Week 2: Should I hit this creep?

Last-hitting, denying and the two kinds of aggro — the first decision small enough to practise on your own

1 March 2027

Open the slides

This week’s decision#

Gold does not arrive on a schedule in this game. It arrives when you take it off a creep that is about to die, while somebody on the other side is trying to take it first — and can also deny it to you outright, which is the part that has no equivalent in most games people arrive here from. You will answer this question a few hundred times a match, whether or not you are paying attention while you do it.

The mistake this week fixes is holding down the attack key. It misses last hits, it pushes the lane, and it pulls creep aggro onto you: three errors in one action.

Mechanics#

Last-hitting. Only the final blow pays. Dealing damage and earning gold are two different activities, and confusing them is the single most expensive habit a new player brings to a lane.

Denying. Below 50% health you can kill your own creep, so the enemy takes no gold from it at all and only 50% of the experience. This is Dota’s distinctive move: refusal made into a positive action.

Denying also drags the wave back toward your own tower, which means this week’s mechanic is already quietly doing next week’s job. You will meet that properly in week 3; for now it is enough to notice that a deny is two things at once.

Creep aggro. Attacking an enemy hero pulls nearby enemy creeps onto you. This is not a punishment for attacking. It is a tool, and you can use it on purpose to move the lane toward you.

Tower aggro. A tower’s targeting priority is predictable, which means “can I take this last hit under the tower” is a question with an answer rather than a gamble.

The resource lens#

Gold is time. Every last hit is a small amount of gold, gold only becomes items, and items only pay off over the minutes that follow. Ten missed creeps is not a small pile of coins — it is your key item arriving late, and in the interval between when it should have arrived and when it does, the enemy is using theirs on you.

Before the lecture#

Valve’s in-game tutorial, section 3 — Last-hitting.

Worth saying plainly: Valve puts last-hitting in section 3, after teamfighting. This course puts it in week 2. That is a deliberate disagreement. Valve’s order is what you need to survive a first match; ours is the order in which you have to learn to decide, and until you know what one creep is worth, no other decision in the game has a floor under it.

This week’s hero#

Dragon Knight — Dragon Blood. It turns “don’t die” into passive income. The armour and the regeneration buy you the right to make a few mistakes and still be standing in the lane afterwards, and a beginner’s worst enemy in lane is not the opponent across from them — it is going home too early. The rest of the kit is on the official hero page; this week only needs the one ability.

This week’s item#

Tango and Iron Branch, the starting kit. Neither makes you stronger. Both extend how long you can stay. From your first game the logic of a starting kit should be “how do I get five more minutes here”, not “how do I deal a little more damage”.

After this week you can…#

• say what one creep is worth in time rather than in gold
• explain what a deny takes from the enemy, and what it does to the wave
• name the three things that happen at once when you hold down the attack key