Ganking

Ganking is the act of actively moving around the map in order to kill an enemy Hero in a numbers advantage.

The advantages of Ganking
Ganking is used to gain an overall experience and gold advantage. Successful ganks can significantly slow down an enemy carry's farm, help a teammate win a desperate lane and provide a time window to push down a tower or to kill Roshan. To gain an early advantage, active ganking and pushing is especially mandatory if the enemy team is stronger in the late game.

Heroes
Most ganking Heroes have the ability to either slow or stun their enemies, making it easy to set up kills for their allies. In general, there are two different types of gankers:

Item-dependant Gankers like Queen of Pain or Pudge usually spend the first minutes of the game farming their core items and gaining some crucial levels. These Heroes will often be played in the middle lane, so that they can control runes and gain a level advantage. After this initial period of farming, they can easily gank the other lanes. Rune control, good vision of the map and communication are key aspects of successful ganking. Item-dependant gankers are most powerful in the midgame and should ideally have a heavy impact on the game during this time. If successful, they can acquire strong items and transition into the lategame, acting as Semi-Carries.

Item-independant Roamers (supportive Gankers) like Vengeful Spirit can jump from lane to lane to set up early kills. These Heroes are well-suited for ganking because their spells are powerful in the early game. As they do not heavily rely on good farm and items, they don't have to spend much time lasthitting creeps in the lane, giving them plenty of time to gank in the early game. Experienced players can gank very early with these Heroes, even at level 1.

Items
There are some items that both item-dependant and item-independant heroes can use to ease their job. Items like Blink Dagger, Force Staff, Phase Boots, and to some extent, Tranquil Boots and Town Portal Scrolls help with a quicker entry to battle. You are less surprising when you are slower, so items that help you in your displacement always helps. Shadow Blade and Smoke of Deceit are also great items, especially Smoke of Deceit because of how it also increases movement speed tremendously and also its cheap price (though, it has a limit of 2 stocks per time). Successful gankers also rarely return to base, so Arcane Boots, Empty Bottle, or some Clarity Potion (for early-game gankers) will help out Heroes for them to be able to constantly gank. Items that help regenerate hit points are also very helpful, especially Urn of Shadows and Magic Wand. Though not necessary, items that disable your opponents longer in combination with your disables such as Eul's Scepter of Divinity and Rod of Atos can help greatly.

Preventing enemy Ganks
To prevent the enemy team from ganking successfully, a team should make sure that they have vision of key areas of the map by placing Observer Wards. Furthermore, Town Portal Scrolls can be used to help out allies that are ganked on the other side of the map. Always carrying TP-Scrolls and watching the minimap can quickly turn a 2v1-situation into a 2v3-situation, effectively turning the gank into a countergank.

A common way to prevent the enemy team from ganking is telling your team mates when an enemy leaves their lane. In public games, this is done via the ally chat: "miss 2 bot", "ss 2 bot" or "MIA 2 bot" means that two enemy Heroes left the bottom lane and they might be ganking.

Some Abilities like Mirana's Leap are well-suited to escape from incoming ganks. These spells are often referred to as escape mechanisms. Heroes lacking an escape mechanism (e.g. Shadow Fiend, Silencer) are very susceptible to ganks and have to be especially careful when enemy Heroes are missing on the minimap. These Heroes can purchase Items like Shadow Blade or Force Staff to provide one.