Dota 2 hotkeys problematic
Dota 2 Hotkey Optimization Gu >
Dota 2 Hotkey Optimization Guide by ChaQ
After writing my “Advanced solo mid guide” I’ve received a lot of questions about hotkeys. People wanted to know how to choose them, which settings are the best and what hotkeys I use myself. To answer all of them, here’s a short guide to choosing your hotkeys:
As I said previously, I’m a big fan of optimising and making your play more efficient. But how can you be efficient when you keep missclicking spells and items or not hitting hotkeys that are too spread out? Yes, you can’t.
I’ll state this clear: i will NOT tell you what hotkeys you should use, if you feel comfortable with legacy hotkeys where spells have their own hotkeys scattered all over the keyboard, go for it. I WILL tell you though some general rules you could follow, and how I discovered my ideal combination.
To start off, there are 4 most common hotkey settings:
1. QWER
2. ASDF
3. ZXCV
4. Legacy
As you can see you can manually select your favorite hotkey setting from the list in DotA 2 options:
If you’re not a DotA veteran, I strongly suggest using the 1, 2 or 3 combination. Legacy hotkeys are for people that are so used to hotkeys from W3 DotA that it would be simply too hard for them to convert to any of above combinations.
Now, to the more advanced things:
Most of the people set their hotkeys to their hero spells and inventory, and that’s it.
In my opinion, if you want to play better and waste less time, you SHOULD have hotkeys for:
1. Quickbuy – allows you to buy an item that you “shift queued” instantly. Insanely useful when waiting for important items like bottle.
2. Purchase sticky – In your settings you can select one item that can be bought after pressing this hotkey. The most useful one is probably tp scroll.
3. Control groups – at least 3
4. Courier, all courier commands – tick “mirror hero hotkeys” in your settings
5. “Missing” – message to allies, really useful in pubs
6. Binded camera position hotkeys (rune spots)
7. Scoreboard – for constantly checking enemy levels
8. Shop – no further explanation needed
9. Show names/hero icons on minimap (default alt)
10. Commands: stop, hold position, move
11. Glyph
Other general hotkey rules:
- Have hotkey for EVERY inventory slot. As you progress in skill as a player you’ll notice that situations where you have 6 active items in your inventory are really common and not having one of them binded proves to be a serious disadvantage.
- Avoid using alt or ctrl+hotkey for inventory hotkeys, this makes things really hard when trying to play heroes like tinker effectively.
- Start putting items into the same slot every game. That way you’ll never have to look at your inventory before casting a tp scroll or magic wand. For me TP is always at G and wand at E.
- Do not put items that require extremely fast reaction on slots that are somehow harder to access and/or require you to change position of your hard before using. Example: blink dagger is way more effective on “Q” than on “Space”.
- If you think you have all your hotkeys mastered and there’s nothing you can improve on – turn on “Shop always uses hotkeys” setting on. Memorizing all the shop hotkeys brings your mechanics to a next level, allowing you to do flashy plays like upgrading the courier with 2 button as someone dives to kill it.
- Do NOT be afraid of changing your hotkeys to something more efficient. For example I’ve always had my hero on “1″ and courier on “2″. Then, when i decided to play meepo my control groups could only start from “3″. That made me missmicro a lot by accidentally selecting the courier. I decided to change the hotkey to ” ` “, it took me well over 3 weeks of missclicking and never getting my items delivered but when I learned it, it helped my play immensely. Think of it as of performing a somersault. If you fall on the ground first time doing it, it doesnt mean you shouldn’t do this at all. It’s just a matter of practice.
When changing hotkeys you know you’re gonna fail a lot, but what matters is the final result – you playing faster and more effectively.
For those unfamiliar with camera binding, the commands are:
Top Rune – bind “yourkey” “dota_camera_setpos -2273.898682 1232.745483 982.072876″
Bottom Rune – bind “yourkey” “dota_camera_setpos 3035.773438 -2972.680176 966.072937″
Hotkeys
The hotkeys settings can be accessed by clicking on the little gear icon in the most top left corner in the main menu. Here, the player can customize many hotkeys, or select one of the many pre-set hotkey templates. Almost every key on the keyboard can be bound to something, with a very few exceptions. The exceptions usually have a set purpose in the game and thus are un-rebindable.
Contents
Unbindable keys [ edit ]
Several hotkeys have a set purpose, which cannot be changed. This results in them mostly being un-rebindable.
