If you have played Dota 2 long enough, you already know that the results of most games are heavily affected by how well your heroes are farmed. In most cases, the team whose members, especially cores, have high levels and net worth usually comes out victorious.
There are various strategies to help your team in this aspect. Of course, learning how to last hit in Dota 2 can cause your hero to level up fast. But enemy teams are often wise to your act and will do everything to limit your farm. It is important then to know what strategies are effective to maximize your experience and gold.
One of them is stacking camps. It is the act of luring neutral creeps away from their camps, and when timed correctly, a new set will spawn. The additional creeps can provide the hero who farms the jungle more experience and gold.
However, doing this strat requires a good understanding of the mechanics and some practice. In this article, I will teach you how to stack camps in Dota 2 and discuss some tips on how to perform it effectively.
Why Stack Camps?
To win a Dota 2 match, your team’s cores, especially the carry, should be enabled because they are the primary damage dealer. If they are slow to level up and obtain the right items, then they are prone to getting run over by the opponents and can be ineffective in team fights.
Going to the jungle can help them get back on track or gain farm advantage over their counterparts. Having more neutral creeps to kill will double or triple the experience and gold that can be acquired.
Who Should Stack Camps?
By intuition, the hero who is jungling should stack camps. After all, the best junglers in Dota 2 have the means to carry the technique out.
However, it is not recommended for the Pos 1 and 2 heroes to do the stacking. Instead, they need to focus on farming in the lane before going to the jungle to take care of stacked camps. The best Dota 2 carry heroes and best mid heroes can clear stacks quickly then head back to the lane to farm some more.
Having said that, one of the marks of the best support heroes is the ability to efficiently stack camps. And for their efforts, the heroes who successfully stack camps are provided with bonus gold after the creeps have been eliminated.
How to Stack Camps
Now that you know how important stacking camps is, here are the steps on how to pull neutral creeps.
- Upon reaching the camp you want to stack, click the Alt key to bring out a yellow box on the screen that signifies the camp’s border.
- Attack any of the units using right-click or a spell to attract the aggro of the neutral creeps.
- Move your hero away from the camp pit so that the creeps will follow you.
It may seem simple to perform, but remember that the most crucial thing here is timing and positioning.
Firstly, no units should be inside the edge by the point the game timer reaches the 1-minute mark (2:00, 3:00, and so on.) If you fail to do this, a new set will not respawn along with the currently alive creeps. Most camps can be stacked when the timer’s second mark reaches 54 to 56 seconds. Of course, this will depend on how far the creeps are from the boundary.
The camps can also be stacked multiple times. However, pulling an already-stacked camp should be done around one to two seconds earlier because having more creeps in the camp will restrict their movements, causing them to take a longer amount of time to walk outside the box.
Furthermore, the camp spots differ in sizes and dimensions. Thus, the exact time when to pull neutral creeps also vary.
If you are having a hard time mastering how to stack camps in Dota 2. There is a way to learn more easily and master the technique — through Dota Plus.
Subscribing to Dota Plus brings several perks. And one of them is a guide on stacking camps. Pressing the Alt key near neutral camps will show a timer on when to start attacking creeps and which direction to pull them.
How to Counter Camp Stacking
Bear in mind that the other team will also look to stack their own camps to boost their cores’ farms. If you want to gain an upper hand, you can try to disrupt the opponents’ plans to stack camps. There are a few ways of doing so.
For one, you can invade the enemy jungle and try to steal their camps by clearing them yourselves. Be wary, though, because the opposing team could place Observer Wards near their stacks. When they have vision that you are alone, they could try to gank you.
You can also prevent stacking of camps (also called blocking camps) by using wards. To do that, place a ward inside the boundary of a camp. The presence of a hero, courier, or ward inside a camp will stop a new set from respawning.
Once the opponents saw that a camp has been blocked, they will try to look for the ward using a Sentry Ward to let them see your ward. Destroying the ward will grant the enemy some gold and waste one of your wards, which is a limited resource. But that is a small price to pay for controlling your enemy’s farm.
On the other hand, the opponent will also try to block the camps in your jungle. It is wise then to invest in Sentry Wards if you find out that the enemies have used this technique.
