Looking for a specific type of dual lane

Question

TL;DR : I'm looking for two heroes that go well together in a lane, and will be able to gang other lanes fast.

I have a problem when I play most of my games, I feel like my team is way too passive. They mostly farm for 40 minutes, then a couple of big fights happen, and the game is pretty much decided at the picking phase.

People dont' seem to realize you have to adapt playstyle with the 10 heroes on the battlefield.

I know I can't change people, but I often play with a friend and, well, we can try to change the pace of the game, and I'm looking for a lane build that can do that.

Here is some background :

• We hover between 3.9k and 4.3k MMR
• We usually win our lane
• We usually play a support and a hero that is fast and that kills fast. Most of the time its something along the lines of Slark-Maiden, Mirana-Sandking/Withdoc, Maiden-Timbersaw, Axe-Dazzle. It depends on what we have with us, on the other side, and our mood.
• We usually have to take care of warding, smoking, and doing stuff like mekansm/pipe/vlads/etc.
• We're really comfortable ganging/roaming, pretty much what I call "playing".

So here is our issue, we play the first 7 minutes and end up having between 1 and 3 kills in our lane, and decide to start killing around. We manage to keep our enemy at bay while helping other lanes, and then the same problem occurs at every game :

• It's really hard to gang 4 players in woods when you're only 2
• We can't get our team to push when we actually manage to kill 2+ on our own.

What i'm looking for :

• Some kind of magic lineup that will help us achieve a win/a push with only two players while the other farm behind forever
• Something that can make people push with us when necessary, or gang with us when necessary. Warding doesnt' work, people just don't come.

We're thinking something along the lines of Io-Furion but we really dont' like Furion as a hero, since he has nothing good to speak of.

I've had great games where people follow, and games where people are passive for over an hour. BUT I seem to notice that the other team is rarely playing like that and has some actual synergy.

WHAT do you do to make people play actively ? HOW do you convince them to not pick 3 mortred?

What is your secret ?

Answer 1

Since hard carry is, in my opinion, the easiest role to play, I would try to safe trilane with a random if I were you. By your MMR, I presume that you probably know how to safe trilane, but I'm going to lay it out briefly anyways for others' benefit.

First, it's not literally a "tri-lane." That is to say if you have three people in the lane from your team at once and you aren't currently ganking the enemy hero(es) into next year, you are not doing it correctly. The tri-lane usually involves a carry and a babysitter as is normal for pub play, but there is a second support that consistently pulls your creep wave into the jungle so that they die to neutral creep and deny the enemy XP and gold. You can do this with a duo lane too, but it's riskier for your carry because they get left alone for at least half the time, and you're alone too which means that if mid ganks through jungle you are also paste. The support in the jungle gains XP by consistently pulling creep from the neutrals dying. He or she can also leave to gank mid or do some general roaming stuff, if you think that it is safe to duo lane for the moment.

Second, in terms of lane comp, you should be focused on "what heroes work well ganking or teamfighting together," not "what hero is the best at sustaining lane presence or helping my carry sustain his presence in lane." Undying and Visage are famously good trilane heroes in almost any comp because they both have skills that benefit greatly from more combatants being in a fight at once, and they're powerful early. Other possibilities include specific comps that synergize well together. A good one might be Ursa + Witch Doctor + Crystal Maiden. CM can set up easily with Frostbite, then WD moves into position and uses Maledict. Once Frostbite expires, WD stuns. Meanwhile the whole time Ursa is laying into them with Overpower and Fury Swipes. If they aren't dead outright then Maledict is guarenteed to kill them because between CM and Ursa you have a very large amount of early game burst damage, which translates into Maledict having huge ticks. That's just one I thought of off the top of my head, just think about the spells of all the heroes you've played and how they might work well together.

Answer 2

There is no easy magic answer for you. It seems like you prefer ganging heroes and early game victory. There is just so much a 2 people can do in a team of 5.

For every dual lane combo there can be a counter pick. You have a power lane - they might counter it with and invisible leecher in jungle. You want to gang middle - they might have QoP middle, good luck with that. The key is of course team-play, but you just can't force people to do your bidding.

What you can do is explain your strategy and hope other teammates will play accordingly. Make use of the voice chat or quick response wheal and pings. But even if you pick 5 hero early push, you can be countered by defensive line-up with a farming carry if you don't manage to complete any objectives.

Now here are some examples of line ups you might enjoy:

Tiny - Wisp - their synergy allows them to be all over map, solves tiny's early problem with mana (thanks to tether) and has possibility of kills, ganks + push (toss deals dmg to towers + aghanim later).

Sven - Wips - very similar to tiny wisp, just more reliable stun and inconsistent dmg output (when the God's strength is off cooldown).

Carry + Lion - Lion is one of the heroes that doesn't need that much money early on - he can get mana, with tranquil boots he has hp, he can buy wards, dust, etc. For carry hero you might want someone who doesn't need farm (as you don't like farming). Leshrac sounds good because of the double stun combo + diabolic edict for early game pushes.

The last thing to remember is that while you roam and gang, more pressure is put on you to accomplish something. Otherwise you just abandon lane and let enemy hero farm.

If you kill a high priority target (position 1 or 2), this might be enough, otherwise you need to work towards a target - farm on your hero or push tower.

What I do is that I try to imagine that every player in game is professional and knows everything about Dota. Then I imagine with this knowledge what would be my team's strategy to win (example, survive early game, protect spectre on safe, but get fast levels on invoker mid and save Vengeful spirit swap only for Enigma ulti, etc.)

and I imagine my enemies goals as well and try to disrupt them (don't let tinker get early boots of travel, care for roaming spirit break and don't let spectre get early kills or easy farm).

If you know what your teams and enemies goals are (according to pick) you will know what to do.

Answer 3

Depends on the kind of enemies you face in your lane. If they do not have any kind of AOE disable or escape mechanism, the following dual-lane combos have worked well for me (the first hero is the support in the list below)

• Bane + Mirana: Bane's sleep into Mirana arrow.
• Bane + Ursa: Bane's sleep into Ursa's earthshock(a value point for the added slow).
• Bane + Kunkka: Bane's sleep into torrent(+ ship). Kinda difficult since the damage output by kunkka in the earlier levels is less.
• Venomancer + Ursa: Venomanver's Q into earthshock == super slowed enemy. Ursa with 1Q, 2W and 1E can kill almost anyone.
• Venomanccer + carry (+roaming Skywrath): Super slowed enemy.
• Shadow Shaman + Ursa: Two early levels into shackles and hex, plus Ursa's DPS == GG. Note that SS has slow movement speed, hence an early boots to cover distance is optimal. (My personal favorite)
• Shadow Shaman + Mirana: Shackle into Arrow.
• Windranger + Nature's prophet(ganking): Extra skills into shackleshot. Sprout on enemy and then Shackleshot == 100% latch.
• Vengeful (with orb of venom for slow) + Ursa: Magic missle + wave of terror + Ursa auto attack == high DPS
• Vengeful + Leshrac: Double stuns + wave of terror + lesh's magic output
• Any reliable stunner + leshrac: Double stuns + lesh's magic output.
• Witch Doctor + Leshrac: Casks + Split Earth + Maledict + Lesh's magic output == RIP
• Elder Titan + Leshrac: ET Stun + Natural Order + Lesh's skills

The point is to chain stun. That worked well for me. Although, I haven't played for sometime now.

Hope these will help pwn some noobs.