Noob Level DotA: Phases of the Game - Middle Game

Games will typically fall into three phases: early, middle and late. Transitions are one-way (i.e. a game that has changed from early game to mid game cannot transition back to early-game), and transitions are ordered. You start in early, move to mid and end with end game (although some games may not reach end game – particularly games with lots of pushing heroes).

(Please excuse my poor Paint skills.)

MIDDLE GAME
Starts: Once people start leaving their lanes and roaming a lot
Ends: Once the hard carries stop farming and start joining team fights

This is the farming and pushing phase. If your team has a lot of support/gankers, and no hard carry, you want to end the game in this phase.

As people are moving freely between lanes, it is not as important to let your team know that people are missing from your lane. However, you need to keep in mind that you might be ganked by 3 or more players, so escaping might not be as easy. A lot of people have the "Don't go past the river" rule of thumb, but my personal rule of thumb is don't go into their control zone unless you have a way out. What do I mean by control zone? Map control is very important in DotA.

Tower Safety

If you look at this image, the red and blue polygons indicate the "tower safe area" for Radiant and Dire, respectively. The way I picture it, is if you draw a polygon using the three outermost towers and the fountain (and that's exactly what I did with Paint).

I consider this the Fairly Safe Area. You might get ganked while in this area, but you're pretty safe in this area. Note: Being ganked isn't the only way to die, you can still die against people in your lane, so just because this is "safe" doesn't mean you can let your guard down. One of the reasons this is so safe is because your allies (if they are paying attention) can teleport to a tower and help you out if something bad happens. This is another reason why it's important to carry TP scrolls!

Creep Safety

In this image, the red and blue polygons are the same as before. The purple and green polygons indicate the "creep safe area" for Radiant and Dire respectively. It's hard to see, because the player icons are in the way, but this is where the creep waves for each side are currently at. If you remember what I said in my first post about long and short lanes, this image gives you a better idea of why the long lane is considered safer. See how much closer the purple corner is to the red corner in the bottom lane than the top lane?

If you imagine my Paint shapes drawn a bit better, the area in the purple polygon, but not in the red polygon, is what I consider the Moderately Safe Area. You'll probably get ganked here, and if you are alone in this area, and enemy players are missing from the other lanes, you should head back into the fairly safe area just in case.

Too Far

If you take a look at this map, the purple player has downed the first bottom tower, and is now trying to push the 2nd tier bottom tower. Notice the large gap between where she is and the red polygon, and how it gives the pink player the opportunity to get behind her.

Ward Safety

This is a bit further in the game. Radiant are pushing top tower, and even though they are far away from the fairly safe area, the position of the wards (yellow circles) makes it difficult for the Dire to sneak up behind them (unless they use Smoke of Deceit, which I'll cover in another post). The shortest path that avoids detection is outlined in pink. It's unlikely that the Dire will know where the wards are though, so they'll probably end up going via a warded path, which gives Radiant enough warning to escape.

You can also see that the light blue player has pushed quite far on his own. It's OK though, because he's Rikimaru, so he'll just go invis and run away. But let's say he wasn't, if he needed to escape, his safest route would be any route that goes through the area in the green polygon. So if you were trying to intercept him, you could pre-empt that and run to bottom river to try to catch him running away.

And that's what I mean by control zone - the areas covered by towers, creeps and wards. If you imagine the wards as semi-extending the purple area, light blue is definitely inside the Radiant control zone. When you are in the opposing team's control zone, you will need to start heading back earlier than you think you need to, and unless you have invis or blink, you should definitely carry a TP scroll.

This is also an example of why the don't-go-past-the-river rule is bad, because at this point, it's quite dangerous for Dire to push past their top tower. Ignoring the fact that Radiant players are currently in top lane, Dire has no vision past their 2nd tier tower, and Radiant has control of most of the Dire jungle at the moment.

Farming and Ganking
This is an important phase for the hard carry to be farming. By now, a few towers should have been pushed, so the creep waves should be closer to your base. Support should be placing wards to protect their jungle so the carry can farm. They should also be stacking the ancients (the stronger creep camps near the secret shops) whenever they can, and staking jungle creeps otherwise. Support and gankers should also try to kill the enemy carry/carries if possible, or at least make it harder for them to farm. I will explain stacking at some point, I swear!

Team Fights
With the focus on trying to kill each other, and the increased movement between lanes in this phase, team fights will be a lot more common. The success of these team fights will set the tone for the rest of the game. Ideally, you'd have the gankers and supports in the team fights, while the hard carry farms away in another lane/jungle, as this maximises farming time, and reduces the risk of the carry dying in the fight and losing the precious gold they've farmed up. However, if one team has the carry farming away during team fights, and the other team has all five of their team members present, it makes it more likely that the team with four will lose the fights. It might be worth the carry teleporting back before the start of the fight, so they can contribute.

Pushing
Pushing lanes can really help your team, not only for the extra 1000g shared between you, but as you can see above, downing towers increases your control of the map.

Roshan
It's also a good idea to start keeping an eye on Roshan from mid game onwards. A ward on the cliffs outside Roshan's lair is probably enough. Oh, I learnt a new shorthand for Roshan today. "ro3", don't ask me why that means Roshan, I have no idea.