There is a surprising amount of misconceptions about what winning the lane means. A lot of players default to thinking that winning a lane necessarily involves a lot of kills, which is simply not true. Today I would like to have a quick discussion about what it means to win your safelane and how to achieve this.

Gold is everything

Simply put, winning the lane means getting more gold and XP out of it than your opponents. It might involve some kills, but they are not a requirement. Oftentimes, you can even win the lane despite getting killed yourself. This is actually pretty common for teams like Falcons and Tundra.

The main problem of why beginner players think that lane kills are incredibly important, is because they think of the laning stage as us and our creeps vs them and their creeps. In this closed ecosystem there can’t be extra gold outside of secured last hits and kills.

However, if you look at higher level games and professional matches, you will quickly realise how many extra options there are. And in the safe lane the amount of options of getting extra gold is the highest.

Map layout

Safelane gets access to two camps they can pull to. An ancient camp behind the T1 tower and an evolving camp close to it. All of these are resources you can and should tap into during the laning stage, starting as early as possible.

Understanding whether your lane is going to be stronger than the opponent’s is crucial. It is also crucial to understand level timings to figure out whether to block the Large pull camp. However with the Small camp it is simple: you always want it available in the safelane.

It is your “lane reset” camp and the most reliable

Push the wave

So, how do you exploit the most in lane? You need to create space for all the jungle shenanigans and that usually means pushing the wave.

The meta is currently in a place where the safe lane carries and supports are overtuned, offlane heroes are a bit on the weaker side and position four players often pick something extravagant.

That means you typically will be stronger in lane, but just to be clear: you get to exploit all of the above if and only if you are stronger in lane. As in, don’t try to do this with an Anti-Mage carry even if you are playing something as broken as Warlock.

Returning to the question at hand: why do you push the wave in a situation where you are stronger in lane? Because that allows you to pull your lane creeps to the neutral camps and get extra gold and experience yourself, while potentially denying gold and experience to the enemy, not through contesting the creeps, but through them dying to neutrals.

Oftentimes it leads to a situation where the enemy offlaner is “happy”. They are standing under their own tower every other wave, they get to last hit creeps while being safe and they might even get a deny or two. More often than not they will agree to this, frequently since they don’t really have a choice.

Their position four has several options: contest the pulls, soak XP under tower with the offlaner or go to their own jungle area to stack. Again, most of the time you will be stronger in lane and adding to it the fact that the enemy offlaner is busy killing creeps under their own tower, if the enemy support contests, they are probably going to be at a disadvantage: there are two of you and one of them.

That is why you often see position four supports in professional games dragging the creepwaves across the map: this way they prevent the enemy safelane from pulling the creepwave to the neutral camp, while also not getting into a 1v2 position. From my experience, this is an incredibly rare move even in low Immortal games, so for the vast majority of players pushing waves has no downsides and little counterplay.

What is important, however, is what you do as a safelane duo at this point.

AFK carries

Many Dota forums and discussion boards are filled with complaints from Carry players and it usually goes something like this: “my support is pushing the wave and pulling single stacks all the time, while I get relentlessly harassed and can’t get a last hit”. But wait, I just said that in a stronger lane that’s what a good support should do, isn’t it?

Yes, but Carry players have to keep up with the reality of Dota and from my personal experience coaching, most of them are stuck back in 2015, where aggressively denying your own creeps and “keeping the lane equilibrium” was considered the go to strategy.

You know why professional Carry players almost always get a sub 14-minute Battle Fury? Even in very dire situations? Because they don’t AFK waiting for the lane to get pushed into tower, they don’t use the time to complain about the pulls — they go to the pull and last hit the neutral creeps themselves.

This gives them some extra gold and, indirectly, pushes the wave! Because if you finish the Small pull camp early, your creeps will start going back to lane faster and they will, more often than not, meet the enemy creep wave just outside the tower range, where you want them to be. To, once again, push the lane, and go for another pull. Potentially to the Large pull camp if your safelane duo is happy fighting and contesting it.

Now, don’t get me wrong — there are things like very bad pulls: the ones that are made too hastily and result in an enemy double wave going into your tower range, creating opportunities for the enemy to dive. However, oftentimes it happens because the carry, when left with the lane creep wave, defaults to “aggressive denies” strategy, which is in direct opposition to the “push the wave to maximise gold and experience” strategy.

Side activities

At some point in this rinse-repeat strategy of winning the lane, supports might find themselves with nothing to do. The enemy position four gave up on trying to contest, after losing their resources and maybe even their life a couple of times, when trying to contest. The enemy Offlaner is “happily” farming under their own tower, while the carry pulled to the Large camp and getting the extra gold from jungle, while also setting up a lane in a way that makes farming lane creeps as safe as possible.

What does a support do in this situation? Well, it really depends on the support. Strong ganking supports like Disruptor and Jakiro can start rotating around the map and apply their pressure elsewhere. More static, lane sustain supports like Warlock or Dazzle should be starting on some stacks and that’s where the T1 safelane Ancient Camp comes into play.

For some reason it keeps on getting ignored by the vast majority of players, while in reality it is one of the prime farming spots for the carry to exploit. Naturally, it is very carry-dependant and not everyone is going to be able to get it early, but it is still something for the support to consider.

Once carries get strong enough to push in wave, take the Small neutrals and take the Large neutrals in one go, that’s when this Ancient camp becomes a good option to not AFK and keep on getting XP and Gold.

So what is winning the lane?

Personally for me as a position five support player “winning the lane” means one simple thing: getting my carry to a point where they can “autopilot” their farm and get into their comfortable farming pattern.

What it means really depends on the carry hero: it can be a Battle Fury on Juggernaut, level six on Drow Ranger, some combination of sustain and farming acceleration items on someone like Razor etc.

The faster I can get my carry to this state and free myself up to start doing something across the map, the earlier I’ve “won my lane”. It has nothing to do with the kills you might or might not get in the first ten minutes of the game, it has nothing to do with the amount of times you’ve died as a support. It is simply about getting your carry farm-ready and independent as soon as possible.

At the end of the day, for the next fifteen minutes or so they become the least interactive game piece on your board: most carries need to have several items before they come online and are ready to join fights.

Creating a Net Worth and Level disparity between them and the enemy offlaner is a byproduct of that: after all if the carry can’t stay in lane in a 1v1 against an enemy offlaner, suddenly their farming pattern is disrupted and the way they can get gold becomes limited.

There are matchups where it is impossible to make it so, even through strong early game and level advantage. Someone like Doom will always have a kill condition on someone like Faceless Void, even with a couple of levels and a couple of thousands of deficit.

However, in most cases Gold and XP are the deciding factor and maximising lane gains of both is done by pushing in waves and exploiting more of the map.

Closing thoughts

This is my current understanding of Dota and what works for me really well in the EU Immortal bracket, but I don’t think I am in position to claim it as some universal truth. In fact, in some cases playing extra conservatively and denying aggressively might be the better strategy: there are games where you simply can’t win the lane because of the matchups.

However, the current meta, as discussed previously, is heavily Carry-favored for the first several minutes of the game and the above post is how I feel like this fact should be used: by exploiting the most out of your corner of the map.

Do you disagree with this assessment? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below: I am always interested in hearing differing opinions on the complex subject of Dota.