The more I play and improve, the more I enjoy this game. Big thanks again for all the help guys.
Played a few matches outside of my comfort zone and did ok! Basically tried both carry and mid roles and did well early enough to get some advantage and push for wins. I really suck mid and late game. Remembering to use items at the right time is a lot of times the difference and I need to work on that. But otherwise feeling good.
The more I play and improve, the more I enjoy this game. Big thanks again for all the help guys.
Played a few matches outside of my comfort zone and did ok! Basically tried both carry and mid roles and did well early enough to get some advantage and push for wins. I really suck mid and late game. Remembering to use items at the right time is a lot of times the difference and I need to work on that. But otherwise feeling good.
Mid and late game are the hardest game stages to learn because factors everything gets much more situational. Like, I can tell you, "if you're laning against Bristleback, buy a wand early", but I can't say, "in the mid game against Bristleback you need to X". Is the Bristleback snowballing or not? How much physical damage does the rest of his team have? What items has he built? Who has map control? Too many factors.
It's why working on your early game and last hitting and farming gets such good results: you enter the mid and late game with a better overall position, giving you slack to make more mistakes and learn more than just "entering the mid game underfarmed is kind of shit".
That makes so much sense. And it definitely explains why I normally have a strong early game and then fade off most matches around the 20 minute mark. I've been really focusing on securing early kills and learning the items. Then checking who has what item and trying to learn counters.
Mostly I have compensated by playing characters with traps or disables. My focus late has been securing assists and staying alive. Haha
Have not played much is the last few weeks (fallout 4!) but played a few over the weekend. Did the community somehow get more toxic while I have been away?
Good lord I have been on a tilt lately, lost like 300 MMR. I think a lot of the way I used to play has just been nullified by glimmer cape and lotus orb. I need to rethink how I win games.
I've recently had such a long string of tryhards and angry teammates and non-English speakers that I've gone back to tabletop gaming and have close to zero interest in playing Dota for the moment. I don't know what happened. It's like my hidden MMR went too high, or something. I pretty much stopped playing when I got shit for not having full mastery of my Hero in Single Draft (of all queues) about 5 times in a row. I'm sure I'll come back, but the rest of my gaming has been neglected and I need to come back to it.
Me also. Last night in the same team (not in a party) I had:
A: Razor mid that build went brown boots-deso. That's it/ No aquila, urn, wand.... Nothing. This versus a shodow fiend that was roaming the map and grabbing runes freely.
B: I was Gyro and was in lane with Pugna. That did not skill his Q until L8
C: A Spanish speaking night stalker that informed us from the 30 second mark that we sucked.
That's 41 min & 22 seconds of my life I will not be getting back.
I've been playing a lot less lately, but that's OK. I'm one of those people who always has to be improving at whatever I'm doing. I was reaching a point where I was miles better than any of the friends I played with so the experience wasn't as much fun for them, or for me. So I'm working on my programming, pretending to exercise, other hobbies. Lately when I play I tend to random and that suits me just fine.
Grinding Solo-queue for MMR kills your soul. I wish I had a group of more competitive people to play with, I love the structure of a prepared Captain's mode match, but I haven't had great experiences with TeamLiquid teams or the Reddit Dota League. The teamLiquid stacks were some of the worst ragers I've played with. RD2L was frustrating because everyone on the team wanted something different out of the experience, some players wanted a beer/chips softball experience, others were after something more competitive and our randomly assigned team captain was not a strong enough leader to get everyone on the same page. Even though the atmosphere was friendly, we would lose game-after-game for exactly the same reasons. The last game of the season our supports still didn't know how to stack and pull, nevermind have a concept of when/why they should be doing it.
One of the biggest problems with the game is that the skill range is sooo ridiculously wide. This forum is a great example of it: the range of experience and player skill is huge, to the point where it's hard to set up PA stacks. At a certain point you have to accept that for what it is, and need to play the game in a way that's fun for you, it is just a game after all.
That being said, don't be afraid to hit me up on steam if you want to play, or even if you just have questions/want to vent some rage. @Musicool and I do some 1v1's every now and then, I usually feel like we both get something out of it (I'm still salty about the time he beat my QoP with his Puck ), and every now and then I manage to sneak into @Spawnbroker or @Buster Blade 's stacks. It's always a good time!
