two different outcomes. Either, you force a multitude of buybacks from the enemy allowing you to disengage and look for a future pickoff of the known financially insolvent targets. Or they die with already lacking buybacks, allowing you to win the game right there on the spot by destroying the opponents Ancient.

Not too different

When it all comes down to it, assaulting the highground doesn’t differ too much from your run of the mill teamfight. Except for the fact that your opponent starts this teamfight with a substantial positional advantage. Therefore it’s key to collect all the possible advantages for your own side first, to overcome this inherent advantage your opponents have due to the geographical location of the fight.

Advantages can range from pickoffs to buybacks and from Black King Bars to an Aegis of the immortal. Analyze the map, look for any possible advantages you can collect before assaulting their highground, and only then engage. At which point it comes down to the one thing that really decides any dota game in the known universe. Which side can press their buttons the best.

P/S: If you are interested in our blog posts and has been looking for ways to improve yourself as a dota 2 player, you can take a fast quiz test to find out more about our coaching lessons here at vikingdota.com.

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