How to bring back the game in Dota 2?

Contrary to popular belief, comebacks in Dota2 are much more common than in LoL. Teams with a 10% gold lead 12 minutes into the game (generally about when the laning phase ends):

• win 89% of the time in professional League of Legends
• win 74% of the time in professional Dota2

The main reason for this is that more expensive items in LoL are MORE cost-efficient than cheaper items, while more expensive items in Dota2 (while often having powerful effects) are less cost-efficient. So by buying these cheaper items, you can finish them sooner and have an advantage over your opponents who are building (and have hopefully not yet completed) higher tier items.

As a team who has lost the early game, you need to recognize this and attempt to get back into the game by purchasing mid-tier items of this sort. Some good examples are Bracers, Drums, Urn, and Mekanism. Carry items in this vein are Diffusal Blade and Maelstrom. For example, two Bracers cost 1050 gold and give 12 STR, 6 AGI, 6 INT, and 6 Damage. An Ogre Club costs 1000 gold and only gives 10 STR (with the advantage that it builds into excellent lategame items like BKB).

While you won't have the item-effiency (per slot) if the game goes on for a while, your goal as a team is to make that disadvantage irrelevant by forcing fights. You will have a period of time where you have equal or greater item effectiveness than your opponents who are presumably saving for more expensive items, and that is your chance to bring the game back into your team's control.

At the beginning of every game you should take a look at the hero lineups and figure out who has the superior lategame team. If you have the advantage in lategame and aren't incredibly far behind, it's usually advisable to simply farm and defend towers at all costs to prolong the midgame. However, if you are incredibly far behind or have equal or worse lategame (usually the case), then you should focus on ganking- better equipped heroes will farm faster than you.

Your best option is usually smoke-ganking as a team. You can catch an opponent or two out of position, kill them, and take an easy tower, Roshan, or teamfight with your newfound hero advantage. Just a couple of these occurances can often completely turn the tide of the game as you force opponents to take teamfights that they aren't properly prepared for. After winning these fights, you can place offensive wards, counter your opponents' warding attempts, and continue to lock your opponents into their base and assert map control.

Good luck!

Stick together, go in groups of 3 people and avoid getting ganked. Ward, ward, ward, ward. Full vision of the map gives advantage over the enemy, and counterward wars are worth fighting.

Other than that, just play solid and strategize. Either stop their farm with a ganking style, outpush, farm better or play your team's advantage. Only engage in teamfights if you know you can win.

In any case, there are team lineups that are just plain better than others, or decisive players can snowball and kill you just by themselves. In the end it's about having fun in the process of being steamrolled, and playing to counter instead of to win is a way.

This game is a LOT less forgiving compared to LoL. If your early game goes south, expect to lose unless you can capitalize on a mistake or two made by the enemy team and manage to drop a lane of towers and recover. I've made comebacks before, but in order to do so, you need to start playing very defensively and prevent any more of your towers from going down. At that point, it's up to your carries to get farm and just wait for the enemy team to get caught in a bad spot, get wiped during a rosh, etc.