Amusing Unconventional Strategies

Dota 2 is a very tactical game. Knowledge is pivotal, be it through vision, knowing the enemy's advantages and weaknesses or simply through experience and game-sense. The element of surprise is also a key factor to winning games. Therefore, here are some strategies that might catch your opponents off-guard while at the same time allowing you to have a great deal of fun. Do bear in mind that most of these strategies are dependent on good communication within the team, so save them for when you are playing in a group of five players who are frequently speaking with one another through the in-game voice chat, Raidcall, or any other program.

The Dagon Strat

You will need:

The first strategy revolves around an item which many players are most likely very familiar with, namely Dagon. This item, which is popular on heroes such as Nyx Assassin, Puck and Tinker, is mostly bought for its active ability, which does quite a substantial nuke of Magical damage to a targeted enemy. One interesting fact to note is that the cost of upgrading Dagon all the way its fifth level is the highest cost of any item in the game, even more expensive than buying a Divine Rapier. Keep in mind that Dagon can target all units, so make sure that you target a hero and not a creep when using it.

In this strategy, the majority of the team or the entire team buys a Dagon. Whether you upgrade it or not is up to the team to decide. The goal of these purchases is to be able to almost instantly take out at least one enemy hero through focused fire with the team's Dagons. Through forcing the enemy to always fight at least 4v5 thanks to the power of Energy Burst, team-fights and pushing should be a piece of cake and you should be able to take the game on the back of this advantage. However, do bear in mind that Dagon is not that effective on tanky heroes and magic immune/resistant units, so attempt to get them decently early if the enemy team is composed of these kinds of heroes.

Suggested heroes:

While this is not a hero-specific strategy and can be done with any line-up, a good idea would be to have heroes whose spells are either burst-focused, do more damage the less HP the enemy has or deals more damage the more damage an enemy has taken under the duration of a single spell. Therefore, a great idea would be to ensure that your line-up includes heroes like Nyx Assassin, Necrolyte and Witch Doctor. A Dagon-filled line-up executed correctly can dominate most games, as was shown by Na'Vi in a showmatch against EG three months ago.

The Divine Copter Strat

Heroes needed for this strat:

This strategy centers on Gyrocopter and in particular Flak Cannon. With this skill, Gyrocopter is able to hit an amazing amount of enemies with his attacks, provided they are within a radius of 1000. What you want to do here is rush a Divine Rapier. For the uninitiated, this is what a Divine Rapier is: an item which gives you 300 extra damage, but will be dropped should the hero carrying it die. Due to this, few players rush getting this item as it is deemed too risky.

However, with heroes such as Omniknight and Dazzle protecting Gyrocopter, rushing it most certainly carries much less of a risk in this line-up. You see, Dazzle and Omniknight both bring heals to the table, and while Dazzle's Shallow Grave can save Gyro should he be close to death, Omniknight's Repel will allow Gyrocopter to forgo acquiring the Black King Bar, obtaining the Diving Rapier much quicker thanks to that. Of course, don't forget the immunity from Physical damage and hp regeneration Omni's ultimate gives, as well as the negative armor on enemies and positive armor on allies from Dazzle's Weave, not to mention how Shallow Grave will make Gyro basically unkillable for a short while.

Be careful, though! One single hero can spell disaster for this line-up, and that hero is Axe. Since Axe's Culling Blade goes through magic immunity and Shallow Grave, he can simply blink in (if he has gotten a Blink Dagger) and insta-gib Gyrocopter should he get low enough on hp. If Axe doesn't have a Blink Dagger, then it should be fine as long as the team positions itself correctly. Blade Mail can also be an issue, but thankfully, that item will not kill Gyrocopter through Shallow Grave although it will still deal significant damage to him. Therefore, being alert and knowing the enemy's items/position is of utmost importance when attempting to put this tactic in motion.

The Global Mobility Strat

Instead of writing anything about this myself, I will refer to an article written on our site previously in regards to this strategy, which you can find here. However, do bear in mind that the heroes mentioned in the article are not a necessity with the exception of the core heroes Wisp, Spectre and Nature's Prophet. You can, for instance, replace the long laner with something like a Lifestealer, who can easily infest into the Nature's Prophet to make your ganks even scarier. Tinker can be replaced by a more suitable partner for Wisp such as Sven, Tiny or Chaos Knight. While the laning stage will be a bit harsh with this line-up, any team that can survive it are likely to dominate the enemy team with superior movement as their ultimate abilities come online.

The Global Ultimate Strat

Recommended Heroes:

Credits for this one go to NigmaNoName, as his hilarious video was the first time that I came in contact with this strategy. This strategy revolves around global presence, but contrary to the previous one, where mobility was the keyword, this one is all about the ultimate abilities of the heroes. If this strategy is successful, you will take off large chunks of the enemy team's HP and maybe even kill them simply through pressing the R-key. Well, almost.

The biggest weakness of this strategy is probably its lack of lockdown, as the only stuns available are Zeus' mini-stun from Lightning Bolt and Ancient Apparition's unreliable stun from Cold Feet, which is likely to not trigger if the enemy team have quick enough reactions. All of the heroes are quite squishy and susceptible to ganks early on as well. Therefore, the laning stage is one of the biggest hurdles that this strategy needs to overcome.

The item choices here are fairly straight-forward. The big items that are to be picked up will be Aghanim's Scepters (on the heroes that have upgrades) and Refresher Orbs. Since Silencer's upgrade applies the current level of Curse of the Silent, don't forget to level that up to its maximum level before picking the item up. Refresher Orbs are not a necessity on Ancient Apparition or Spectre, although if your team feels like doing that, they are free to do so. On Spectre, I would personally favor something which would do more damage through Haunt, such as a Diffusal Blade or a Radiance whereas Ancient Apparition can perhaps more support-esque items like a Mekansm and Wards.

Teamfights start off either through landing a huge Ice Blast on the majority of their team (if they are together) and/or then getting vision (if they are spread out) of the entire enemy team through either Haunt or Thundergod's Wrath and finally finish your job with Wrath of Nature and Global Silence. If one round of ultimates is not enough, then use the Refresher Orbs and repeat the process. Most heroes should fall to this barrage of damage, especially if they are affected by Ice Blast, which will prevent any healing during the duration of its debuff.

Thanks for reading this! If you liked this article, feel free to follow me on twitter where I will notify you whenever a new article of mine is published. In this article, you only found four of the many different unconventional strategies that you can make use of in Dota 2. Which one is your favorite? Is it the 5-man pushing strat, or the level 1 Rosh strat? Let me know in the comments! Until next time, enjoy the game!