Dota – Why no trilane in pubs

Generally, you run a trilane to get guaranteed farm and protection on one hero who is very gold reliant. This way, you get him into the game more quickly than if he had to contest for farm. You don't usually want to trilane with a carry hero who needs levels to be effective like Shadowfiend or Drow, since the carry will split a lot of experience with his supports. Good carry heroes for safe trilanes are those who can all be very effective heroes in the midgame with only ~5000-6000 gold and one or two key items such as Armlet or BKB.

You can also run a defensive trilane with a very hard carry hero like Faceless Void, Spectre, or Medusa in what's called a "four protect one" strategy, but this is not very common recently because it doesn't do well in 3v3 lanes and is weak against aggression.

Priorities in a trilane (higher is more important):

• Your carry is getting as many last hits as possible.
• Whoever you are laning against is not getting kills (if 3v3), last hits (if 3v2), or experience (if 3v1)
• Your supports are not wasting their time- if they aren't doing much in the lane, they should be pulling, stacking, or ganking another lane.
• Killing the opponent and then pushing the tower.

A lot of new players make the mistake of thinking that a trilane is for getting kills and do things like Juggernaut trilanes to get 3-4 kills in 15 minutes. This is good, but 3-4 kills is about 20 last hits, and these new players ALWAYS miss more than that. Each lane has about 80 creeps spawns in the first 10 minutes. In a safe trilane, your carry hero should get at least 60-70 of them and should be aiming for perfection. Killing the opponent if he gets too far out of position is just a bonus. The carry player also needs to deny as much as possible to keep the creep equilibrium static- autoattacking will push the lane and give your opponent unnecessary experience and gold.

Another common mistake is that supports worry too much about harassing the opponent and not enough about the overall game. They need to stack, pull, and roam so that they secure experience and gold for themselves as well. If your enemy is contesting the lane, they should stick around until it's secured.

There are a ton of different variations of trilanes- here are the more common ones:

• A typical safelane trilane against an offlaner or no one where you're just passively farming a carry and your supports are using the jungle or zoning your opponents out of the lane. Generally, you need one support to harass for each opponent in the lane with the carry ready to help at any time (voicechat is crucial).
• If you run your trilane on the offlane (not jungle side) and only have one or two opponents in that lane (plus the enemy jungle), your goal should be to try to get a tower kill or hero kills as soon as possible, because it's a lot harder to keep the enemies from getting last hits and experience (they can pull and have a close tower to retreat to). This is a lot easier if one of your heroes is a good pusher. After you do this, you gain a lot more map control and it usually forces the opponents to start roaming.

Finally, there's a safelane trilane against an opponent's offensive trilane, or vice versa. This is one of the most complex laning scenarios in Dota and it's very hero dependent and guaranteed to be razor's edge. Here, there are a few things you definitely need to worry about in this scenario:

• Strong supports. The strongest trilaners have good base stats, strong AoE debuffs or buffs, and the ability to kill enemy heroes who are out of position without overextending. For example, Naga Siren is an incredible trilane hero because of her 6 base armor, lengthy Ensnare, and AoE armor debuff/nuke Riptide. Rubick is also great: his Fade Bolt reduces enemy autoattack damage and his Telekinesis is excellent for pulling enemies who are slightly out of position even more out of position. Defensive heroes who can do the opposite are also valuable, like Shadow Demon with his Disruption or Abaddon with his ability to remove stuns with shield and heal. Other good trilane supports: Dirge, Visage, Tidehunter, Venomancer, Bane, Vengeful Spirit, Earthshaker and many more. Each of these have some combination of the above traits that you should be able to recognize, and they get them at low levels.
• A carry who is somewhat gold dependent, but not too level dependent, and is able to contribute to fights early on. This hero is going to be farming, but in a 3v3 lane will be forced to split experience. One of the most important attributes on a carry is their base armor/survivability, and they should almost always be completing a Ring of Basilius with their first 325 gold in lane to boost that for themselves and allies even more. If the carry is able to contribute to kills with a stun or powerful slow, that's also huge. Alchemist has low armor but is a great trilane carry because of his offensive power with his Concoction and armor debuff. Lifestealer is very similar: he makes up for his low armor with a built-in BKB and an incredibly powerful slow. More traditional trilane carries like Gyrocopter, Luna, and Slardar are tough to bring down and have powerful clash abilities.
• Good gankers in your solo lanes. Having heroes like Puck, QoP, Clockwerk, Bounty Hunter, Weaver, Nature's Prophet, etc. who can dominate lanes and easily kill underleveled supports is almost a necessity if you plan on 3v3 laning. You can also be more greedy than usual when choosing these heroes because it's very difficult for the enemy supports to rotate and gank when contesting a trilane vs. trilane.

My personal favorite way to run a trilane, regardless of what we're up against, is with one strong ranged disable and one strong slow- this gives the trilane the core killing potential it needs and anything else on top of that is just a bonus. Double stun lanes (one ranged and targeted to start things) also work well. Without this, punishing out of position opponents is a lot more difficult.

