Due to fairly recent changes in the DotA map, taking down towers has a huge payoff and it is easier to do. The addition of siege creeps and a bounty reward of $200 per player on the aggressor team makes the towers a much bigger factor than they ever were before. The players who were paying attention adjusted the way they play the game. They realized that the first epoch of the match is won by the team who can bring down 3 of the opposing team’s towers first. If you can preserve all of your towers, and bring down each of the opposing outer towers, your team enjoys roughly $3,600 gold advantage, assuming no tower was denied. If only one tower was denied, the advantage is still close to $3,000 gold.

If an ally is jungling away despite the enemy team destroying the lanes, he has to single handedly farm $3,600 or more gold from the neutral creeps just to even the income difference between teams. Let’s assume he can clear an average of $180 gold per camp on average, he must kill 20 neutral creep camps in the time it takes the opposing team to bring down 3 towers. If his laning allies can buy about 25 minutes of time before folding, it may be worth it. But if the jungler is insensitive to the tower situation and continues his lone adventures while the lanes are wrecked, he will find he has a marginal advantage at best. The enemy team enjoys the extra map vision and “pushed” situation provided by their outer towers. They may roam as a pack more easily, using the outer towers as rally points. They control the river routes where the runes appear. They also have quick access to Roshan from their middle outer tower. In most cases, the defending team actually tends to fragment more as they defend the various pushed lanes.