Quote (Spirit-Warrior @ Jan 10 2010 04:31pm)
The most important basic step in DotA is learning all the heroes and the items. Almost everything you need for starting/just pubbing is nothing more than simple knowledge. The things that you need to be "good" (coordination, instinct, map awareness, etc.) comes from experience so you can't really be taught these things.
My advice - download the AI map. Just -random every game until you learn all the hero abilities and get the hang of last hitting/denying with different attack animations. The AI is actually surprisingly decent at denying (better than a lot of pubs actually) so you can get some ok practice for it. Once you get a real feel for this, read up on a few guides (good ones ideally). Item builds are fairly basic and should be common sense once you get a feel for the game. After some experience, you can tell what aspect of the game a hero may excel at and choose your items according to their strengths/weaknesses/progress of the game. It really sounds more complicated than it is. Basically, just play a lot to get started.
I've been playing Aion as of late and haven't touched the game in some time, but send me a PM and I might have some time to play an AI game or two with you to give you a few pointers.
I can't download any AI maps yet, not on my own cumputer.
I don't even know how to use items or anything lol