As with any MOBA title out there, there are several Dota 2 objectives on the map that help advance the game state in one way or another. Aside from the main objective and the reason to learn how to play Dota, which is to destroy the other team’s Ancient before they destroy yours, these extra goals provide your team with powerful bonuses that can swing the game in your favor, or make a comeback effort much more difficult if you allow your opponents to just take them uncontested.
So, it’s important to learn what these are and how to maximize your chances at getting these objectives for yourself, as they can often mean the difference between winning or losing in your Dota 2 games.
Dota 2 Towers
Towers are the most basic objective in the game. Each lane has three towers placed in specific locations along their lengths, referred to as tier 1 towers for the towers at the end of the lanes, tier 2 towers for those in the middle, and tier 3 towers for those on the ramps leading to each side’s base. There are also two tier 4 towers stationed in front of each team’s Ancient.
Tier 1 towers are the weakest and easiest to destroy, while tier 4 towers make up the strongest of the lot but be careful, if you stay in range of an enemy tower for too long, you’ll end up dead. Every tower except for tier 1 towers are invulnerable at the start of the game, which can only be removed once the towers preceding them are destroyed first. For example, the tier 2 middle lane tower on the Radiant side cannot be attacked or damaged in any way until the tier 1 tower before it falls.
The same goes for every lane tower, but in the case of tier 4 towers, only one tier 3 tower needs to be destroyed before their invulnerability is removed.
Towers automatically attack enemy units that get within their radius, and serve as a tough first line of defense for each team. Compared to Turrets in League of Legends, though, Dota 2 towers are quite a bit weaker overall, making tower diving to get kills in the laning phase a viable strategy.
In short, League towers protect you. In Dota 2, you protect the towers. Mostly.
The Ancient
Located deep within each side’s base, just a stone’s throw away from the Fountain, is the Ancient — the very thing that the game’s name comes from (Defense of the Ancients). The Ancients are large, highly durable structures that make up the game’s main objective, and are the only true win condition in the game.
That is to say, that it doesn’t matter how far behind your team is relative to your opponents; if you can somehow take down their Ancient before they take down yours despite the deficit in gold or experience, you win. Period. Both Ancients are completely invulnerable until the pair of tier 4 towers protecting them are destroyed first.
Outpost
Located near each side’s secret shop, Outposts serve as “control points” that teams can use Town Portal Scrolls on to teleport to them. Each outpost is automatically controlled by the side that it’s closest to at the start of the game, but can be captured later on after any tier 2 tower on that side is destroyed. Recapturing an outpost that originally belonged to your team at the start of the game does not require you to bring down a tier 2 tower, though.
To capture an outpost, a hero must issue an attack order onto it. This will cause them to start channeling the capture process, which has a base time of six seconds. This time is divided evenly between all heroes from the same side, so it’s possible to speed up the channeling by having more heroes from your team capture the outpost at the same time.
Outposts are permanently invulnerable and can never be destroyed. They are quite handy to have late in games, as heroes respawning on your side can quickly rendezvous with the rest of your team if you’re trying to break into the opponents’ base.
Roshan
Roshan is the most powerful neutral creep on the map, one whose strength far outstrips that of your average hero. He starts with 6,000 HP and deals a ton of damage with his regular attack and area of effect spell called Slam. He also has access to passive abilities that block one targeted spell every 15 seconds, give him magic and status resistance, and give him buffs that increase his stats as time passes.
He spawns at the start of the game at the bottom river, inside his pit. There is another pit of the same kind on the opposite side of the river. Roshan moves back and forth between these two pits depending on the time of day, crossing the river in between the middle lane to get to the other side as needed.
Trying to kill Roshan by yourself is something you should absolutely not try in most, if not all, cases. He is extremely tough to bring down, and will require pretty much your entire team to defeat. In addition, dealing damage to Roshan with regular attacks, which are typically the most effective against him given his huge magic resistance, is restricted to the areas inside each pit.
Roshan’s pit
Regular attacks simply won’t hit if either you or Roshan are outside of his pit, so you and your teammates are required to box yourselves into his little hovel. This presents a huge risk that your team has to take if they want to kill Roshan, considering that ground-based vision is blocked from both the outside and the inside of each pit.
But it’s definitely worth the danger you’ll be putting yourselves into. Upon death, Roshan drops powerful single-use items that can change the outcome of a game. The most important one is Aegis of the Immortal, an item that respawns the holder on death, in the same spot that they died in, after a five-second delay. The hero respawns with full health and mana, though their cooldowns do not get reset.
This alone can make it extremely hard for your opponents to initiate teamfights against you, as they will have to contend with one of your heroes enjoying a second life in the middle of battle. It’s not uncommon to see entire teams avoid fighting into an Aegis this way, as they know they will be at a significant disadvantage otherwise.