Had my first really abusive game last night from a pa who was my lane partner with me as cm. We got easy first blood at the rune, but I got yelled at for kill stealing (my frostbite took the last hit.) The remainder of the game was abuse about every decision I made.
Something is off though. I have a decent record so far. 55/40 win/loss. But I'm now getting matched up with people way above my profile level. Is my invis MMR just increasing? I'm not sure how that works. I'm not even in ranked yet. Profile level is 15. Most games I'm matches with 17+ now.
Profile level doesn't mean much, just total amount of games played since Reborn dropped. I started off around level 15... but it meant nothing because I'd played thousands of games in by that point.
Your 'hidden' MMR works the exact same way as the real one would, so if you've been winning games overall it will put you against stronger players.
I've been playing a lot less lately, but that's OK. I'm one of those people who always has to be improving at whatever I'm doing. I was reaching a point where I was miles better than any of the friends I played with so the experience wasn't as much fun for them, or for me. So I'm working on my programming, pretending to exercise, other hobbies. Lately when I play I tend to random and that suits me just fine.
Grinding Solo-queue for MMR kills your soul. I wish I had a group of more competitive people to play with, I love the structure of a prepared Captain's mode match, but I haven't had great experiences with TeamLiquid teams or the Reddit Dota League. The teamLiquid stacks were some of the worst ragers I've played with. RD2L was frustrating because everyone on the team wanted something different out of the experience, some players wanted a beer/chips softball experience, others were after something more competitive and our randomly assigned team captain was not a strong enough leader to get everyone on the same page. Even though the atmosphere was friendly, we would lose game-after-game for exactly the same reasons. The last game of the season our supports still didn't know how to stack and pull, nevermind have a concept of when/why they should be doing it.
One of the biggest problems with the game is that the skill range is sooo ridiculously wide. This forum is a great example of it: the range of experience and player skill is huge, to the point where it's hard to set up PA stacks. At a certain point you have to accept that for what it is, and need to play the game in a way that's fun for you, it is just a game after all.
That being said, don't be afraid to hit me up on steam if you want to play, or even if you just have questions/want to vent some rage. @Musicool and I do some 1v1's every now and then, I usually feel like we both get something out of it (I'm still salty about the time he beat my QoP with his Puck ), and every now and then I manage to sneak into @Spawnbroker or @Buster Blade 's stacks. It's always a good time!
We still play pretty often, you can join us whenever you like! I also have a low level alt that I use to play ranked mode with my buddies because my main account has too much of an MMR difference, the alt's name is Spambroker if you want to add me.
I totally feel you about the skill disparity, though. I'm about a low 4K player, and most of the people I play with are 2K or below, and it definitely leads to some frustrating moments. If we want to win and I have to tryhard, I usually have to take the carry or mid lane role and just farm my ass off because I can count on just having better farming patterns than my opponents. This has the unfortunate side effect of leaving all of my friends with little practice at these roles, which just exacerbates the problem.
I've been grinding solo MMR for kicks lately, just because I want to improve my play. A big mindset shift that helped me was that I no longer attempt to help people who are worse than me; I can't change the behavior of others. What I CAN change is how I play and how I approach the game. If I can improve myself enough, the rest doesn't matter. There is plenty I am doing wrong in every game of dota to look at before I look to blame others for bad play. Sometimes I slip up and something nasty comes out, but I try REALLY hard not to let that happen.
Oh also, never ever ever tell someone they did something wrong in a dota game. At best, they get defensive about it because they're also beating themselves up for doing that dumb thing. At worst, they lash out at you or someone else on the team and now everyone is flaming each other.
Giving a "Well Played!" every once in a while or silently directing your team with pings and emotes will have a direct correlation to at least a 5%-10% win rate increase for you.
Had my first really abusive game last night from a pa who was my lane partner with me as cm. We got easy first blood at the rune, but I got yelled at for kill stealing (my frostbite took the last hit.) The remainder of the game was abuse about every decision I made.
Something is off though. I have a decent record so far. 55/40 win/loss. But I'm now getting matched up with people way above my profile level. Is my invis MMR just increasing? I'm not sure how that works. I'm not even in ranked yet. Profile level is 15. Most games I'm matches with 17+ now.
