What Components Does Every DotA Draft Need? How Do We Fill In Gaps In A Draft?

What are the essential components of every dota draft? I don’t mean roles 1 through 5, but in terms of what each team conceptually needs or could have to successfully play a game. I’ve always enjoyed discussions around drafts and rounded out teams, while it’s also something I also struggle doing, especially when time constrained during pick phases (whether in ranked or captains mode).

I have been planning on doing something around this for a while, and finally got started on it last week. This is part 1 in a series covering everything I think you need (or could at least have) in a dota 2 draft. https://youtu.be/8JEvlzzxGzc

If you take a look, let me know what you think, and if there’s anything I could improve on or cover differently. I think this will be at least 4 parts so I have time to make some changes if people have useful suggestions.

You can also request certain topics and I can include them in a future part if I haven’t already planned on covering that concept.

In this video I cover tower push, initiation, counter initiation, and roshan taking; talking about why each concept is desirable in a draft, what happens when you’re weak at that area based on draft. And then how to play with it and how to play against it. There’s also examples included, although that by nature is very limited as many heroes do many different jobs.

While the whole series isn’t going to be in a specific order, I did start with this 3 concepts (lumping initiation in with counter initiation here) because I think they are some of the most important things you need. If you are drafting for your team in the second phase or last pick, you need to account for and try to incorporate these components.

While not unwinnable, drafts without tower push are bad. Drafts without initiation are bad. Drafts that can’t take roshan prior to 25 minutes and two items on your carry are pretty bad (except in low mmr where there’s the gentleman’s agreement to not take RS before 30 minutes in place anyways). If you looks at pro drafts, they always have at bare minimum these essentials.

GL drafting out there!