A Beginner's Guide to Dota 2 (Part 2)

Heroes

Hero categorization by main attribute. Axe is a strength hero because his main stat is strength, Nevermore is Agility, and Crystal Maiden is Intelligence.

Role Categorization

However, the attribute categorization is not enough to truly describe the heroes. For this reason, a more specific categorization is present – by the hero’s role. There are roughly seven hero roles: Hard Carry, Semi-Carry, Ganker, Support, Initiator, Jungler and Pusher. Most heroes fit into more than one role, and there are further categories within every role. The Carry role, for example, can be further broken down into semi and hard carry. For starters, let’s look at every role in detail to understand what they mean and why specific heroes fall under it.

The Hard Carry

Hard Carry is usually the most discussed role in the game, because of how much they change over the course of the game. Generally speaking, hard carry heroes are defined by three things: the need to “farm items” (meaning get gold as quickly as possible to buy powerful items) and get a high level quickly, and their reliance on auto-attack. This is because their main abilities are not effective before a high level with good items, and because the majority of their damage comes through auto-attacking.

The Semi-Carry

Semi-carries are actually very different from Hard Carries. They are much stronger in the early and mid stages of the game, but weaker than Hard Carries in the late stage. Also, unlike Hard Carries, Semi-carries don’t have an ability that truly “scales” with levels and items.

The Ganker

Gankers are probably the most common and widespread role in DotA and Dota 2. Ganker heroes are good at catching enemy heroes off guard, and quickly killing them.

The Support

Support heroes are the best at buffing and protecting their teammates. Healing abilities and auras are very common amongst support heroes, along with a multitude of buffs.

The Initiator

Initiators are heroes designed to begin team fights between the two teams in a Dota 2 game. This is why ALL initiator heroes have abilities that cause widespread chaos and confusion within the enemy team.

The Jungler

Jungler heroes are defined by the ability to easily level in the jungle/forest, even early on in the game. The reason why is because most Jungler heroes have minions, which tank the neutral creeps for them, and help with dealing damage.

This is the same reason most heroes can’t jungle – they take damage too quikcly, and deal damage too slowly to level effectively in the jungle/forest, and instead level the normal way, in one of the three lanes.

The Pusher

Pushing heroes are good at exactly what their name implies – pushing lanes, in order to kill towers and force the enemy heroes to respond. The defining characteristic of pusher heroes is the ability to quickly kill creeps in a lane, sometimes combined with ways to kill towers quickly.