Being new, I've been playing a whole lot of bot games. I always end up destroying the other side's Ancient, but I can never get a kill. The instant I start hurting any enemy hero a fair amount, they always sprint back to their base before I can finish them off. Even when I have boots or even double damage, I can never kill a single one.

I did a bit of googling, and found that a lot of people have had the opposite problem, in which the bot heroes chase them back to their base.

So am I doing something horribly wrong, or is the bot AI a little messy? Curious to see if other people have had either experience.

Sounds like the bot AI is working well if you can't kill them. They really shouldn't case you back to your base, because that's not something that is generally considered a smart move in normal play.

Seems a little peculiar, although your saying that you cant get kills on them, they go back to base when theyre low. THis is generally something to do in regular play if you have no good hp regeneration items

what heroes are you playing as, because we could narrow down the field of possibilities!

Also considering that you're new I'll also point out that generally when playing you don't just kill a hero from max life to zero in one attack string (esp in the early game/first 10 minutes). Normally during the laming phase you work on getting last hits on the creeps while also harassing your enemy with right click dmg, and after you whittle them down a bit you go for the kill.

what he said

the first minutes of the game especially tend to be really slow, unless youre playing someone really agressive who needs lots of kills really really fast and generally speaking thats not going to happen right away either most heroes need a few levels to get going!

Yeah, I see your point. I've played Morphling, Tidehunter, Lich and a couple others. Even in end game, I can only get the bots down to ~1/3 life before having to turn back. And while laning, I only see them outside the fog for a short period of time.

I dunno. It's probably just my impatient noobishness.

Yeah, the thing with being over agressive is that sometimes it ends up just not working out, you really need the help of people to coordinate ganks, most heroes cant just solo other heroes without a decent amount of farm or the right set of skills.

I have found it is not impossible. Got 5 kills and a couple assists using Axe's ulti. Also realized that I had been mostly playing bots on passive, which means they don't use items. Which means that they have to go to base to heal up. Kinda facepalmed after realizing that. Put them on easy, and things worked a lot better.

relax and farm dude get them levels up and then a little later hunt them fucking AI down like the dogs they are

Yeah that would definately make a difference!

Also keep in mind some toons aren't setup to be killers. For instance Lich and TideHunter aren't really setup to get early kills, don't get me wrong they can kill at any level its just that that isn't their primary duty and thus their kits aren't really set you up for early snipes. If you want early kills look for characters marked gankers on their role circle, these guys are normally setup to hit hard and fast and get kills quick by surprisingly their overextended enemies from the jungle.

What Alv said.

Some newer player friendly gankers id recommend include : Viper, Lion, lina, or even queen of pain. some of these guys and gals are supports, Queen of pain can mid, viper can go anywhere too. So really gankers can be anyone, and they can go anywhere too! of course every hero is going to take some practice and getting used to their moves but maybe this little bucket list can give you some ideas to play around with, you can always ask around here too, theres so many people who are willing to help you improve~!

What shane said

It definitely seems like a very rudimentary AI, and I too have noticed that the bots (at least on easy or medium) really like to dive for kills. I had a group follow me all the way across the map, from their base to mine, through two towers, before finally killing me in the fountain. I suspect that it's much less a risk for bots in bot games than it is for humans in human games, as Valve doesn't seem to have added concepts like team support to their framework yet, so they also really like to just leave a fellow hero hanging. Still, it's a work in progress, and at least they put out consistent updates to the AI. We can reasonably expect that they will get at least a little better as time goes on.

When you play on hard they dont do that, i do also recommend playing on hard even from the start, you get the feel for alot of different aspects of the game, especially some of the different items and abilities in the game too. a big other thing that they do is they will punish you a little bit if you move out too far in the open. this kind of hints at the fact that its a bad thing to be caught out in the open. but a few games on easy or medium definately help out alot especially since the slow pace of the game helps you sort of ease your way into the fast paced beast that is DotA

What is this "normal play" of which you speak?