Dota 2 is a team-based game; things don’t go according to plan. A significant percentage of Dota 2 matches are lost in the first 10-15 minutes but you’ll still need to wait for another 15 – 20 minutes until they finish.
Trolling in Dota 2 is generally a bad idea. And that’s because you’ll get reported and most likely, found guilty of trolling. That will send you to Low Priority, where you’ll probably spend several hours. But if you want to learn how people troll in this game, here are the core principles of Dota 2 trolling.
1. Be Annoying
These days, you can no longer buy and feed couriers. That mechanic was abused for many years but the fun ended when Valve decided to give each player his own courier. However, that doesn’t mean that you cannot be annoying.
One of the things that you can do is to pick Pudge and just hook your own allies. If you interrupt what they’re doing and aren’t helping at all, this will create a lot of tension.
Another thing that you can do to anger people is to pick Bane and then use Nightmare on them. This will keep them trapped for many seconds and might even get them killed if there are enemies nearby.
One more way in which you can be annoying is to ping frequently on the map. Carry and mid players hate such behavior because they can’t focus properly. If you ping non-stop or draw on the minimap, this will hinder people’s ability to make good decisions.
How to Troll in Dota 2
If you want, you can also disturb people using the chat wheel. Spamming the same line over and over is sure to interfere with your allies’ ability to focus on their own game. But people will likely mute you very quickly if you do that, so the effect won’t last.
If you’re playing support, you can troll your carry during the laning phase by stealing his farm or by hitting his creeps. This is guaranteed to anger people because in Dota 2, support heroes are not supposed to do this. Their role is to ensure that the core players have a good laning phase and the act of interfering with their farm is seen as subversive.
Another way in which you can be annoying is to not allow the midlaner to level up as fast as the enemy midlaner by leeching his experience. If you sit near the midlane tier 1 tower, your mid hero will lose a lot of experience. And if you do it while not helping at all, that’s an obvious act of trolling.
2. Be useless
One of the ways in which you can troll teammates in Dota 2 is to have no positive impact on the game. If you just farm continuously without paying attention to what is going on, you will certainly make people feel trolled. Because the expectation is that the highest net worth heroes will contribute to the major battles.
This is perhaps the most subtle way to troll your team. Other methods are obvious and will get you sent to Low Priority. However, this one is harder to recognize and label as trolling.
Killing neutral creeps in the enemy jungle while the action is taking place near your base is probably the best way to troll in Dota 2. Sometimes, people won’t even do it on purpose. They’ll just feel like the battle would be lost anyway so they try to get an advantage elsewhere.
Of course, not everyone thinks this way, which is why Anti-Mage pickers often get reported for trolling or being afk.
3. Be counterproductive
If you’re trying to be counterproductive in obvious ways, there are four things that you can do:
Feed
This is the method that will end the game quickly. If you just kill yourself over and over, the enemy side will gain a big advantage as a result and the other 4 members of your team will no longer be able to fight it. A match in which 4 players need to defeat 5 is already extremely difficult. But if the 5 players also get fed, it makes it even harder.
Sometimes it’s enough to feed just a few times for the match to be lost. So if you want to troll, attack the enemy without any backup and get yourself killed.
Block Your Own Neutral Camps
Doing this will put your team at a big disadvantage. Because much of the gold is gained by farming the jungle. If your carry and mid players cannot do that because you’ve blocked their neutral camps, the other side will quickly gain a significant gold advantage and will probably win the game.
Destroy Your Items
In Dota 2, the act of destroying your own items is quite common. If you do it, people will report you for griefing. After you’ve gathered 5,000 or even 10,000 gold, destroying all of it in a matter of seconds is guaranteed to lose you the game. And that is why this behavior is considered to be an act of trolling.
Pick Inappropriate Heroes
Sometimes, the trolling starts from the drafting phase. If a teammate of yours has decided to pick a mid hero and you clearly indicated that you want to play mid, you can pick a second mid hero and play on the same lane.
Another option would be to pick a hero that farms more easily and steal all his farms. It’s scarce that a double mid-lane will result in a positive result, so if you want to troll your team, pick an inappropriate hero relative to the rest of the draft and ruin the game by going to the wrong lane.
Conclusion
In Dota 2, how people troll is endless. The game is so complex and requires so much synchronization that even the slightest act of trolling is likely to result in a defeat. However, keep in mind that everyone hates trolls, and the practice is considered to be pathetic. If you want to play Dota 2, you should do it properly.
