Specifications
Dota 2 has one of the best chat wheels I've ever experienced; it made it super easy to get messages across, especially in the European region. When you hold the chat wheel key (default Y) it opens the gui. Moving the mouse in one of the 8 directions then releasing Y sends that message.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIi3hWGVcQo
It also allowed you to customise the 8 messages you could choose from, even in the middle of a match, allowing you to adapt to any situation in a few seconds.
Later in the game's life, they moved a lot of QoL features over from the wheel to the rest of the UI, but a lot of the ideas were very solid, such as pinging health (e.g. Enemy Axe -> 55% HP)
Messages
In my opinion, the less specific a message, the better. For instance, if you integrate pings into the chat wheel:
- Experimental under construction! Can be used to ping your own t4 or a scouted enemy t4.
- Point defense here: Can be used to warn an ally of creeping pd, or tell them they need their own.
- Low HP Commander
- TML here
- SML here
and so on