- The following keys are completely unbindable: ESC, SHIFT (left and right), CTRL (left and right), MOUSE 1, MOUSE 2
- The ALT key can only bound together with other keys, as a combo key. The ALTGR key is treated as the same key.
- Although the ALT modifier can be bound to another key, ALT is still unbindable. When the modifier gets rebound, ALT has no use.
- The WINDOWS KEY (left and right) (or COMMAND KEY on Apple keyboards) are unbindable, but they can be turned bindable in the advanced hotkey settings. These keys keep their default function, which is opening the start menu on the desktop. This is true even when the keys get bound ingame.
- The PRINT KEY is fully bindable, but it also keeps its default function, which is to take screenshots.
- The following keys are bindable on their own, but cannot be combined with ALT: PRINT KEY, TAB
- All other standard keys are bindable.
Basic hotkeys [ edit ]
Basic hotkeys are active while playing a match. The player can change the hotkeys at any time, even during a match. There are hotkeys for abilities, items, unit actions, shop actions, chat, interface and control groups. In the advanced hotkeys, there are additional settings for unit actions, shop actions, interface and control groups, and the hotkeys for camera actions, saved camera positions and some hotkey setting options.
Hotkey templates [ edit ]
By default, the game uses the “Arrow (Default)” hotkey layout. The player can choose from a variety of pre-set hotkey templates, which can be found by clicking on “Reset hotkeys. ” at the bottom left of the settings menu. Available templates are:
| Template |
Description |
| Arrow (Default) |
Dota 2 default hotkeys. |
| WASD |
Dota 2 default hotkeys, adapted for using W, A, S and D for camera movement. |
| Legacy Keys |
Dota 1 style hotkeys; with different ability hotkeys for every hero and unit. 1 |
| MMO |
Key bindings similar to various Massively Multiplayer Online games. |
| League of Legends |
Key bindings similar to League of Legends. |
| Heroes of Newerth |
Key bindings similar to Heroes of Newerth. |
| Smite |
Key bindings similar to Smite. |
1 Legacy keys can also be enabled by ticking the corresponding option in the Advanced Hotkeys settings, rather than starting over with this template.
Activating a template unbinds all hotkeys used in it from their existing actions. Hotkeys can still be changed freely after selecting a template, except Legacy Keys’ item hotkeys.
Abilities [ edit ]
There are 6 ability slots which can be used. If one slot is empty and contains no ability, it is not visible in-game, and all abilities coming after it are moved together. For example, if a unit has an ability in slot 1 and 3, but no ability in slot 2, then the 2nd slot is not visible and the 3rd ability is moved next to the 1st ability, so that there is no gap. However, the slots are still bound according to the settings. Despite the 3rd slot being moved to remove the gap, its hotkey is still equal to whatever is set for the 3rd slot in the ability hotkey settings.
Heroes usually have 3 abilities in their first 3 slots, and their ultimate always in the 6 slot. This causes the ultimate spell to always use whatever hotkey is set for the 6th slot, despite the ultimate visually appearing in the 4th slot. This is why the hotkey of the 4th ability on non-hero units is not equal to the hotkey of ultimate abilities. The non-hero unit has 4 abilities in its 4 slots and has the 5th and 6th slot empty, so they are not displayed. If its 4th ability would be moved to the 6th slot, it would make visually no difference, but change its hotkey to what is set in the 6th slot.
By default, the ability hotkeys apply to every unit the player controls. It is possible though, to bind different hotkeys to heroes, couriers and other units by turning “Unit Specific Hotkeys” on. It is also possible to bind unique hotkeys for each hero, however, this is not possible for other units. Clicking on “Clear” after having given non-hero units, couriers or an individual hero unique settings, sets the hotkeys back to what the player set as default.
The player can choose between regular cast (select spell and then select target) and quickcast (select spell and automatically cast it where the cursor is). Autocast is by default ALT+ability hotkey. It is possible to choose between regular and quickcast for couriers, non-heroes and for each hero, just like how unique bindings are possible. If the player wishes to use regular and quickcast, or wants to use different autocast hotkeys, the “Enable Advanced Quickcast/Autocast Hotkeys” setting can be turned on, which allows setting different hotkeys for regular, quick – and autocast for each slot. This also works together with unit specific hotkeys. However, advanced quickcast/autocast hotkeys is not compatible with legacy hotkeys. Here, the player can only decide between regular and quickcast, and autocast is always ALT+hotkey.
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