Look at your minimap every 5 seconds, as simple as that. The better your laning and last hitting mechanics are, more natural will be the feeling of playing, hence you will spend less time focusing on last hitting (but you're be as effective as before) and more on looking at the minimap. This will allow you to have good map awareness.
As ^ said.
That was the biggest tip and help mainly when I started (you seem to be asking for another person since you have about 2k games played).
Every 5 seconds look at it, and we mean every 5.
Peripheral vision also helps when looking at the game and being able to notice a hero popping up on the minimap.
Also as someone else said: check other player's inventories every few minutes when you can see most of the enemy and you are safeish.
If you see someone building a butterfly or hally then you will want someone to counter with a mkb asap or know they have a refresher etc.
Buy some wards.. even if you're playing a carry, its 150 gold, you lose more everytime you die because you didn't see a gank coming
to make it easier check minimap every time you last hit. im not sayin you have to put your mouse and check other lanes, but just look at the mini map and see how many heroes are missing and stuff like that, every time you last hit
After a while you know where you'd be if you'd be on enemy team.
Stuff like "I don't see lycan, is roshan up?", "No enemy on map, they are either behind towers, roshan, or smoked" or " pudge is missing, I'd better stay in the trees" becomes reflex.
not really. there are other games where minimaps are important (think rts such as starcraft etc), so one might already have this ability from other games
there is a lot to it. if you don't see anyone on the map what do you do?
experienced players will know when and how the enemy is gonna try to gank mid, rosh, or just farm in their woods.
you can learn stuff like this faster if you play with people who are better than you.
and one more thing, i hate it when someone dies and cries : WTF MID WHRE SS. i try to always look when some lane is missing and what hero is missing just to know if i can get ganked, and even if i get ganked i don't say stuff like : ty for ss faggot.
Some simple examples of this where a lot of people fall over...
> You're a solo support, you have no wards and you go out solo to place one, you're dead 100% as they will have wards.
> If you're pushing a lane past the river with no wards and the map is black and you farm a full creep wave and you see no one on the map, they're coming for you get out.
> If the team is missing at any time for longer than 1-2 minutes then they are probably doing or have done Roshan.
A lot of this comes in time as you see patterns, playstyles and where people hide, how they gank, how they roam, when they do smokes etc... after 6000 games you have seen pretty much all of it so it does come in time but it also takes a bit of game knowledge and situational awareness and skill.
You don't need vision to see that none of their heroes are showing up on the map.
I set my minimap icons to hero avatars instead of colored arrows so it's an easier time seeing where everyone is !
hero avatars is easier to see for me
also you need to evaluate every game as it comes
are you support? if yes what are the enemy heroes which threaten you? do they have nyx? check your scoreboard to see if nyx is 6. if he is 6, do you have sentries? if no, play more defensively if you cannot see him on the map. etc etc
awareness is dependent on each game and you have to consciously go through a list of threats, for example on lifestealer you can usually farm very aggressively unless the enemies have heroes like bane or clinkz, likewise on TB you can use your main to hit towers if there's a teamfight on the other side of the map
you need thousands of games to internalize these to the extent where you can do most of these things automatically
People said I was mad for using hero icons instead of colours, but it helps so much because you don't have to think about what colour what hero is, you just see X hero straight up coming to chase your ass
sometimes you only see them appear on the minimap for 0.1 seconds, that's much easier to tell who it is by color than by hero icon
as for map awareness without vision, it all comes down to thinking what the enemy is thinking
If you see 4 people on the minimap together mid game, it does not necessarily mean that 5th person is with them. If you are a core hero and you know he can kill you, and he knows he can kill you, chances are 99% of the time he's trying to gank you so don't go for that creep wave
think about general rotations. If the mid player goes back to base either by healing or dying, chances are he's going to tp to a side lane to gank if he is lvl 6-7+ and you should back until he shows up again mid
late/super-late game: one person on the minimap = 4 allies are behind him, you can use that to your advantage to push the other lane out far while being safe
I actually find it easier to read high skilled players rather than low skilled players. You don't know wtf the low skilled guys are gonna do, but high skilled players generally think the same way
People are missing from the map and you're on their side of the river = they're coming to gank you or they're doing rosh.
Supports missing from trilane and carry playing defensively = they're rotating mid/off.
Supports missing from trilane and carry playing agressively = they're circling around trees to come fuck you from behind.
Offlane missing:
Is it tide? Can be coming mid or doing ancients
Is it alch? Same
Is it nyx? Is he 6? If yes, he's coming to fuck you. Same with clock. Same with void.
You're at their t3, rosh is dead, and no one is on the high ground? They're circling around with a smoke.
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Is it true that u only gain this through hours of dota exp? How can a new guy start learning this basic but very impt skill?
Also, I always refer this to spidersense :D