My wife loves to get on my ass for slowing down to allow a car in my blind spot to pass so I can merge over . It ' s like she lives in this alternate universe where people aren ' t assholes . <| sep |> 1 . Play with him , not against . Much easier to watch his moves throughout the game that way , and give guidance where needed . I ' d suggest starting him on an easy carry hero think Sven or WK and you play support for him vs bots to start , of course . Carry is a much simpler role in a sense because you just have to farm up and then kill stuff playing support well needs a ton more game knowledge . Also , it ' s way easier to own on a carry with a competent support behind you who can save your ass Omni , WD , Dazzle , etc . and feeling like you ' re owning is a great motivator to play more and learn more . 2 . Don ' t introduce too many things at once , there ' s an ENORMOUS amount of knowledge you need to build heros , abilities , items , objectives , timings , counters , interactions , etc . etc . and the easiest way to make someone give up is by overwhelming them with info . For item builds it ' s good enough to just show him how to load the Torte de Lini build and follow it they ' re far better than the default Valve ones , and the added skill explanations are useful . Adapting builds to games will come eventually . 3 . This one ' s a little more abstract , but explain why to do things , don ' t just tell him what to do . Most often players will somewhat figure out how to do specific things e . g . teamfight with sven warcry , blink in , stun , start hitting , win but not when to do them or why , or what to do after you win or lose . Explaining general concepts farm until you hit a powerspike , then force a fight , use the won fight to take objectives because they can ' t contest helps a lot in building understanding of what to be doing during games when you ' re not there to coach anymore .