Regeneration
In ye olden days of Dota 2 there was only one courier for the whole team to share, this meant buying lots of regen at the start the game was essential. Since you didn’t want to hog the courier so it could ship you tango’s while the mid was waiting on their bottle. This mindset of regen’s importance has become so entrenched in the dota mindset that people still choose to buy lots of regen at the start of the game. While the personal couriers of the current day are able to just keep ferrying you the necessary tangos, salve, claritys and mangos. Obviously, one set of tango’s or a salve is essential when you walk into the lane and want to keep up your resources. But when you start with 9 tango’s, you might want to look into other ways to spend your money.
The speedy support
Every role has a different way that they play the lane, and therefore need different things to be effective in that playstyle. Because of the support’s necessity to move a lot in the laning stage, boots can amplify their effectiveness greatly. Chasing around enemies, blocking camps, pulling creeps and juking through the trees. All these activities can be done so much more effectively when you have boots to get around with speed. While they are expensive, 500 gold is still an amount of money that fits within your 600 gold budget. Leaving you exactly enough money to buy one set of tango’s. The rest of the regen you can ship in when the bounty runes get picked up and you get a quick financial injection.
The careful core
While boots are definitely essential for core heroes as well, they tend to have different priorities at the start of the game. Since they are expected to take on the duty of getting the last hits in lane, it is important that your starting items will help you achieve this goal exactly. This means a Quelling Blade for melee heroes and some stat items to boot. Even the humble Faery Fire can be a great tool for core’s. It is essential that you buff up your attack damage so that you won’t be outplayed by your opponent. For if they have more damage than you do, they can deny creeps in front of your nose before you even have the opportunity to last hit them.
Special cases
Obviously we haven’t talked about all the possible starting items you could begin your game with, but those tend to be a lot more situational. The Magic Stick is an amazing purchase whenever you play up against a hero that spams spells like a crazy person, think of Batrider and Zeus for example. The Orb of Venom is great for melee supports that wan’t to chase down their opponents through right clicks, the Blight Stone can amplify physical damage greatly and a Sage’s Mask can keep your mana topped up. The basics stay the same however, supports and need speed and cores need stats. Everything outside that is window dressing, and is up to you your own insights in what to use and when to use.
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