Hi guys Ive just been introduced to Dota by a mate and have been sucked in big time. Im having a few problems though with picking a hero. Can you guys point me in the direction of a good set of heros I should learn to play as a beginner.

Crystal maiden and ogre magi are easy heroes. Heroes which is supportive like those does not have very much pressure on them to perform like a carry has. Therefore i say learn those heroes first.

Lich imo is the very best beginning hero. You can have a simple gameplan of "the enemy should almost never see me until a fight has started" and play insane turtle/conservative style, and you will do really good. After that I think Tidehunter is a great second hero, since you are a tank who throws himself into the fight. The opposite style to Lich, but still a simple strategy. I learned how to not suck playing a few games of Lich. But I learned to love Dota with Tide.

CM and Ogre are simple skill-use wise, but they are both meant to be aggressive gankers which is a more complex style than Lich or Tide, who are purely teamfight heroes. Definitely not bad choices though, and you will get some kills with them and probably rape newbie games with all them stuns.

Drow Ranger and Skeleton King are also good newbie heroes.

Noob question; is there somewhere a matrix online that displays foes / friends while considering a hero to play.
I have 'learned' to play now 10 a 15 heroes a bit and start to see that some perform better/worse against some opposing team picks.
Such a matrix would be a great pointer to assist my nuub picking.

I disagree with Tide. Having a great AoE stun every 2.5min sucks. You have to be capable to land it properly which is often not that easy w/o blink dagger. And even if you land it; either your pub team mates have already initiated (and are obviously winning or getting raped) or your pub team mates arrive 2 a 4 sec to late even after you talked about your initiation in channel. Causing you to maybe have use of your ultimate (transforming it into a team fight win) once every 10 minutes. I stopped using him. I was too bad using him. Also, often peeps do not use runes making warding for runes useless.

Thanks for this. I just played a match with Lich and was able to keep pace xp/level wise with the other players on the team which I was struggling to do with the other hero's I was picking. Also managed to score a few more kills than usual with his sick ulti. Gonna play a few more with Lich than give tide a go

http://www.dotaedge.com/ shows good counters but doesn't really explain why, so it might not be that helpful. Read some guides at playdota.com they will usually explain which heroes are good with others.

Thx, this helped me greatly.

Vengeful Spirit is one of the best noob heroes as well. Very effective with single target stun skill (easy to execute). And her swap ultimate is really fun, and will teach positioning, which so much of this game revolves around.

Don't pick venge or cm as starting heroes. They are both unbearably slow- you will feel like it takes you hours to just move around the map and your more mobile team is going to leave you behind. My friends hated these heroes when they started playing, and it's extremely easy to feed with both of these. You have to understand positioning better before playing them.

Lich I think is always a safe choice because he has some team fight abilities (at least for low level games), and he is an easy and strong laner. Also has 4 active abilities, 3 of which are very easy to use, so that you get used to constantly using all your abilities but don't have to worry too much about proper execution (except your ultimate).

Lich is definitely way faster. I would recommend as well to get Tranquil Boots on vengeful, to help with the speed issue.

The main reason I don't like to recommend Lich is that he's pretty boring imo.

here is the list of heroes that the tutorial suggests new players start with

**** all that noise. I learned Dota by randoming every. single. game.

When players are struggling at the lowest level of matchmaking I don't think randoming every game is the best solution.

I also don't think people should get used to having random bonus gold.

why does bts audio in dota tv sound so terrible

easiest rares of my life

Super disband

rotk disband

the pause was longer than the game.

rotk dota

#322 yolo

i want rotk to join EG. is that not perfect or what guys???

alienware cup discussion:

Navi vs iG about to start on http://www.twitch.tv/beyondthesummit

Heart is on Na'Vi, rares on iG.

Game 1 already looking SICK from pick phase.

wow Dendi shadow fiend with e-blade popping fools left and right

Great comeback by Navi in the tournament. Hmm even lgd.cn got destroyed in their group matches.

damn, way to cognitive dissonance yourself

how can the finals LGD vs Navi be 41:59 in favor of Navi if Navi lost to them in the UB final??????