Spent this weekend working on the pulling techniques posted on the previous page of this thread, and it's more difficult than I had thought, but working at it slowly. I think the main issue I had was rushing up and hitting the creep as a melee and then trying to run back, the creeps end up hitting me a few times, plus as radiant I had trouble pulling the creeps into the line of creeps (this was as radiant, playing in the upper left corner).
I've started finally playing versus games, mostly using the "compendium match" setting, so I'm now officially up to 7 wins against actual opponents. I found the team games to be populated by people that are much more serious than the vs. bot games, for example I was playing Shadow Demon and the one guy rushes in and dies, then flames me about it "SHADOW DEMON U SUCK! REPORT SHADOW DEMON!", then the other teammates called him a jackass for rushing in there.
By the end of the game though I had 20 assists, and our team won. I was somewhat surprised that people would get so incredibly angry at a player with 4 wins and 1 loss (at the time - now I'm up to 7 wins) and kept insisting that I get reported. I didn't think you could report players just because they are new to the game?