DotA Ganking Styles

Ganking, ranked 4th place in 8 Essentials in Winning DotA Games, is one of the most important tool in winning DotA Games. Thus, there are different ganking styles that will make you sneaky and unpredictable. It is important that you have proper coordination with your team mates if you are going for ganks. Pro players are too careful that they don't often die from getting ganged up. Observer wards are too cheap and placing them in ganking areas is the best counter for Ganks. So, a variety of ganking style is recommended for being unpredictable.



1. Backstabbing

The most basic ganking style is backstabbing. It's when you hide in fogs and appear behind enemies while they are farming. This is done well if you have perfect timing of using skills and I recommend to have a gank mate because sole gankers cannot assure kills. Having disables like stun and slow makes it easier to kill heroes. This is the reason why gankers usually have this kind of skills. Beware because this type of ganking is easily countered by observer wards. Study your prey. Know if they have wards basing from the prey's actions. If they usually stay farming and then retreat totally when you got near them, most likely they have wards.

2. Trapping

Trapping is a kind of ganking where as you stay on the opponents retreating area and stun/slow them to death. An example is ganking mid lane. One ganker would appear behind the prey to disable him. A good player wont retreat directly to the tower because the ganker can have more normal attacks on him and end up having a cheap death. Thus, the ganker will retreat going the other way. In this case, upwards, where the 2 heroes can't attack him. Now, here comes another ganker to finish him off. Another good use of trapping is when you gank heroes with escape mechanisms, like leap of Mirana, waveform of Morphling, Blink of Akasha, Orb of Puck, Sucuchi of Nerubian Weaver, etc. Good prediction will make it easy for you to gank these heroes by trapping.

3. Go and Teleport

This is done by making the allied heroes on the lane use their disables to make the opponents stay near while you are teleporting to gank. An example for mid lane would be having a Storm Spirit use his electric vortex on his opponent while you are teleporting at his tower. You can use your disables after teleporting to aid the Storm Spirit kill the prey. Be sure to do this with good timing. Disabling the opponent hero too early would make the ganker waste gold for tp because the prey would be gone when he arrived. There are limited heroes at mid which you can use this ganking style. The heroes with perfect disables, like Puck, Raijin, Rexxar, Bane Elemental, Viper, are the one suited with the Go and Teleport at mid lane. When it comes to the trilane this can be executed easier. Most heroes at trilane have disables thus making it easier to have the opponentes stay near the tower when the ganker arrived from teleporting.

4. Charge!!!
This ganking style is named charge because this is a ganking style where you run towards your opponent infront of him. This can be executed at night time the vision of the opponent is smaller thus making it possible to gank him by charging. This requires quickness of both your hero and your hands. Good players with fast reactions will retreat after seeing one hero charging towards him. Appear from fog then disable him at once to make fleeing from you not possible.

5. Teleport and Go

Furion, spectre and wisp are the only heroes that can do this. Teleport from opponent's blind spot then gang him up. In spectre's case you, there is no need for blind spot for he teleports directly beside his prey. Spectre is not a ganker but can be used to gank sometimes, particularly if he already is farmed up.

6. Swap and Bam

Vengeful Spirit reaching level 6 can have a special style of ganking with his swap. You can walk infront of your opponent where it is fog then swap-stun him to set a kill for your allied hero.

7. Invisibility

Invisibility have great advantage in ganking. You can be sneaky without having to consider the fog of war. Getting into good position, you can whack the opponents by surprise. May it be invisibility from rune, invisibility skills(windwalk, moonlight shadow), or lothars edge, you can gank opponents easily if they don't have true sight vision.

8. Blink and Go

Blink is like invisibility too where you can appear beside opponents in an instant though blink still needs to consider fog of war. Heroes with disable can use blink to stun/slow a prey so allied heroes can charge towards the prey for dinner.

9. Bait

Bait is one of my favorite ganking style where you can wipe out 3 heroes in no time. One hero, a carry would be better, will be creeping while the gankers will wait hidden in fogs. When 2 or 3 opponents come to gank the bait, they will be stuck in one place because they are going for the kill. Now, you're going to execute your plan and kill the gankers. I, sometimes, call this ganking the gankers.

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