Dota 2 Mind Games Guide:
How to Trick your Enemies

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Chapter 1	Mind Games & Player Types
Chapter 2	Easy Mind Game Methods
Chapter 3	Harder Mind Game Tactics

What’s inside?
If you start making successfull mind games inside ranked matches, then you reach the ultimate Dota 2 heaven! 😀 In this guide you can identify your personal playstyle and choose the mind game methods that fit for you to trick enemies.

Chapter 1: What are Dota 2 Mind Games
and which Player Type are You?

You are an experienced Dota 2 player with hundreds of games?

You feel ready to finally move on to the ultimate style of using mind games and psychology in Dota?

You’re welcome, let’s start… 😉

Introduction: What are
Dota 2 Mind Games?

Hi and welcome to this Dota 2 mind games guide! 🙂 Winning a match involves a lot more than just having great individual skills like perfect last hitting, map awareness, good positioning and so forth.

Once you are capable of all these, you can tryout to use more challenging methods: Controlling your emotions or playing with your enemies’ emotions and frustration are weapons you can use to win games.

These techniques can be used by any hero roles:
1) Supports can juke a lot
2) Carries can shine in the late game
3) Offlaners can win even as the underdog

If you start frustrating yourself within a match, then you have to realize you can also upset your team. And This can lead you to defeat. Having a good mentality in hard times might even lead to a crazy comeback! Winning fights little by little against the enemy team can demoralize them.
Perfect individual skills are great, but combining them with some soft skills is a plus…

Mental Mind Game Example: You can even make the enemy believe you’re totally tilted and you hate your team, but in fact, it’s all a lie and part of your plan. Your opponents will feel too confident and lower their guard. Here’s where you surprisingly gank a lane and make a huge team wipe. Now you know, your mind games worked perfectly.

Physical Mind Game Example: On the other hand, single skilled moves can also be mind games: Using the fog of war, attack animation canceling as well as spell animation canceling or using any other active move to trick the enemy are challenging techniques you can learn in this guide.

Dota 2 is 50% skill and 50% mentality and attitude. We’re all humans and we have feelings, which affect our way of playing. We have good and bad days.

That’s why it is so important to understand this factor: The secret is to keep a good mentality and be really creative when it comes to the psychological part of Dota 2!

2. The Analytical Dota 2 Player (Think before You Act):

PROS: This type of player is totally aware of his spells and cooldowns. He will maximize his use of mana and ways of farming, in order to master efficiency.
He will be really communicative and collaborative with his team. He trusts his team a lot. This player usually chooses core roles.

In Dota 2 the most scenarios can be calculated before they happen: This player is not relying on reactions but on his calculations. 😉

CONS: Trying to save some spells for efficiency because these are not “necessary” in the team fight or securing an objective might end up really bad sometimes.

He also is not the fastest decision-maker, he needs time to rethink his actions.

4. Hesitant Players (The Tactical Guy):

PROS: He wants to play very tactical and win trough strong synergies and combos.

These players make a deeper analysis of the game and is always double-checking the enemies’ items. He’s always thinking a step forward and can predict some movements. He can predict fights and game phases and wants to inform this team.

CONS: This player doesn’t have the fastest reflexes to escape or win fights. If his plans are not working out, he has not many other options to rely on.

6. Chilled Players (Confident but Silent Guys):

PROS: It’s a pleasure to play with him. He always has a positive mind and tries his best. He prefers silence over argumenting with his teammates. Even if this player had a really bad and stressful game, he’s gonna be fine and not affected by it. He can play many different roles and is very flexible. He plays his hero confident, but is not giving advice or feedback to others.

CONS: It might be hard for him to criticize his team and he may prefer to say nothing. He holds his own real feelings to avoid trouble inside the game, which can make him feel more stressed.

Chapter 2:Easy Mind Game Methods
You Need to learn in Dota 2

Now you are aware of the most Dota 2 player types, now let’s start with basic mind games.

Using the fog of war and animation canceling are the first steps you take, afterward harder tasks wait for you! 😉

1. Abusing the Fog of War:

First of all let’s start with methods you might be already using: Using the fog of war for your advantage is feasible in every single match. But go one step further: How can you even troll an enemy through the fog? Train your fog step skills and get the master of escapes, sudden teleports, and baits.

Dota 2 is all about vision, but certain objects can block it, making us totally blind in some cases. When people lose sight of something because of the Fog of War, they start getting really frustrated. If you use this lack of vision on your favor and survive, this is what we called “Jukes”.
Juking your enemies once, twice or… three times is gonna make them so mad! Especially when you’re a vulnerable Support 5. This frustrates cores a lot. 😉

Pro tip: Create a custom lobby with a friend in the enemy team. Inside the game, start wandering around the map with your friend, so you can both see where you have vision of each other during daylight and night. Also, don’t forget to cut trees and see how much vision you can gain! Also test around with the vision of wards.

2. Attack Animation Canceling & using the Hold Key:

Doing this in the laning phase is great to get more accurate last hits and denies.
You can use this to bait a right click and get an easy deny.
In the case of spells, for example, canceling the animation of the Magnus Ultimate might trick the enemy’s mind.

