Dota 2 maximising your gold

When it comes to Dota 2, is there any commodity as important as gold? the issue though is that a lot of players in the game seem to not understand how to improve their gold efficiency. Learning ways to farm better and spend your gold more wisely will help you improve your win rates tremendously.

Part 1: Making more gold.

Before we can discuss how to spend gold more wisely, first lets talk about what you can do to make more money throughout the game.

Improve your last hitting. This seems fairly obvious really and pretty much everyone mentions it, which just goes to show how important it is for you to be good at last hitting. No matter what role you are playing learning to last hit better will give you an edge over your opponent.

However lets say you've practiced but still can't quite get the hang of last hitting yet, so you should improve your base damage by using one of these tactics.

1- Quelling blade is really only worth it if you're a melee carry, but if you are boy is it worth the gold, giving you 32% more damage is huge. To give an example Void has a base damage of 58-64, so lets say 61 base damage, an extra 32% is roughly 20 more damage, meaning you'll be hitting for an average of 81 per hit. No other item in the game can give you so much creep damage early game for that price.

Get me. I can be your best friend.

It's also useful against Furion and allows players to cut their own paths through the trees to help them pull the neutrals better.

2- Buy damage increasing items. One of the issues of buying a Quelling blade is that eventually you will have to sell it. It doesn't stack or build into anything, doesn't help you fight enemy heroes and really it just takes up space later and because of that some players do not like buying a QB ( despite how good it is). If you don't want to buy Quelling blade then improve your damage by buying either stat or damage items to give you an edge in last hitting. This way your gold gold won't be wasted as any item you buy can be upgraded later and you'll be more effective against enemy heroes early on with an item like a bracer then you would using Quelling blade.

3- Upgrade whatever skill improves your last hitting.

A lot of carry heroes have some ability or another that either gives them direct damage or a chance to do more by either critical attacks or bashes. These abilities are very useful to level up early as they ensure a last hit every time they proc.  So if you miscalculate a little then hopefully you'll get a lucky critical and get the gold either way.

4- Stack and pull the creeps. While this is more towards supports or junglers than lane players, being able to stack and pull the creeps gives everyone a chance to get some gold by farming more lanes. Also stacking the creeps allows you to farm them later or let your carry get them to boost his gold advantage.

5- Look at all the lanes and determine where you should be. Too often a bunch of players group up and hold hands for 2-3 minutes without accomplishing anything, players sticking together and farming one lane splits the gold and exp too thinly among them. Look at where your team is and find the best opportunity to make gold for your self.

6- Farm for as long as possible.
Sometimes I notice players who manage to farm a decent chunk of gold go back to base to get their items or travel to the secret shop to pick up Perserverence or whatever item they need. Try to reduce doing that as much as possible, if you have an empty lane, then don't leave it to go pick up an item elsewhere, send the courier and continue farming. By traveling on foot from the lane to somewhere else you lose any potential gold and experience you might have gained had you just stuck around and farmed.

Also if you just killed 3-4 enemies in a big team fight but you only have 30% life, stick around and farm, its unlikely that you'll be ganked and you can tell when the enemy team will respawn, until then try to get as much out of their death as you can.

Part 2: Spending your gold.

Well now that we talked about ways to improve your income, lets talk about the most efficent way to spend the gold you earn.

1- Gold unspent is useless.

Here's the thing, the moment you have enough money for buyback, any gold above that is useless for you and does nothing. If two Faceless Voids fight each other, both with 2k gold net worth, except one of them has a Mask of Madness and the other just has his money in his stash, who will win?

That's why players should aim to spend their gold as soon as possible, especially when they are dying often. Too many times players have a certain item build they try to go for all the time but die too much to achieve, when those games happen look for cheaper alternatives so you can be more effective.

2- Don't stack items.

Stacking the same item is generally pointless except for very few exceptions. Early game some players like to buy 2 Bracers or multiple Wrath Bands which generally does nothing for you as you won't upgrade both Bracers into Drums will you?

If I need more life points then instead of stacking Bracers I just add one and an Urn. Same thing with most items as these basic low level items wont be with you for long and it's a bit of a waste of gold to sell them later. Always aim for high tier-items especially if you're a carry.

3- Know where to ward.

If your team is pushing the enemy top lane, then you should have wards in that area, not a rune near the bottom rune or a place you won't be traveling to in the future. When it comes to warding make sure you ward the areas you are farming and the areas you know the enemy walks around a lot. Warding Roshan when he's dead really doesn't accomplish anything for your team.

And that's all for this post, Hope you learned something useful. Any feedback would be appreciated.