Appreciate the start. Anybody feel like beating up on new player while giving some pointers, my Steam name is the same as this one.
I just checked out the video above, and I'm sure it'll make sense when I pick up the lingo, but right now, it's pretty much gibberish.
I am excited about figuring this out though...heh. The game from what I can tell from watching is really pretty intense.
Okay, so a really basic rundown of the game would be this:
Essentially, the game is a class based 5v5 battle in which the goal is to destroy the other team's main base.
To do this though, you first have to do a variety of things.
Step 1: Picking a hero.
Each hero fills one (or more) of a variety of roles. These roles include:
Carry: This is a hero that starts out weak, but by earning a lot of gold quickly throughout the match, becomes powerful enough to defeat multiple other players at once. In order do fulfill their role, they usually require a large amount of expensive items. Getting this gold can come from either killing enemy heroes, having the killing blow on a creep (the NPC units that charge up the three lanes), or killing neutral enemies in the area between the lanes.
Support: This is a hero that tends to enhance the abilities of other heroes either by having their abilities combo with other heroes well, or actually having abilities such as heals and buffs. They also tend to require far fewer items to be effective, though are usually not able to defeat multiple other heroes (or, in some cases, even one depending on who the opponent is). These heroes also tend to use their money to buy items that benefit the entire team instead of just themselves.
Ganker: These heroes focus primarily on killing other heroes quickly, especially when they catch them alone or off guard. Every time someone kills a hero, they get a lot of experience and gold, and the person who dies loses gold, so their goal is to kill as many heroes as possible early to cause their team to be of a higher level than the enemy.
Initiator: These heroes focus on stunning and disabling enemy heroes in a way that allows their team to enter a fight with an advantage. Towers do a lot of damage early in the game, and many heroes can do damage very quickly, so having an initiator can make a team have a huge advantage when determining the outcome of a major fight. Since respawn times can be very long in Dota, winning team fights not only gives you a gold and experience bonus, but allows you to make significant progress toward your goal of killing the enemy's main base.
Pusher: These heroes essentially focus on being able to kill towers quickly early on in the game. Towers do a lot of damage, but also give out a lot of money when killed, which gives your team a good item advantage early on.
In general, it is easiest to start out with a hero who is a support, since they are generally the least item dependent and thus can be effective even without the ability to generate gold quickly.
Step 2: Playing the game.
The most common way for the game to start is for two heroes to to the top/left lane, two heroes to go to the bottom/right lane, and for one hero to go to the middle lane. Barring people in the side lanes killing the enemy heroes quite frequently, whoever is in the middle lane will level up faster than the people in the side lanes.
The main focus of this phase of the game is for the carry to farm a lot of gold, and for everyone else to try not to die while gaining as much experience as possible.
If you can get early hero kills, that's great, but when you first start out, it is much more important to focus on not dying. Your ideal scenario is to be sitting between the third tower on your side and the third tower on their side for as much time as possible, because you only get experience when you are in range of things that are dying. Dying or going back to town thus stops your leveling.
As the game progresses, your goal is to slowly kill the three towers in each of the lanes, as well as the two barracks at the end of each lane. Once those barracks die, the power of your NPC allies in that lane increases, and it allows you to push further into their base and eventually kill their main building.
However, during the middle of the game, you will eventually exit the "laning phase" where you are split 2/1/2 across the lanes and instead enter a phase where you travel in larger groups of 3 to 5 in an effort to try and win large battles against the enemy team and kill towers quickly. In this phase, whoever did a better job at gaining experience and gold in the previous phase will have an advantage, but the skill of the players and their ability to work together will still play a large role in determining the victor of each fight.
There is a lot more depth to it than that, but for now, I think that's enough to try messing around with the basics in practice mode.
As for sample heroes who are good for beginning players, I'll get back to you on that in a moment.
Edit:
Yeah, the below two guides (especially the second) does a better job explaining which heroes are good choices to start with than I will.