What is Quick Casting for in Dota 2 and how can you use it?
How to use Quick Cast in Dota 2?
- Open Dota 2 and open the settings in the upper left.
- Click on the Hotkeys option.
- Two option will appear on top: Abilities and Items. The Quick Cast checkboxes are below these hotkeys.
- Enable both checkboxes by clicking on them!
- Done! The Quick Casts are activated now and will work with your normal hotkeys!
But that’s only your first step, to release the full power of Quick Casting, read on – I will show you each aspect you need to know!
What is Quick Cast in Dota 2?
In Dota 2 every second counts: In seconds, teams lose a battle and in seconds heroes die!
Quick cast is a hotkey feature that allows activating your items or abilities instantly.
Regular Casting:
For regular casting, players have to activate a spell or ability, select an enemy, ally or area and click again to select this. No doubt, it is an efficient method but not quite fast. It gives more control (especially new players) but is definitely slower.
Quick Casting:
With Quick Cast, a player has to activate a spell or ability and just point the cursor on the enemy, ally or area. It will be directly released where your cursor is! It can save a lot of time if it’s done well and you will be able to escape faster and hunt faster! It’s pretty helpful.
Why Should I use Dota 2 Quick Cast?
In matchmaking, various crucial situations occur, to overcome those situations quick cast can improve your outcome tremendously! Here are the four circumstances where it would help to execute the quick cast functionality:
- Teleportation: Teleportation is a feature which is used for escape as well as to gank. In both situations, a player only has a few seconds. If it’s a ganking situation, activate teleport and move the cursor on the map to your desired location: It will save at least 1 second! The same procedure applies to the escape situation.
- Spam Abilities: Quick Cast is also quite helpful in spamming abilities. In Dota 2, many support heroes have spells with a low cooldown. To harras the enemy and to dominate the lane, spamming abilities is quite effective. Due to quick cast, regular spam converts into quick spam! This will increase the chances that the enemy is not able to farm and he might lose the lane.
- Hit/Kill and Run: You may have seen many pro players using Tinker and Natures Prophet like an assassinating machine. All those fast spells are done by using a quick cast. The player has to activate the spells, and the cursor is already on the enemy. 10-sec attack shortened to 4-sec!
- The quick cast is a golden feature for a few heroes such as Legion Commander (Fast Dagger), Pudge (Fast Hook), Lion (Quick Ulti) and many more! By using your expert skills, you can make it a golden feature for every hero. 😉
Quick Cast Vs. Normal Cast in Dota 2
The main goal of the quick cast is to reduce the time it takes to cast a spell or item. The quick cast is crucial for some heroes.
Let’s take Meepo as an example, one of the most complex heroes in Dota 2:
With the regular cast, the process of calling all the Meepos is like: Meepo 2- click- poof- Meepo 3- click- poof- Meepo 4- click-poof. When using Quick Cast, you are using 1/3 of the necessary inputs. Quick Cast: Meepo 2- poof- Meepo 3- poof- Meepo 4- poof. After buying Aghinam Scepter, the combination becomes even more complicated for the regular cast.
The same concept applies to heroes like Invoker, Tinker, Storm, etc. All these are core heroes! To eliminate the enemy team, core heroes have to cast fast!
Of course, normal casting is easier to use for beginner players and Quick Casting is hard to use correctly: It requires some practice to become pro in it. 😉
How to set up
Dota 2 Quick Cast in Detail?
It gets a little messy when it comes to using abilities and items on enemy heroes in a crowd. For Example, you want to use Lion’s Ulti on a low hp enemy. However, the enemy is surrounded by creeps and other enemy heroes. It would get hard to use Quick Cast in that situation. To avoid this type of situation, you can select a quick cast on specific key binds. However, most players do not know about this advanced feature for Quick Casts!
Step by Step guide to make
Advanced Changes for Quick Casts:
- Go to the Dota 2 settings.
- At the end of the settings page, you will see an option to advanced Dota 2 hotkeys.
- Click on the advanced hotkeys option, and a new page will appear on the screen. On the bottom right corner, there is a column of hotkeys options.
- In the hotkeys option area, click on the last checkbox “Enable advanced Quick Cast options”.
- Now, go to the previous page, below hotkeys of items and abilities you will see three new options: Cast, Auto-Cast and Quick Cast.
- Cast defines the usual casting method, Meepo 2 click poof. Remember?
- Auto-Cast casts an ability on its own whenever it’s ready. Auto-cast is applicable only on a few heroes such as Zeus, Silencer, Gyrocopter, etc.
- The Quick Cast is the same option as before but a bit different: Now, you can select on which hotkeys you want to release the Quick Cast. For Example, Quick Cast on Lion’s first and third spell. It will even work in crowded areas!
Quick Guide How to Train with
Dota 2 Quick Cast:
The Quick Cast is an amazing and helpful feature of Dota 2. However, it is not easy to use. It’s quite tough to use instant casts in critical situations such as smoke ganks or a quick escape! To use it properly focus on the following points.
- Start practicing in the Dota 2 Bot mode or hero demo mode.
- To improve your abilities in casting, play the demo hero mode. Because in demo mode can use unlimited spells, create unlimited enemies, no cooldown, and no mana cost. This will save you a ton of time, compared to practicing it in real matches.
- To practice Quick Cast skills in a crowded area, summon ten same and one different enemy. Now, try to cast spells on the one unique enemy, also use items like Dagon, EUL’s, Synth and Force Staff!
- Practice the above step again and again until you become an expert in it.
- To practice ganks and escapes, go for the Bot match. Use Quick Cast in the whole game. At first, it will be tough, but practice makes perfect. 😉
It will take only 5-10 days to become comfortable with the Quick Cast functionality (If you practice correctly).
Which Dota 2 Pro Gamers
use the Quick Cast Feature?
Almost every international Dota 2 pro player uses Quick Cast because it’s especially made for players with amazing skills. Some pro players are popular among the Dota 2 community that uses Quick Casts like a god!
- Invoker is one of the toughest heroes to handle in Dota 2. Miracle, for example, is one of the best Invoker players in Dota 2. This guy nailed Quick Casts on one of the toughest heroes! He made his combos popular among the Dota 2 community by using the Quick Cast feature.
- Puppy is the best support in Dota 2, because of his pro skills and fast reflexes. He made his team win in almost every tournament in Dota 2. How he made this happened? Yes! of course, he got OP skills. However, Quick Cast boosts his abilities. His best hero is Earth Spirit, and you have to check his streams, it’s just hilarious!
- Mid One is one of the best carry player in Dota 2. Wish you never face his Monkey king, this guy eliminates its enemies in second. Blink your eyes during a battle, and he will kill your hero.
Many other pro players use Quick Cast such as Kuroky, Sumail, SingSing, Xcalibur and many more!
Using quick casts is also great to be faster for any possible mind games or psychological tricks. Often the quick casts allow faster reactions and reflexes.
View Dota 2 Mind Game Guide
Some pro players do not use this method, but everybody has its strategy and skill. For some regular casting is more comfortable. If you want to figure it out which option suits you, start practicing and identify if it enhances your skill or not! 😉
On the long term the quick cast feature can increase your Dota 2 rank:
