Quinn shared advice on how to apply pressure on opponents in Dota 2

I think that during the laning phase, when you’re getting extra runes or landing a kill, you can afford to make slightly less favorable trades or play a bit more aggressively and chaotically, because you obviously have more regeneration than your opponent.

So you shouldn’t play the same way you usually do. You can take a little more risk, look for trades and fights more often, and try to chip away at your opponent’s health, because you have more gold and can buy more items, get a Bottle faster, and so on.

One more thing: sometimes you’re at full health and have a Bottle charge. Go ahead and engage in a trade, because you need your health and mana regeneration to kick in. So, whenever possible, it’s worth going for these trades.

Heroes like Lifestealer, or other “jelly” heroes who are impossible to kill, require a different approach. In such cases, you simply need to push them off the lane. Just because you can’t kill a hero on the lane doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fight them.

For example, in an Ember Spirit vs. Lifestealer matchup, you won’t be able to kill him. He’ll just cast Infest and back off or use Rage to teleport away. But heavily damaging him and forcing him out of his farm zone is very effective.