This is part of a series I’m writing on the earliest part of DotA - the lane phase. How you control your lane and the creeps within is a vital part of playing a good game. Matches can be won and lost in the first few minutes, and learning how to maneuver around the creep wave to beat your enemies out of the lane can make all the difference in the world.

To begin thinking about harassing enemies in DotA, we need to make sure we understand lane control to begin with. The most important part of the early game to try to control is where the creep wave rests.

When the creeps clash at the beginning of the game, it can be assumed that both sides will die at the same time and the lane will be empty until a new wave of creeps arrives. Of course, DotA is not a perfectly balanced game and there is a bit of randomness to creep damage which will naturally result in the creep wave moving over time. Still, let’s assume it is perfectly balanced and move on.

As you last hit creeps to acquire gold, you will cause the enemy creeps to die sooner than allied creeps, causing the creep wave to gravitate toward the enemy tower and into more dangerous territory. In order to avoid this, you must cause damage to your own creeps. The simplest method I use for remembering this is to “count” the hits i give out and try to stay zero-sum. Every time I hit enemy creeps to last hit, I add one (starting at zero) to my imaginary counter in my head, and attempt to hit my own creeps at some point so I can subtract one and get back to zero. Of course, this can get much more difficult as your lane gets more and more players in it, and enemies will be attempting the very same thing. While the creeps are near your tower, your enemies will be actively attempting to do more damage to their own creeps than yours to cause the creep wave to move toward their tower and a safer area for them to fight in.

This is where harassment comes in. Not only would it be nice to simply force your opponents out of your lane (or kill them), it would be silly to simply allow them to affect the creep wave any way they want. The reason this guide was written was to help teach people the right and wrong ways to harass your opponent. Too often do I see, even at very high skill levels, players simply attacking their enemies and ignoring all consequences. While cutting your enemies’ health down a few bars might make you feel like you are in control of and winning your lane, you can actually do more damage to yourself in the process.

The easiest and most common form of harassing enemies is simply attacking them. You do damage to your enemies and force them to react, typically by backing off so they don’t take more and more damage. However, if you force attack your enemy in close proximity to computer AI controlled units (say, the creep wave), they will also respond to your attacks and defend their hero. This ends up looking something like this:

While it might seem innocent enough at first, this kind of play is very damaging to yourself and your team. While the Dire creeps chase my Rubick around, they are not doing damage to my creeps. Of course, my creeps are still doing damage to them. The end result is that the enemy creeps will die before mine do, inevitably pushing the creep wave toward Slark’s tower and allowing him safer access to experience and gold. Make the mistake of attacking the enemy like this too much and you can very quickly push the creep wave all the way to their tower, like I did in as little as thirty seconds:

Naturally, while the creep wave is under Slark’s tower, it is virtually impossible for me to stop him from last hitting and getting experience. If I made this method of harassment a pattern, he would easily get levels from this lane and even some measure of gold. The enemy hero getting some gold and experience in a lane is not a game breaker, of course. However, many heroes who solo the the offlane (where their creeps naturally clash farthest from their tower) are considered a success if they simply get a few levels, as they are only reliant on their spells to be useful to their team during the middle stages of the game. Big choices for this position are heroes such as Bounty Hunter, Puck, or Magnus. While you might not be able to cut their experience out entirely, you can severely decrease it by keeping them away from the creep wave with proper harassing. Furthermore, keeping the creep wave near your tower will enable you to prevent the enemy from last hitting for gold and will also keep you and your potential lane partner safer from enemy ganks.

In order to effectively harass enemies, you should aim to damage your enemy without causing aggression from the enemy creeps. Typically, the easiest way to accomplish this is to click on the enemy hero from outside the range of creeps aggro (roughly the range of the ranged creep) and to use spells that don’t do area of effect damage. After you do some damage and the enemy retreats, you can continue attacking the creeps and maintaining control of the wave. This method will look something like this:

Even in the second clip I get the attention of the closest enemy creep from my second attack, which I would consider a mistake any day. Fortunately, the creep was already close enough to death that this didn’t affect the placement of the creep wave, as an insignificant amount of damage to my creeps was lost. In the end, I am able to do damage to Slark while keeping the balance of the creep wave intact and, therefore, keeping the creep wave close to my tower.

This is just a quick example. In an actual game, the practice gets much more difficult. Typical lanes have more than two people in them, and this can easily work in your favor or against you. For example, if you focus on harassing without affecting the creep wave, you can push the enemy away while your partner focuses on keeping control of the creeps. However, people often get so wrapped up in attacking the enemy that they ignore their affect on the creeps.

This guide is meant to remind players that control of the creep wave is very important, never get lazy and push the creep wave to the enemy tower unnecessarily. Skilled players will allow you to harass them and push the creep wave to where they can safely farm. In some cases, players have been known to intentionally die to cause the creep wave to come to their tower where they can safely farm. Always be aware of the consequences of your actions!

If you can master harassing the enemy while also keeping control of the creep wave, you will be well on your way to dominating the early phase of DotA. Not only is lane control important, but preventing your enemy from ever getting gold or levels can cripple them for much of the rest of the game. However, become too aggressive and lazy with your control and you are in for an unpleasant surprise when the enemy you thought you were beating up crushes you under his high-leveled, well-equipped fist.