Example:If you’re playing Slardar versus a Juggernaut, you can bait the Spin by trying to stun and canceling the animation. This is a really good way of trying to waste his mana.

3. Provoking and Baiting the Enemy into Traps:

Picture it: You’re the midlaner and your entire team is smoked behind you. You show yourself alone in a lane to farm creeps and move a bit too far. The enemy is gonna think that you’re completely helpless and they will try to kill you. When this happens, your entire team is gonna be there to help you and counter initiate!

You can also use your supports like baits or even wards! If you start protecting your own wards, the enemy is not gonna expect you to be around and you can easily kill the entire team.

4. Using Good Behavior as a Method of Manipulation:

If you show yourself like a good guy, who’s always willing to help and ask their teammates what they need, then your team is gonna trust you. Flaming and criticizing don’t lead to anything good. What your teammates need is understanding!

Also, if you identify a noob or just somebody that is practicing a role, don’t be mad! Just try to guide him, suggest him items and where to farm in case he’s playing a core. The worst you can do is blaming him and flaming because this can lead to frustration and even rage quit. Always have the win in mind. 😉

5. Win an Oscar as the Best Actor with Illusions

You can make an enemy believe your illusion is the real one and easily scape from really bad situations. For example, if you’re playing Phantom Lancer, you can start practicing controlling each of the illusions to confuse the enemy.

Illusion Runes are really underrated, but they can make a huge impact on the psychological factor of players. You can send them to “gank” and the enemy might throw all the ultimates to this copy. When they realize it’s an illusion, they’re gonna feel really pathetic and down. For more info about Runes check out this guide.

6. Transfer the Mind Game Aspect onto Your Personal Growth:

Make rules for your self. This is a gamechanger.

Rule 1: Always give 100% or don’t play.
If you know your team is fighting all the time, flaming and blaming each other, it doesn’t matter to you. You have to develop the ability to play at you 100% despite this awful situation. If you play nice only when you have a great team, you’re never gonna learn and grow.

You have to play out of your comfort zone and push yourself beyond the limit. Dealing with your emotions is the hardest part of Dota 2. Emotional intelligence is a skill you also have to develop. Don’t let negative thoughts blind your mind and focus on your objectives.

Rule 2: Break your tilt and make a pause.
We all have been in a situation where we keep playing until we get a victory. You go to bed after losing 10 games and finally winning one, right? If you had a horribly stressful game and you lost, then I recommend taking a little break and being honest with yourself.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Am I tilted?
• Should I play another game knowing I’m still really mad?
• Am I gonna play angry next game?
• Should I just play tomorrow when I feel more relaxed?

I strongly recommend playing the next day after having a stressful game. If you keep playing, you’re probably gonna do it really mad and ruin everybody’s game. Know your emotions and dominate them! 😉

Chapter 3: Harder Mind Game Tactics

After completing the simple mind game methods in Dota 2, let’s see what we can do on top?

The following psychological tips and tricks are only for high-level Dota players and need a lot of training.

Are you ready to get ninja-skills? 😉

Predicting in Dota 2: Nostradamus Reloaded

Dota 2 is all about making really good predictions.

Example for Quick Predictions: If you have some vision around an area and see the enemy Hard Carry passing by, then you can predict he’s gonna farm in the nearest neutral camp and keep farming around his jungle, so you can gank really fast with your team.

You can predict this Hard Carry is gonna go jungle again to farm because he just got killed and he’s trying to get an item. So, you tell your support to ward around and smoke gank to kill him again before he can farm. You did all this by predicting the enemy mentality and behavior.

Example for Delayed Predictions: And you can even predict whole scenarios and game phases minutes before they happen: Through specific items, movements and behavior you can see a plan behind everything: Will they push in 5 minutes? Let’s prepare for that, what is the plan we can counter? Think about it actively not passively! 😉

Make Your Enemy Believe that you are AFK or Disconnected:

This is a troll strategy, but it works sometimes! 😀
Imagine you are on the midlane and moving and acting like an APM-monster. You have perfect positioning and dominate your enemy and the creeps. Now you plan a bait: You move into a half-exposed area and just auto-attack. You just do nothing. You pretend to be disconnected or afk! 😉 The enemy gonna think that you’re an easy kill and will go all-in for you. Now just wait for the perfect moment and strike back to kill him!

Another situation: You start writing in all-chat that you hate your team, they’re the worst and even one of them is a total noob. Every time one of your mates die, you make fun of them, but it’s all part of your strategy, right? You’re making them believe your entire team is tilted and you’re all gonna feed, so the enemy is gonna lower the guard and here’s where you attack.

Trick Your Enemies through Hardcarry Support Hero Picks

Just because you see Void Spirit in the midlane, it doesn’t mean he’s not a really good Support 4. Some cores can also work in the support position. Monkey King might also be a really good Pos 4! Don’t categorize heroes like everybody else and keep an open mind. Be willing to try any possibility and build to confuse the enemy! 😉

You could even pick a Morphling, Naga Siren or Lancer first and play a support role – just make sure everyone in your team knows about it and that you are not missing core functions!