Some of the most stylish plays you’ll see in Dota 2 tend to involve somebody killing their own teammate or tower. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing your hard-earned tower kill stolen away from you, or that hero you’ve worked so hard to bring down denied by a teammate. Denying is a huge part of the game and if done successfully, you’ll be able to use this game mechanic to limit the ability of the other team to develop a gold and experience lead, or catch up with yours.
How to Deny Creeps
Unless you’ve got a Lich in your team, denying creeps is going to require you to manually click on them when they’re below 50% health — press whatever key you have bound to “Attack Move” (the default is “A”), and then left click the creep you want to deny. Since the 7.06 patch, lane creeps give 70% experience to enemies when denied by allies, and grant the denying team the other 30% of the experience bounty. Because the ranged creep gives 90 XP, as well as slightly more gold, and the melee creep gives only 40 XP, you can quickly see that denying the ranged creep is a big deal. You should always prioritize last-hitting over denying creeps, but whenever you get the opportunity to deny, you should take it, unless you’re planning on using the wave to push a tower. You can manipulate the creep aggro to make denying easier, as shown in the video above.
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How to Deny Heroes
Meepo can deny himself? That’s right. And he’s not the only one. Any hero with controlled units can use them to deny and you get full marks for style for doing it. You can deny yourself–or your teammates–whenever they’re ticking down from abilities like Doom, Shadow Strike and Venomous Gale. Other heroes that are able to damage themselves can use abilities to deny themselves. Good examples of this include Techies’ Blast off, Alchemist’s Unstable Concoction, Abaddon’s Mist Coil, Pugna’s Life Drain (when cast on an ally), and, of course, Pudge’s Rot. Denying a hero means the other team will miss out on experience and gold from the kill, although it’s important to note that the hero who gets denied will still lose gold. If you’re trying to deny a teammate, it’s best to let them know using voice chat if you have it enabled, for hopefully obvious reasons.
How to Deny Towers
Denying a tower cuts the enemy global gold bonus in half, as well as preventing an enemy hero from getting that juicy 150-250 gold last-hit bonus. This could cause a swing of up to 600 gold, so denying towers is absolutely massive. It delays enemy item timings and buys your team time and space to make up for the loss of your building. Denying towers can be tough, especially due to the increased damage that siege catapults are packing nowadays. Arteezy’s tower deny in the video here is absolutely epic–he sends in the dominated Centaur Creep, fakes the stun, and then times the last hit to perfection.
