Misha shared tips on applying pressure and creating key moments in Dota 2

The difference between catching up to an enemy and letting them escape is 15 movement speed. The difference between arriving at a fight on time and arriving too late—and getting knocked out of the tournament—is 15 movement speed. The difference between getting between camps and farming a lot of gold is 15 movement speed. And that’s why he [ATF] takes Wind Lace. And I’ve seen 33 do it too. Sometimes he takes… they take Wind Lace for 5 minutes. Got it? Renting Wind Lace for 5 minutes. They run around with Wind Lace for 5–10 minutes and sell it before their inventory slots fill up. But it’s worth it.

First—always think about the pressure that each of your heroes and enemy heroes can create. Play around that. This is the easiest way to understand high-level Dota 2 macro in general. You just think about pressure points: who will do what, where, and when. Sometimes, if you’re a support player, you can think about this 10 minutes before it happens—or 5 minutes, or 6 minutes—so you can place wards and anticipate where things will unfold. An example of this is Malady’s ward on the teleports—a very early ward placed before Brewmaster reaches level 6, because once Brewmaster hits level 6, the teleports will be activated. In other words, Malady thinks this through. An example of this is a ward from Saks, where he places a ward to secure a fight at the 6:00 rune, right? 6:00–6:10. And he ends up outplaying his own ward. So, these are the kinds of moments.

The second point is creating opportunities. Creating opportunities where there aren’t any. Creating opportunities out of thin air. The very best players are the ones who can create opportunities out of thin air. Deliberately push further, force your enemies to chase you, and escape at the last moment. These are the things that let you win unwinnable games. These are the games where you can make split-pushing a real nightmare for your opponents, because very often people in ranked say, “I’m going to split-push—I can’t fight.” And the minions aren’t moving as a team—you’re even losing—but the highest-level split-pushing is when you out-gold your enemies by split-pushing, because they’re chasing you, while you’re running away from them. And you have to run from them effectively, not just hide in the deepest camps. You have to bait them and take risks. And, of course, there’s risk involved—you’ll die in droves, you’ll die doing this—but that’s part of the game.