Thankfully, the Aegis doesn’t last forever. It has a timed life of five minutes that starts as soon as it is picked up, and will disappear from the holder’s inventory once that timer expires. The Aegis also cannot be dropped and/or given to other teammates, so whomever grabs it has to hold it until it is used or expires.
Roshan respawns anywhere between eight to 11 minutes, which is determined randomly by the game upon each death.
Roshan Item Drops
Neither side will ever get any indication of when exactly he’ll reincarnate as such, so it’s important to keep track of when he will respawn the soonest after he dies. Simply take the game’s elapsed time when he dies, and add eight minutes to it to get the minimum respawn time. Of course, he could always respawn at the maximum amount, so you will still have to physically check the pit to see if he’s alive again.
Each respawn beyond Roshan’s first death adds more items to his inventory for teams to fight over. The exact items that he drops beyond the Aegis are determined by which pit Roshan dies in. For example, Cheese, which instantly restores a massive amount of health and mana on use, drops on his second death onwards when he’s in the Dire side pit. Conversely, he drops Roshan’s Banner, which buffs lane creeps that pass through its area of effect, when in the Radiant pit on his second death.
On the third death onwards, he drops Refresher Shard — which is a ridiculously strong item that doesn’t even cost any gold. All in all, Roshan is perhaps the most important objective in all of Dota 2 aside from the Ancients themselves, and will be a point of contention for both teams in any given Dota game.
Barracks
Behind each tier 3 tower is a pair of Barracks, commonly referred to by the community as “Rax” for short. In each lane, there is a Melee Barracks and a Ranged Barracks, which have different HP, HP regen, and armor values.
These don’t function the same way as similar structures in traditional real-time strategy games, where their purpose is to produce fighting units. Instead, Barracks keep creeps under a certain power threshold, much like Inhibitors in League of Legends. Once destroyed, the creeps of the team that downed the barracks in that lane grow stronger, into what are called super creeps. Super creeps have more health and hit harder than regular creeps.
Taking down each lane of barracks helps your team siege the opponents’ high ground more effectively, as super creeps serve as cannon fodder that the opposing team cannot just choose to ignore. This typically causes them to leave behind a hero to help stem the tide of creeps coming to their base, which creates a 5v4 advantage that your team can exploit if they try to push towards your base.
However, getting to the barracks in the first place is one of the hardest things to do in Dota. Not only are they protected by a tier 3 tower, they are also shielded by the opponents’ high ground advantage. You should generally only try to siege barracks if you have the Aegis of the Immortal, or are so far ahead that you can afford to siege without the insurance from Aegis.
Tormentor
The Tormentor is a powerful neutral creep that is completely immobile. It spawns in one of two designated pits at the corners of the map, indicated by “camera lens” terrain features. The Tormentor will not be available at the start of the game, as it initially spawns at the 15 minute mark. Only one may be present and active on the map at any given time, and its location will always be opposite to where Roshan is at the moment.
The most prominent reward from killing the Tormentor is a completely free Aghanim’s Shard, which the Tormentor drops upon death. However, unlike the Aghanim’s Shard dropped by Roshan prior to Patch 7.33 (the patch that introduced Tormentors for the first time), this Shard is not an item that any hero can pick up and use. Instead, the Shard automatically goes to one of the two lowest net worth heroes on your team, which will typically be your soft and hard supports.
In addition, the Tormentor leaves behind a 2 percent health regeneration aura upon death, which lasts 15 seconds. For those that play League or Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, this is kind of like the bonuses you get from killing drakes in the dragon pit or from killing Turtle and/or Lord. Finally, the Tormentor also grants your team 250 bonus gold per hero for killing it — equivalent to a 1,250 gold swing.
How to kill the Tormentor in Dota 2
Killing the Tormentor is simple: you just have to deal enough damage to bring it down before it can do the same to you or your team.
Though Tormentors technically only have a single hit point each, they are deceptively difficult to kill because of their regenerating barriers. They start with a barrier worth 2,500 HP each, which regenerates at a rate of 100 HP per second. This regeneration is active at all times, so there’s no way to disable it.
Beware though, Tormentors reflect 90 percent of all damage they receive, which goes back to all heroes within a 1,200-unit radius of their spawn points.
The reflected damage is distributed evenly among said heroes, which means that killing a Tormentor is typically a three to five-man endeavor rather than a solo affair. And not only that, but they also have a permanent damage over time aura.
Each Tormentor comes back stronger with each death. For one, the damage reflection goes up by 20 percent with each death, and so do the barrier hit points and barrier passive regeneration. But of course, your team will be a lot stronger as well on the second Tormentor spawn onwards, so it’s not like these buffs on death make Tormentors impossible to kill late in the game. Just keep in mind that they do get tougher later on.
