I've noticed Dota 2 has a courier unit which I suppose is made for delivering items from the stash/backpack to the hero on the battlefield. How should they be used and in what situations?
Sometimes in the game I find that I often can take my hero back to the base since I also need to heal, so I hit two birds with one stone. Also, sometimes my hero has a better speed than the courier. Thus I don't understand when to use it exactly.
When and how should he be used?
Best Answer
The courier is useful throughout the game as a way to gather new items without needing to slow down your experience/gold gain. The courier is frequently referred to as a 'Donkey' 'Chicken' or 'Chick' because of how it was in original DotA. A flying courier is usually called a 'Crow' for the same reason.
In the laning phase, it's very common for a hero that is losing the lane and low on health to use the courier to bring his character a Healing Salve or Mana Potion. If he instead walks back to the base, he's spend probably 60 seconds doing this where he's unable to gain any experience. If you use a TP Scroll to return to your lane, now you've spent 60 seconds and 135 gold to heal, where you could have used the courier and 100 gold to bring you 400 HP worth of regen and not lost any experience. By doing this, now you might now have the advantage in lane and if your opponent doesn't make the same decision you can control the lane.
During this phase, returning to your base to heal should usually be done only when you're low on both health and mana and thus aren't much of a threat in the lane, or when you're no longer needed in your lane and don't have much mana (as a support hero/roamer/ganker, typically). Mana recovery through consumables takes longer and so it's more acceptable for a hero to back off to recover mana, but if you're at full health and not afraid of dying there's usually no reason to back off just because you're low on mana.
Later in the game, you can use the courier to pick up items for you at the secret shop, or after winning a teamfight, so that you can utilize the time when the enemy team is dead most efficiently.
The bottom line is this: if you're playing as a hero who needs to constantly be farming, in an ideal game the number of times you return to the well to heal/recover mana should be ZERO.
A couple of simple rules about couriers and courier etiquette: