How to Get Better at Farming in Dota 2 to Improve your GPM

Check out our guide on how to get better at farming in Dota 2 so that you can hit your key item timings faster and carry your team to victory

If you’re playing as the Position 1 Hard Carry in Dota 2, there are few things that are as important as your GPM. Gold Per Minute is the measure of how much Gold you’re farming on the map each minute while your team is creating space for you.

As a carry player, hitting your key item timings is crucial, and for that, you need Gold. To get Gold, you need to farm not only the creeps that spawn on each lane of the game but also switch between jungle camps and farm them in between each wave.

The thing is, Dota 2 is a complicated game and things don’t always go your way. Unless you’re efficient with how you move around the map to farm, you won’t be able to keep up with the enemy team’s speed.

So, how do you get better at farming in Dota 2? Here are the essential tips.

8 Tips to Get Better at Farming in Dota 2

Here are eight simple, easy-to-follow tips to improve your farming speed in Dota 2:

1. Practice Last Hitting

What makes Dota 2 different from other MOBA titles is its emphasis on last hitting. When you’re laning against an enemy player, he will pressure you into missing as many creeps as possible by harassing you.

You need to keep a level head and get your last hits in while keeping yourself alive.

Practicing your last hitting skills in the Demo mode of the game for 10 minutes each day will significantly increase your ability to get creep kills under pressure. Or you could create a custom lobby for yourself and go to the middle lane and farm creeps for ten minutes. Do this each day before you start playing and see your GPM skyrocket.

The idea is to isolate the last hitting element of the game and focus on that until it becomes muscle memory for you.

2. Use Quelling Blade Smartly

Quelling Blade is almost a must-have item on all the Carries in the game. It costs 150 gold and gives you bonus damage when you’re hitting enemy or neutral creeps, making it easier for you to last hit them.

It also has an active ability called Chop Tree that lets you cut down a tree. Though it doesn’t sound like much, by using this ability smartly, you can shorten the distance between you and the creep that you’re trying to last hit.

When you make a habit of it and add up all the seconds you saved, you’ll notice a significant increase in your GPM.

3. Know When the Lane is Dead

Just because you’re playing in the Safe Lane doesn’t mean you need to keep your tower alive.The hero draft in the game might put you at a disadvantage against the enemy laner..

Even when you manage to keep the Offlane under pressure, the enemy team can rotate extra heroes and kill you easily if you’re farming on the lane on your own for too long.

Recognizing when the lane is dead and it’s better to go jungle is an instinct that all Position 1 players should acquire. When it starts feeling like your farm speed is taking a hit, and you’re at risk of dying in the lane, leave it and go farm the jungle camps.

It would also free up the lane for your Position 4 and 5 players to get some much-needed experience to get their ultimates.

4. Know When to Let the Tower Go

Dota 2 is a highly dynamic game. You can’t expect the lane matchup to go your way every game. Sometimes, you are stuck with playing a Carry that gets hard-countered by the opponent’s Offlane.

In this situation, you should aim to get some early farm and experience, and move to the jungle as soon as possible. Even if your enemy team takes down the safe lane tower, don’t feel pressured into defending it. Sure, if your team rotates in heroes to defend it, you can join and get a kill or two.

However, don’t forcefully defend a Tier 1 tower if you don’t need to. If the tower falls, the enemy creeps will move closer to your Tier 2, making it easier for you to rotate between jungle creeps and lane creeps.

5. Prioritize Lane Creeps

We know we just said it’s okay to let the tower go and leave the lane if things get difficult, but here’s the thing – The lane creeps always give you more gold and more experience. It’s true for pretty much all stages of the game.

So, during the mid-game stage, when you’re moving around the map farming jungle creeps and lane creeps in safe spots, make sure you prioritize farming the lane creeps. Farming jungle creeps lets you stay off the map, sure, but if there’s a creep wave that’s near your tower in a free lane, don’t hesitate to go and farm it.

6. Keep a TP Scroll

The Town Portal Scroll in Dota 2 is arguably the most useful item available in the game. While other MOBA titles often come with a Recall ability that lets you get to the fountain after channeling for a while, in Dota, you can use the TP Scroll to teleport to any of your friendly buildings on the map.

How does that help your farm? Well, if there’s a creep wave moving into your tower, you can quickly teleport to that lane and farm it up. Alternatively, if there’s a fight breaking in near your tower, you can teleport and join the fight, picking up one or two kills and getting gold for it.

Keeping a Town Portal Scroll in your TP Slot always ends up paying for itself.

7. Itemize to Farm Faster

Items like Battle Fury or Maelstrom come with passive effects that let you hit and damage multiple creeps at the same time. For a Hard Carry who doesn’t have any innate fast farming abilities, investing in this type of farming item is always a good idea.

Anti-Mage, for instance, doesn’t have any speed-farming abilities. With a Battle Fury, however, he becomes one of the fastest farming heroes in the game since he can move between creep camps quickly thanks to his Blink ability.

8. Ask Your Team to Stack

If you’re playing flash farming cores like Medusa, Luna, or Sven, asking your team to stack the Ancient Camps is an easy way to ramp up your GPM. These heroes come with innate abilities that let them farm a lot of creeps at one go.

Stacking creep camps also give the Carry something to fall back on if the laning phase goes poorly. With a couple of Ancient and Jungle camp stacks here and there, these heroes can hit their item timings much sooner.

Of course, not all teammates will stack for you, but it’s always worth asking if you are playing a flash farming Hard Carry.

The Bottom Line

Mastering your last-hitting skills is the most important thing if you want to improve your GPM. But that alone won’t cut it. At one point, you need to start thinking and making smart decisions in terms of your movement and farming pattern.

Hopefully, our tips on how to farm in Dota 2 will help you improve your farm speed and accelerate your item timings in the game. Good luck!