Knowing Your Hero Roles

Hero roles are a very important part of every game from the international championships down to the lowliest of pub games. It is especially important to grasp the concept of hero roles from game to game if you are frequently queuing with friends. 

You may have heard people refer to a hero by a number 1-5 position in the past. This is simply a matter farm priority with the 1 position being the highest priority farmer. In a typical game your positions should look like this.

1. Safe lane farmer/Hard carry

2. Solo Mid

3. Offlane Farmer

4. Secondary Support

5. Primary Support

Even if you have 5 melee strength carries you and your teammates should have the same mutual understanding of who is in what role so there is no unnecessary fighting for farm. There are situations where your tri-lane carry wouldn't necessarily be your 1 position carry, but it's a good general assumption.

A good reason to acknowledge going into the game who will be playing what roles is so you can have a better grasp of what item builds you will be going. Furthermore you should know that a hero can play different roles depending on your team, and should be played/built differently depending on what position you fall into on your team. For example if you have a Natures Prophet in the jungle, but you also have an offlaner/mid/carry+support lane you will be playing a 4 position NP. Your item build on a 4 position NP would have to be different than the standard 3 position NP because there isn't as much farm available for you as there is three heroes that have higher farm priority than you. Maybe you would go for a less greedy build like midas into force staff or necronomicon instead of a greedy shadowblade/deso build. 

Differences in supports

It can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between who should be primary and secondary support, and what exactly that entails, so here ya go.

Primary Support: 

Last on the totem pole as far as farm dependency.

Buys majority of wards, requests help from secondary support if necessary.

Doesn't really think about buying big items unless all supportive duties are taken care of!

Secondary Support: 

Builds towards bigger support items such as mek/force staff.

Helps with sentries/smoke/dust 

The support out of the two that puts more use to items

Certain support heroes are better suited for one or the other. A good example of this is Visage. Visage thrives in the Secondary Support position because he gains alot from having medallion/mek/aghanims scepter so he is much better off getting what farm he can. Furthermore Visage tends to pick up lots of kills in fights with soul assumption so that makes for early mek/medallion.

Know your role within your team and pick your items accordingly!