Where Your Gold Goes in Dota 2: 6 Networth Leaks

Networth grows from two things: how much gold you earn and how fast you turn it into items. The Highground coach checks both. Below are the six places where it finds the most losses, with a rule for each.

The gold sits in your pocket

Holding gold: in a five-minute stretch of the game you carried unspent gold for more than a minute in a row. The threshold depends on the phase: 800 or more in the laning stage, 1600 in the mid game, 3000 in the late game. For that whole time, an item you could have bought did nothing for you.

What to do: order items as soon as you can afford them, and keep the courier moving. A component of your next item works too.

You died with an item's worth of gold

The coach flags dying with gold when, at the second of your death, you had enough unspent gold for a whole item: 900 or more in the laning stage, 2000 in the mid game, 2500 on top of buyback in the late game. A purchase in the 10 seconds before the death clears the flag, since it shows you were spending.

What to do: spend your gold before a fight or Roshan. In the late game, keep only the buyback sum.

You farm slower than you could

Slow farm: in a five-minute stretch where you mostly farmed, your income fell below roughly 60% of your best stretch in the same match. The coach compares you with yourself, not with someone else's benchmark.

What to do: plan a route between the wave and the camps so you don't walk for nothing. Stack camps ahead of time and take the wave before you go into the jungle.

You stand in the base

Idle time: you spent a quarter of a five-minute stretch or more in the base and bought nothing in the whole stretch. The first 90 seconds of the match don't count.

What to do: decide what you will buy before you TP to the base. Teleport back to the lane as soon as you have recovered.

The courier didn't deliver

Courier lost: the enemy killed your courier while it carried items worth 500 gold or more. The items arrive only after it respawns, and you meet the fight without them.

What to do: send the courier while you stand by your own tower, and check that its path doesn't cross the river where enemies were just seen.

Buyback: not enough, or not worth it

In the late game, gold also decides buyback. The coach catches three cases: not enough gold for buyback, when your base was falling; missed buyback, when you had the gold; and wasted buyback, when you died again within a minute without a single kill.

What to do: from minute 30, work out your buyback sum before every purchase (200 + networth / 13), and buy back for a goal: defend a building or finish off a won fight.

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The other mistakes with examples on the map are in the common mistakes guide.