Mana recovery through consumables takes longer and so it's more acceptable for a hero to back off to recover mana, but if you're at full health and not afraid of dying there's usually no reason to back off just because you're low on mana. By doing this, now you might now have the advantage in lane and if your opponent doesn't make the same decision you can control the lane.ĭuring this phase, returning to your base to heal should usually be done only when you're low on both health and mana and thus aren't much of a threat in the lane, or when you're no longer needed in your lane and don't have much mana (as a support hero/roamer/ganker, typically). If you use a TP Scroll to return to your lane, now you've spent 60 seconds and 135 gold to heal, where you could have used the courier and 100 gold to bring you 400 HP worth of regen and not lost any experience. If he instead walks back to the base, he's spend probably 60 seconds doing this where he's unable to gain any experience. In the laning phase, it's very common for a hero that is losing the lane and low on health to use the courier to bring his character a Healing Salve or Mana Potion.
A flying courier is usually called a 'Crow' for the same reason. The courier is frequently referred to as a 'Donkey' 'Chicken' or 'Chick' because of how it was in original DotA. The courier is useful throughout the game as a way to gather new items without needing to slow down your experience/gold gain.