Dota 2 for people who have never played it, taught one decision at a time: which creep to hit, when to leave the lane, who to pick, what to buy, when not to fight. Mechanics are the tools that answer each decision.
What this course is
Dota 2 has produced an enormous amount of teaching material and almost none of it is a course. Purge's guide is a reference. The wiki is a reference. Valve's in-game tutorial is a checklist you complete once and never open again. All of them are good at what they are, and not one of them has an order, a workload, or anything you have to hand in.
This is the same material arranged into twelve teaching weeks, one lecture and one Lobby Lab each, running across Semester 1 2027. A Lobby Lab is this course's Thursday tutorial — a real match, not a discussion section — where the lecture's decision becomes something you did in a game rather than something you can explain. Each week is built around one decision a new player actually runs into — should I hit this creep, when should I leave the lane, who goes first — and the mechanics are taught as the tools that answer that week's decision rather than as a list of things the game contains. One lens runs underneath all twelve: everything you do here spends something, and what you have to spend is gold, experience, time, space and information.
Who it is for
People who have never played a MOBA. There are no prerequisites beyond owning the game and no assumption that you have played anything like it. If you are arriving from League of Legends, week 1 carries a short bridging passage on what transfers and what quietly does not, and after that you are with everyone else.
You will lose a great deal, especially early, and the course is built on the assumption that you will. Losing is not the problem. Losing without being able to name the decision that cost you the game is the problem, and most of what you hand in is arranged around closing that gap.
Where to go next
Lectures
Twelve weeks, twelve decisions, in the order a player learns to make them rather than the order the game presents them.
Lobby Labs
The Thursday match for each week's decision — twelve of them, one a week, each with its own pass condition.
Assessment
Four assignments and no exam — 10, 20, 30 and 40 percent — ending in a drafted best-of-three against another team from the course.
Heroes
The pool this course actually teaches from, one hero per week it introduces one, linked to the official page for the rest of the kit.
People
Who teaches which week, and who coaches your team for Assignment 4's best-of-three.
Policies
Teams and captains, the Hall of Fame that carries no marks, and the patch every figure on this site is pinned to.