I previously stated that trading your life for a tower is a terrible idea. I'll explain why here and exactly what you should be doing instead. This post will be an all encompassing post on towers, there will be more later and while everyone can benefit from the strategies detailed I believe beginners and intermediate players should probably skip over the exact values and just keep the strategies in mind while hopefully remembering a broad approximation of the values given. Advanced players ABSOLUTELY SHOULD try to remember the exact values or at least a very close approximation (eg. ~250 gold instead of exactly 264 gold is OK).
First, you should only be pushing a tower once you feel like you have a good
enough level and/or gold advantage or if the lane is temporarily
abandoned. Don't suicide trying to take down the tower. Your time is
better spent simply being alive and extending your gold/xp advantage. If
there is a risk that you will die before a tower goes down (especially
if alone!) , GET OUT. Its not worth chipping away at the tower and
risking your life.
Also, the critical point for a
tower is 10% hp. So for the tier 1 tower that is 130 hp and 160 hp for
the rest of the towers. Underneath this threshold a tower can be denied.
The difference in gold between destroying a tower and having it denied
is astronomical so please do not attack a tower to underneath this
threshold unless you are absolutely sure you can completely finish it
off. If there is a chance that you will need to bail, its better for the
tower to have >10% hp so that you can properly finish the job later.
Although its implied above the tier 1 towers each have 1300 total hp. The tier 2, 3 and 4 towers each have 1600 hp. Also, the tier 1 towers has no backdoor protection whereas the rest do. With backdoor protection a tower takes 25% less damage from heroes AND will regen the hp lost at a rate of 90hp/sec. While its possible to take down a backdoor protected tower with enough damage its generally not a good idea to whack at a tower for too long. Hit the tower once and decide then whether it is worth it.
Backdoor protection comes into play when there are no enemy creeps near a tower/rax (meaning your creeps are not near the enemy tower/rax). For tier 2 towers each tower will need your creeps by it for backdoor protection to be disabled. For tier 3 towers if you have an allied creep (can be dominated or otherwise controlled, does not have to be a lane creep!) by any of the T3s all of them lose backdoor protection. Many people do not know this. Use it to your advantage early and often.
Pro Tip: Once you've taken down any of the T3s you can start attacking the tier 4 tower, you don't even need to take down any rax first. Do not treat this as a strategy. Its just another fact that is not too commonly known. Once you know how to take advantage of this information you'll love that you know about it. Generally you can go for a tier 4 before taking down a rax if the enemy team can not touch you (whether they were wiped or only the core can fight you and they are dead without buyback, bb for short). You'll still only want to skip the rax if the rest of your team is working away at them and your creeps in the other lanes are no where close to tank their T3s.
The nicest thing about taking a tower is the bounty given. Successfully destroying a T1, T2, T3 and T4 tower will each give out 264g, 312g, 358g and 405g respectively to each player on your team. That's reliable gold too. In total that is 1320, 1560, 1790 and 2025 gold for each T1, T2, T3 and T4 for your team. Getting a last hit on a tower will give that one hero an extra 150-250 gold. You'll see that simply taking down one tower is quite a large advantage for you team even when simply analyzing just the gold bounty. Also, a denied tower will only give 100, 120, 140 and 160 gold for the T1 through T4 towers. That's MUCH LESS than half the gold you would otherwise get.
Although they may be the most crucial buildings towards eventually taking down the enemy ancients rax do not normally give any bounty at all for simply being destroyed. Each will only give a bounty if last hit and the value will vary from 352-370 gold. While your chances of winning are very good if you're whacking away at any rax its still worthwhile to get the last hit on a rax so try to time your hits correctly.
Any advanced player will already have heard of rat dota and split pushing but as anyone can read this its good to introduce the terms and ideas here first as the strategies are those that can be instantly applied to your games.
Rat dota is where you push an empty lane to the enemy tower and chip it down then run off when the enemy arrives. You want to think of a rat gnawing away on something and running away at the first sign of danger. This can be very annoying to play against and is a legitimate strategy especially when playing from behind.
The idea is that your team is mostly turtled up and farming your own jungle. You push the lane and gnaw away at a tower forcing the enemy team to defend it. They'll probably commit more than one unit to defend but you take off when you feel them come close. This prevents the whole team from storming your jungle or tower or rax as you've split up their numbers to defend their tower. If the whole team comes to defend then they are missing out on gold/xp from farming the other lanes or jungle.
The reason this is considered an advanced strategy is because you really need to have a good understanding of all the heroes and the game that's played out so far to know when to go into rat dota mode or if its even viable for you based on your lineup.
Split pushing is where you push out multiple lanes are once against enemy buildings. This is best done against teams with good teamfight but poor push/counterpush and/or ganking. Split pushing is viable whether you are ahead or behind because of its nature. By pushing multiple lanes at once you split up the enemy as they try to defend each lane. This keeps them from grouping up as a team to fight you which is great for you if they have better teamfight.
I do believe that split pushing is a good strategy to employ in every single game. The biggest problem is making sure you actually have the lineup for it. Generally any pushing heroes are fine but you will want to be able to be able to push creep waves quickly as well as push down towers. Wind Ranger is a good hero who can do both effectively. Power shot can clear creep waves quickly and focus fire can take down towers or rax very quickly. The classic heroes for split pushing are Nature's Prophet (NP for short) and Tinker.
This is because an important aspect to split pushing is mobility. You don't want to commit all your heroes to the strategy. You should have heroes farming the jungle or a pushed in lane and possibly a ganker going for pick offs with a disabler while the enemy is split up trying to defend the split push. This is to make sure that you are always keeping up on your farm.
Finally, I want to leave you an extension on the "Get Your Farm" mantra. While it should be clear now, farm is not all about CS (short for creep score which means how many creeps you've killed and denied). Simply taking down a single tier 1 tower is equivalent to every person on your team getting a kill gold from killing a level 7 hero.
A tier 2 equates to a level 12 hero kill for your whole team while a T3 and T4 is just like a level 17 and level 22 hero kill for your whole team. This doesn't take into account gold earned from ending kill sprees which is greater than the standard bounty on a hero kill but it also doesn't take into account the gold earned from farming waves while pushing let alone all the experience gain from that. Still, its a powerful enough idea without having to include complex variables. Please keep in mind the importance of that sort of gold advantage when calling for a push to finish off a tower OR when calling for TPs for when you have a tower pushed in that your team needs to defend.
This is just the first part on towers with a tiny intro to rat dota and split pushing. You'll find more later.
Get Your Farm!
