Donation Method - Ask a bot for a Spare Key!
There is a Steam Community bot that people donate extra DotA 2 keys to. You can add the bot as a friend and send him the private message "give dota" to get a DotA 2 key sent to you. You can donate any extra keys you end up with afterwards.
New Method - Buy the access to Dota 2 Beta
Valve gives now the possibility to buy directly an early access bundle through Dota 2 Store. The bundle contains the beta access key and some collectibles.
Old method - Join contests/giveaways
Beta Giveaway Contests (by Dota 2 communities)
One legal and legit way, is to participate to one of many contests available and hope to win. The official community of Dota 2 is PlayDota. I suggest you to register to to that site, because since the launch of Dota 2 Beta it was the main beta key distributor, through random beta keys giveaway (hundreds if not thousands key already distributed).
There are many other places around to check and it has no much sense list all sites here. Just check PlayDota forum and Dota 2 Reddit Channel, that are the two main Dota 2 international community sites at the moment. If a new giveway starts, it is usually advertised there.
SteamGifts is also an interesting community driven gift website (that support Steam logon) that often has Dota 2 keys.
Beta Tester Selection (by Valve)
If you don't have time, skill or attitude for a contest, you can try to install Steam and fill this survey.
It is an hardware survey followed by a simple questionnaire that will be used by Valve to target potential beta testers. Identified subjects will receive the beta access and 2 additional keys to invite some friends.
Other sources
Be aware of scammers sites or people that try to sell you fake keys, there are many around. Also buying valid keys infringe Steam rules, so just avoid it.
You need to recognize burst gankers like Tiny are a threat early in the game and adjust your play around them. Typically, this means that I'll be picking up strength Power Treads and/or a Bracer to give myself extra strength to survive. If the other team has multiple magic damage heroes, you can also look into picking up a Cloak or even a Hood or Pipe.
This should prevent Tiny (or Nerubian Assassin, or a few others when they're ported) from ganking you by himself, he'll need teammates or a truly massive advantage to do so. Tiny has powerful burst but after his combo (which deals ~900 magic damage, ~675 damage to standard magic resistance) plus the damage from a couple of autoattacks, if he hasn't killed you there's no way he should be able to: you have your own spells and hopefully aware teammates.
Other things you can do to prevent a Tiny from snowballing apply to every game: have good wards up at all times and help your middle lane rune control if possible. Limiting Tiny's early game mana really slows him down because he's not much of a threat without that 240 mana to combo. You can also put strong laners against him, since Tiny has such low base armor, and seriously limit his early game farm. Some common options to counter a solo melee hero in mid lane include:
- Ancient Apparition
- Batrider
- Viper
- Venomancer
- Warlock
- Lich
Best Answer
Earth Spirits (which I'm going to call ES in this post) is in the current meta game one of the strongest hero. However he suffers some weaknesses that can be exploited to your advantage and help you deal with him.
ES is a "skillshots" based hero : Both Boulder Smash and Rolling Boulder require good positioning and good aiming skills. When facing an ES that you feel want to initiate, imagine you are playing versus a Pudge or a Mirana so you wont get silenced by the Smash or initiated on with the Boulder. Low skilled ES' players tend to spam their remnant making their initation very limited and quite obvious. High skilled players of ES tend to keep their remnants for teamfight. If you are familiar with keeping timing for roshan or big ultimate (Ravage, Black Hole, Reverse Polarity etc.), try to keep count of the ES' remnants aswell. Those things have a 25 sec cd for 1 restock which makes ES after a teamfight quite useless.
His ult deals a lot of damage if not taken seriously. Its kind of a mix between Lich's ult (which spreads between heroes) and Venomancer's ult which deals a incredible amount of damage over time. Once magnetize has been casted, have your bkb ready and spread like you would spread versus Chainfrost.
When considering fighting an ES, remember that with magnetic grip and a remnant, he's got kind of an instant AOE Roar (BeastMaster). However the timing of the spells allow a really small margin for error when pulling a combo off (THe most common Being : Stun > Rolling Boulder > Smash back). If he hesistates too long to Boulder into you, you can avoid it. Especially in early game when cooldowns are high and stuns' durations low. You can even bait a Rolling Boulder in order to force him to get out of position and kill him.
Rolling Boulder stop on collision : to avoid him escaping that way, stand in his way.
As you mentioned silences and all sort of insta disables helps a lot (Orchid and Hex to be agressive and a defensive Euls/Forcestaff will help you dodge a lots of spells). On the same note, any mana bruning spells or diffusal blades on your carry can really kill his gameplay.
ES is more of a teamfight controller (like clockwerk), if he manages to spread the teamfight in several direction : just ditch and limit the loss. If the fight spread and you try to gather, you're likely to get wiped since his cooldown allows him to control your team very efficiently.
If ES is picked against you, consider counter-picking : Nyx (manaburn + carapace), lion (mana drain + 2 disable), Rhasta (2 strong disables), pugna (ward), silencer (mana draining spell + global silence) or KOTL (Manaleak before Rolling boulder). In any case a Pipe is strongly recommended to fight in his ult and a mek on top of it allows you to negate almost all the damage if you learn to position correctly.