Your invis MMR is probably higher. It's an unfortunate part of the learning experience and every matchmaking system out there. You're learning new skills, and using them, so you win more games and do better. But if you want to turn around and learn something else, you're already too high to learn it. It's why I had to play bot matches for a long time after I hit the 300 game mark, because there was just zero patience from teammates.
That's probably the point I'm at again, and this is probably the time for me to pick 5 Heroes I'm really good with and just hone them, but that sounds an awful lot like homework to me and I'm not interested. Plus Dota bots are awful. They don't do anything right, they don't contest runes, and since Reborn they've been less responsive to pings.
I've recently had such a long string of tryhards and angry teammates and non-English speakers that I've gone back to tabletop gaming and have close to zero interest in playing Dota for the moment. I don't know what happened. It's like my hidden MMR went too high, or something. I pretty much stopped playing when I got shit for not having full mastery of my Hero in Single Draft (of all queues) about 5 times in a row. I'm sure I'll come back, but the rest of my gaming has been neglected and I need to come back to it.
I think I'm actually finally done with Dota for good. It's too much like crack when you're playing it and doing well. It ruined every other video game for me since it literally hits every gaming pleasure center there is when you play a round. I can't justify the time anymore and I'm tired of dealing with shitty players. Been on a 3 or 4 week break and it's been heaven. But I'm still all about watching it played competitively.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I've recently had such a long string of tryhards and angry teammates and non-English speakers that I've gone back to tabletop gaming and have close to zero interest in playing Dota for the moment. I don't know what happened. It's like my hidden MMR went too high, or something. I pretty much stopped playing when I got shit for not having full mastery of my Hero in Single Draft (of all queues) about 5 times in a row. I'm sure I'll come back, but the rest of my gaming has been neglected and I need to come back to it.
I think I'm actually finally done with Dota for good. It's too much like crack when you're playing it and doing well. It ruined every other video game for me since it literally hits every gaming pleasure center there is when you play a round. I can't justify the time anymore and I'm tired of dealing with shitty players. Been on a 3 or 4 week break and it's been heaven. But I'm still all about watching it played competitively.
I now only play with a 5 stack of friends.
If they're not getting a game going, I don't play.
I've recently had such a long string of tryhards and angry teammates and non-English speakers that I've gone back to tabletop gaming and have close to zero interest in playing Dota for the moment. I don't know what happened. It's like my hidden MMR went too high, or something. I pretty much stopped playing when I got shit for not having full mastery of my Hero in Single Draft (of all queues) about 5 times in a row. I'm sure I'll come back, but the rest of my gaming has been neglected and I need to come back to it.
I think I'm actually finally done with Dota for good. It's too much like crack when you're playing it and doing well. It ruined every other video game for me since it literally hits every gaming pleasure center there is when you play a round. I can't justify the time anymore and I'm tired of dealing with shitty players. Been on a 3 or 4 week break and it's been heaven. But I'm still all about watching it played competitively.
i'm the same. i don't mind losing but the pure toxic behavior is ruining what I consider the most complex game I have played. Been playing Fallout 4 and battlefront and just enjoying myself.
The games are just too long. I played a 75 min game with a team that decided to turtle exept our NP that always tried to split push with no vision and inevitably dying. That's an hour and a half of doing something that is in no way fun.
PSN: Canadian_llama
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
casual mention of heroes of the storm hitting a lot of the same notes DotA hits in 20-minute packages
casual mention of heroes of the storm hitting a lot of the same notes DotA hits in 20-minute packages
I've been trying it again, it really does not. There's lots of things dota does that it doesn't. Every single hero feels like bristleback/AA level of responsiveness/heft of abilities, everything moves at the same movement speed.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
casual mention of heroes of the storm hitting a lot of the same notes DotA hits in 20-minute packages
I've been trying it again, it really does not. There's lots of things dota does that it doesn't. Every single hero feels like bristleback/AA level of responsiveness/heft of abilities, everything moves at the same movement speed.
