Many players seem to think that for a given hero you pick two abilities and only level those two up. However, sometimes at level 4 it’s a good idea to get the 3rd ability rather than get the next level of a previous picked skill.

A few common examples of this are the Pandaren Brewmaster, Death Knight, and Lich. Panda’s Drunken Haze has great synergy with Breath of Fire, giving  Damage over Time, so it’s nice to get the first level of haze especially earlier before your opponent has enough dispel. His Drunken Brawler ability is also good though, so a lot of times the skill order for panda might go Breath-Haze-Breath-Brawler. ( by the way, anyone remember 1.17 haze slow 50% at level 1? hahaha that was a joke )

With Death Knight, many players will go Death Coil, Unholy Aura, Death Coil and then Death Pact at level four. Death Pact really helps to keep your DK at a healthy hit point level.. not that DK ever dies anyway.

With Lich, I don’t know if real Undead players do this but I’ll often go Nova-Frost Armor-Nova-Dark Ritual. Level 1 Dark Ritual isn’t much, but I still think it’s nice to have it in addition to frost armor’s melee-attacker-slow ability.

DOTA! I use this concept in DotA a lot as well and certainly other players do too. To give a couple examples:

Dragon Knight: For the early levels I mainly level up the Breath of Fire and the passive ability (don’t remember what it’s called). BUT at level 3 I will first get one level of Dragon Tail (the stunning ability, I think this is the correct name). Dragon Tail’s first level already has a long stun and additional levels only add .25 seconds and not a lot of damage. So you get level one’s very decent stun, and then level up the passive ability.

Queen of Pain: Same idea for this hero. If I don’t plan to be blinking a lot, I level up mainly Shadow Strike and Scream of Pain, but I’ll first get 1 level of blink for running away or early chasing.

Another example is Venomancer’s passive ability, which slows heroes by the same percent for all levels. (but in this case, I would get +2 stats instead of the 3rd ability usually)

Only named a few!