9 minute read
Your team is smoked and you're running as five to contest Roshan, because you've scanned that the enemy team is there. You're seconds away from reaching them when you hear the announcer: "Roshan has fallen to the Dire". You and your carry decide it's a lost cause and back off, but your other teammates aren't on the same page and charge in. Upon seeing this, the two of you turn around to try and help, but at this point you've all gone in one by one, the fight is a complete catastrophe, and your entire team ends up dead.
"What the **** are you **** ***** doing"
Many players would be happy to yell out their frustrations into the mic after a disaster of a teamfight, spam their chat wheels off cooldown, type essays in the chat, and ping their teammate's items / levels / spells (which is why Valve made it impossible to ping the spells and items of dead allied heroes).
In other words, they use every available in-game communication tool, but only once there's nothing to be achieved other than venting disappointment. It's common knowledge that typing more than a few words or repeatedly pinging an ally isn't doing them any favors, regardless of how positive your intentions might be. But what about alt-pings—is there a time and place for those? How much voice chatting is too much?
That's what this article is going to examine by breaking down all available comms channels. Communication and the tools available for it are arguably the most important aspect of teamplay that is not considered enough by the average player—that's what we believe and discuss in our Discord server, together with other Dota players of all skill levels, including professionals.
Hold your chat wheels, we're diving in!
Each communication channel has its clear advantages and disadvantages. Choosing the right channel for the job is fundamental for communication to flow well and teamwork to be effective.
Before we delve into the details, the image below will show you an objective comparison of each communication channel's advantages and disadvantages, helping you decide which one is best used for each situation.
1. Voice Chat
Dota 2 allows you to use its in-game voice chat to communicate with your four teammates—this is a form of verbal auditory communication. Although very powerful, naturally fast and easy, voice chat has several major limitations:
Everybody must have access to working audio peripherals and be in a sufficiently quiet environment (or have noise-canceling headphones). Additionally, each player needs to have their audio input and output settings adjusted properly.
Every player's behavior score needs to be high enough—if a player has been reported a certain amount of times by their past and current teammates, their behavior score will drop and they will not be able to use the in-game voice chat.
All players need to not be manually muted by their teammates. These manual mutes carry over across matches, so if player A decides to mute player B for whatever reason during a match, player B will never be able to communicate with player A again, until the latter manually unmutes them.
Everyone needs to speak and understand each other's language, dialect, and accent. (Although there are in-game settings that allow you to set your preferred language before queuing for a game, these are not verified or checked, and it is therefore quite common to have players speaking different languages on the same team.)
In other words, even if you have double-checked that everything is in order on your end, you have no assurance that your teammates are hearing you properly and aren't blasting music that drowns out your in-game calls, or that they even understand the language you are speaking.
Considering these limitations and the fact that there is no record (whatever you say leaves no trace), it's safe to say that voice chat is far from being a reliable communication channel.
2. Text Chat
The text chat in Dota 2 follows largely the same rules as voice chat, but with several key differences:
The behavior score threshold is lower, meaning that a player needs to be reported far more often in order to lose their ability to use the in-game text chat.
Dialects and accents are not present in written text which makes same-language communication easier, including the mention of internationally used and accepted Dota 2 terms. However, different alphabets can make things more difficult.
While there's a solid chance that somebody can't hear the game and therefore its voice chat properly, it is guaranteed that everyone can see the game and the text chat properly—if they couldn't, they wouldn't be able to play at all.
Lastly, communicating through the in-game text chat is recorded and leaves a trace for the duration of the match. Its main disadvantage, however, is that it is quite tedious and slow.
3. Map Pings
Each player can draw on the minimap (holding ctrl + left-click dragging their mouse on the minimap) and ping locations simultaneously on the minimap and main screen, with two ping options: an exclamation mark and an X, both with slightly different sound cues. These can only be seen by your team.
It’s good to know that even if you get muted, some of your pings will still go through, albeit on a cooldown (e.g. a maximum of 2 pings every 30 seconds). Your minimap drawings are not shown if you're muted.
4. Alt-Pings
Almost all objective information and HUD segments on the screen can be alt-pinged (holding alt or ctrl+alt and left-clicking the element) in order to print a preformatted message in the team text chat, automatically translated into each player's set language. Alt-pings generally avoid the disadvantages of verbal and written communication and combine their advantages. They are fast and easy to use like the voice chat, while also leaving a trace for the remainder of the match, like the text chat.
Players with sufficient behavior score can alt+ping the following main elements:
HP and Mana - Maximum and current, either in percentages or absolute values. This includes the HP and Mana of their own hero or unit, as well as any allied enemy hero, unit, or structure.
Spells and Items - Whether they are available or not. If they aren't, their remaining cooldowns or required mana costs will be indicated.
Buffs and Debuffs - Anything that their own hero, their allies, or their enemies are affected by, as well as how long the remaining duration of said buff or debuff is.
Gold - How much they need for an item, for their buyback, or for both (using ctrl+alt-ping).
Experience and Levels - Their current amounts, as well as how much experience and how many levels they still need to level up a certain spell or talent.
Missing Enemy Heroes
The In-Game Clock - What minute it is and how much time is left until the next power, bounty rune, and day or night change.
Dropped Items - Any dropped allied or enemy item or neutral token
Specific Locations - with the indication of attacking, defending, moving, retreating, needing vision or suspecting enemy vision there.
5. Chat Wheels
There are three chat wheels in Dota 2 that you can bind to a hotkey and use during games. Each chat wheel holds up to 8 words or phrases that you can quickly print by simply holding the hotkey you've chosen, moving your mouse towards your phrase of choice, and releasing the hotkey. Potentially fast, but it takes some getting used to.
Two of the three chat wheels can be filled with a huge list of phrases, including many commonly used ones, such as "go back", "well played", and "my bad". However, this isn't what most people use the chat wheels for. The most popular phrases are the ones that also play audio which either only your team or both teams can hear—this can range from classic sounds such as clapping or a "badum-tss", to phrases said by popular casters, most of which need to be purchased.
The third chat wheel is reserved for hero voice lines—each hero has nine different voice lines that you can only use if you're playing that hero and have played enough games on it to unlock them. The first two are free for everyone and can be seen and heard by your team only, while the next seven are seen and heard by both teams, but are locked until you pay the DotaPlus subscription and play a substantial amount of matches (over 300 for the final voice lines) with each corresponding hero.
Closing Words & Invitation
Congratulations! By going through this article, you've already taken the first steps towards improving you performance in and outside of Dota. This piece is actually part of our much bigger article on communication, covering all other aspects of effective comms in Dota2 and beyond.
How do you personally use the available communication channels? Which is your favorite, and why? Let us know by joining us on Discord, where you can also see the opinions of other players from all skill levels. You’ll also find a downloadable game communication diary to set goals and track progress, a video series diving deeper into why communication habits matter (coming soon), and access to discussions with professional coaches and top players about how to use these skills effectively—in the game as well as outside of it.
And this is just the beginning. We’re developing a comprehensive communication analytics tool for Dota 2 that will take your game insights to a whole new level. If you found value in this article, you won’t want to miss what’s coming next. Let us know what areas of communication you’d like to explore further or suggest new skills to focus on—we’ll catch you on Discord!