Yeah, it's obviously not going to be the same experience. And if things like perfecting your last hitting is something you really enjoy you'll be missing out on it, but if you're someone who likes teamfight heroes and the more PvP side of the game it's a good substitute, which is basically what I was looking for.
I'm honestly starting to get the same feeling. I've played over a thousand games of DOTA and my MMR, after a nice rise a few months ago, has tumbled to almost where it was when I first calibrated. A thousand fucking games and I'm about as shit as when I first started. I'm not seeing any improvement here, and that's rapidly sapping the fun out of the experience too.
Lately I've just been playing through a haze of uncertainty. I don't know what to do in-game because DOTA doesn't make sense to me anymore. Should I split push? I don't know. Should I stun that guy? I don't know. Should I back or commit? I don't know. Where should I ward? I don't know.
I used to know. I used to be a whole 800 MMR better than I am now. I used to just sense what was a good idea most of the time. That knowledge is - or was - somewhere in my brain. I just don't know where it's gone, and nothing seems to be bringing it back.
The solo life is tough. I think what's kept me in it so long is that I also have a group of over 10 IRL friends who play. We all road tripped to the International this year which was frankly an absolutely incredible experience. I've been watching Esports events since Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, but it was my first live tournament, so it was pretty special. I can only hope that some of you make the nerd pilgrimage next year, just to see how wild it is to be surrounded by a community of people going absolutely bananas about the game.
Edit: I will say, whenever I get into a rut I stop playing ranked games for a bit and just random. Mixing it up reminds me how well designed the game is.
I'm honestly starting to get the same feeling. I've played over a thousand games of DOTA and my MMR, after a nice rise a few months ago, has tumbled to almost where it was when I first calibrated. A thousand fucking games and I'm about as shit as when I first started. I'm not seeing any improvement here, and that's rapidly sapping the fun out of the experience too.
Lately I've just been playing through a haze of uncertainty. I don't know what to do in-game because DOTA doesn't make sense to me anymore. Should I split push? I don't know. Should I stun that guy? I don't know. Should I back or commit? I don't know. Where should I ward? I don't know.
I used to know. I used to be a whole 800 MMR better than I am now. I used to just sense what was a good idea most of the time. That knowledge is - or was - somewhere in my brain. I just don't know where it's gone, and nothing seems to be bringing it back.
Whenever I feel this way, I read through Welcome to Dota, You Suck again to remind myself of the basics that I may be taking for granted.
Fuck that, I think your first mistake is thinking your MMR points correlate with your knowledge.
It does to an extent. I'm 3.2K. Put me vs someone that is 2K and I will run circles around them. I will buy smoke and deward. They will not. I will place wards on high ground and possibly block camps. They will not.
Another thing to keep in mind is there is a lot of variance when trying to raise your MMR. The game is trying to give you as even a match as possible, so if everyone's MMR was perfectly balanced and correct, you would win 50% of your matches.
Let's assume you are the only person in the match whose MMR is out of balance, i.e. your true rating is higher than your current MMR. You will still be expected to lose around 40% of your matches due to circumstances outside of your control. A player on your team decides to feed, a disconnect happens, your carry makes a game losing mistake at the 50 minute mark, etc. etc.
So with a winrate of 60% (which is exceptional), you could still lose 5 matches in a row and might have just had bad variance.
The opposite is also true, you could be playing heroes that are just not strong in the meta right now and your winrate could be sub 50% due to that. I can definitely see someone attempting to only play hard carries (Medusa, Antimage, PA, etc.) having a VERY difficult time winning right now due to the current patch incentivizing early teamfighting so much.
Fuck that, I think your first mistake is thinking your MMR points correlate with your knowledge.
It does to an extent. I'm 3.2K. Put me vs someone that is 2K and I will run circles around them. I will buy smoke and deward. They will not. I will place wards on high ground and possibly block camps. They will not.
So yes in a general sense mmr=knowlege.
Same with putting me vs someone that is 5K.
And my solo rating is 4.5k and I never buy smoke. If you lose 800 MR it doesn't mean you know less all of a sudden. Unless you're 5k, maybe 6k you could know very little about builds/mechanics/whatever you want. I've seen a friend who hadn't played dota since WC3 sit down and outlane some dudes on a 2k account as timber mid with no items.