Some examples:

• Lifestealer and Vengeful Spirit
• Alchemist and Tidehunter
• Sven and Venomancer
• Luna and Visage
• Gyrocopter and Earthshaker
• Mirana and Naga Siren
• Slardar and Lich
• Dragon Knight and Rubick
• Skeleton King and Leshrac
• Chaos Knight and Ancient Apparition

Your third hero can fit into the puzzle however you need based on how the matchup and overall team composition is looking. Depending on the strength of the lane you're up against, it can be a strong roamer, pusher, or potentially even a jungler, and if it looks like you're in for a 3v3 lane you can shore up your weaknesses there.

Finally, this is a great guide to trilaning in original DotA that helped me a ton when I was learning.

Before getting to work, my first advice will be: Play carry. Train and learn to play a hard carry that needs safe farm to be efficient. While you'll be playing, you will notice immediatly what your support needs to do in order to protect you. As far as I remember, being the most experienced player in my party, I always played carry. Needless to say that when I switched to support I was able to protect the lane and offer safe farm for my carry as I had myself been carry for a very long time and I knew as a carry what I wanted my support to do. Now I understand that this require a lot of time but this is the best way to learn to support, I can assure you. For the moment I can offer you some tips based on my exeperience of the game, starting with....

How to react depending on the enemy lane

If you are familiar with all the heros, your first reflex is to foresee (depeding on the hero picked) what type of lane the enemy team will run and adapt your behaviour. If for any reason you feel you need more help in the lane, do not hesitate to bring one more hero and run a defensive trilane.

If you are laning against :

• A passive solo offlaner (furion, elder titan for example) : Zone him out as soon as possible (even at first wave). You must zone him out of xp range. Do not hesitate to trade hit with him. Those offlaner dont have a great offensive power, if you have enough regen (tangos) you can force them out of the lane and deny a lot of xp by stacking and pulling (see last section).
• An agressive solo offlaner (darkseer, weaver, clockwerk, windrunner). Usually zone him out with one more hero at the very begining, then stack and pull. Those hero have great killing potential even in 1V2 situation. They might get over confident and put themselves out of position which allow an easy kill (especially with Crystal Maiden when you have a strong slow and a great stun).
• An agressive dual lane : this often ends up as a 2v2 situation. In this scenario the best you can do is sit in lane with your carry and save regen for him (pull him tango). If the 2 enemy hero are strong laner just stay passive, deny creeps as much as possible an try to get back the lane equilibrium close to your tower. It's the responsability of your carry to not put himself in danger aswell. As soon as possible request a gank from your mid. If the 2 heros took a level advantage and if they both get killed you will gain that advantage back in seconds.
• An agressive trilane. Play as defensive as possible. They brought 3 heros here which means they are losing in xp and gold. You can take advantage of it by not dying. Winning versus an agressive trilane is really as simple as not dying. They will shortly fall behind in levels and either abandon the lane or get killed by your mid when mid games kicks in.

In any case : don't forget to buy sentries/dust if you are laning against an invisible hero !

Items you can concider buying

Those item will bring some lane sustainability and are affordable for a support :

• Ring of basilius : mana regen + armor aura (don't forget to turn it off in the laning stage so the creeps dont benefit from the armor and the lane wont push toward your enemy tower : a place where its more dangerous to farm for your carry)
• A headdress of rejuvenation : Good stats and AOE health regen.
• 2 or 3 sets of tango : you can share them or trade hit with the enemy without worrying since you have plenty of regen
• Remember that you can share ring of health/regen, if you are planing on building tranquil boots, you can temporary lend the ring of regen to your carry.
• Wards (obviously) : the following ward's spots are often overlooked, however they are great to provide lane safety for your carry :

1) To protect jungle on the dire side

2) This wards allow you to see if a gank is coming from the tower and cover the river entrance (dire side)

3) This one protect the jungle on the radiant side and even allow you to see the rune

4) This one allow you to see an upcoming gank from the enemy tower as well as the river entrance (if the enemy mid come with a rune for example)

Use them in the following order : When you buy your first set of wards, give one to the offlaner and put the other in the jungle (1 or 3). If you are on dire side and your mid need rune control, concider warding the rune spot at the begining instead of the nearby jungle. Once you can afford your second set of wards, ward the rune and ward the spot that cover the tower (2 or 4). Usually the time where your recieve the second set of wards match the timing where enemies start rotating to your safelane in order to gank your carry. If you can see them TP to their tower you can avoid unnecessary death or foresee a push, plus it allows you to see an enemy venturing too far in your lane and getting out of position : allowing an easy kill.

Asserting lane dominance

It might sound silly but : play agressive.. from the start. If people don't fear your Crystal Maiden, Frosbite them from the begining and hit them. people underestimate how much magical damage you can dish at low level. Dont worry about wasting your mana, you should get arcane aura at level 2 or 3 anyway and level it up at least twice. Let your carry last hit while you frost bite every enemy that come close to him, it works like a charm.

For more information

You can go check:

• My previous post about When to be agressive or defensive as a support where you will find more detail about how to support in early stage and through the game.
• This video about stacking and pulling.