I think the thing a lot of people don't want to admit is that gaining MMR in DotA is actually hard and you have to work at it. People want this game to be easy. They want perfect 5-0 teamfights with easy decisions (i.e. who to focus, how to position, etc). They want the game to be won at the draft (which is hardly ever the case in 2-4k brackets).
The truth is, game is hard. Getting better at it is hard. You need to know how you are getting better and why, or else you'll just sit where you are.
Fuck that, I think your first mistake is thinking your MMR points correlate with your knowledge.
It does to an extent. I'm 3.2K. Put me vs someone that is 2K and I will run circles around them. I will buy smoke and deward. They will not. I will place wards on high ground and possibly block camps. They will not.
So yes in a general sense mmr=knowlege.
Same with putting me vs someone that is 5K.
And my solo rating is 4.5k and I never buy smoke. If you lose 800 MR it doesn't mean you know less all of a sudden. Unless you're 5k, maybe 6k you could know very little about builds/mechanics/whatever you want. I've seen a friend who hadn't played dota since WC3 sit down and outlane some dudes on a 2k account as timber mid with no items.
I'm not quite sure what you are saying?
If you lose 800 MMR it means you lost... A lot. The how and why is usually case by case. Your friend that would beat a 2K I'm sure played a fair bit of OG Dota and while things have changed a lot of the fundamentals have remained.
Honestly I think I'd enjoy the game more if I just STAYED where I was at. I have no desire to get better, I enjoy the game as it is. The push to get better at this point is a turn-off for me. Going full competitive has rather serious physical drawbacks for me I'd rather not go into. Suffice to say, I enjoy being the #5 support who grabs wards, plants them, and is a good lane bro. I've seen smoke get used maybe 5 or 6 times in the game, I never get teammates to huddle up, so I just don't use it at all. I don't bother stacking, because my lane buddy will bitch about me abandoning him, and I have no guarantees that my teammates will take advantage of the stack, or not get killed by the stack and bitch about that (it's happened). So, stacking, not a thing I do, not a thing I worry about. I just lane, and deny and harass and tp to other lanes to help out, and upgrade the courier, and buy wards. The rest of the game, I teamfight, I do what I can to get good aura items, and a Force Staff or Blink, and just do what the team needs doing. This has been a happy experience for me.
But now it's like my hidden MMR shot through the roof or something, because now my teammates expect these extra activities from me regularly, but I've not practiced the timings, I still get a 25% participation on smoking, and my lane buddy still bitches about me not holding his hand while he solo-pushes against a duo-lane. And frankly, I don't have time to re-learn dota I prefer the dota I had been playing for 8 months without issue, but now I'm expected to play (I'm merely guessing here, I have no fucking clue) 3k MMR dota and my apathy kicks in hard. I don't mind the winning or losing, I just can't handle what I feel are rubber-banding expectations. This is to say nothing of the insane expectation I've recently been under, which is that I should have every Hero fucking MASTERED in order to play Single Draft or Random Draft, which has been a major point of pain for me lately. Okay, we're playing Single Draft. I see we need a mid, I have TA, I pick her. Does this mean I'm going to rock the house? No, I'm shit with her, but we need a mid, and I want to learn TA. This is unacceptable to everyone I play with nowadays. They see me try to attack someone from too far away when I'm hidden, and it's all "noob TA" and "TA uninstall pls".
Sorry, at this point I'm just bitching and it's not productive, I'll stop.
Fuck that, I think your first mistake is thinking your MMR points correlate with your knowledge.
It does to an extent. I'm 3.2K. Put me vs someone that is 2K and I will run circles around them. I will buy smoke and deward. They will not. I will place wards on high ground and possibly block camps. They will not.
So yes in a general sense mmr=knowlege.
Same with putting me vs someone that is 5K.
And my solo rating is 4.5k and I never buy smoke. If you lose 800 MR it doesn't mean you know less all of a sudden. Unless you're 5k, maybe 6k you could know very little about builds/mechanics/whatever you want. I've seen a friend who hadn't played dota since WC3 sit down and outlane some dudes on a 2k account as timber mid with no items.
This is all true, but it doesn't take the sting out of losing a ton of MMR, especially since it can be so hard to win those points in the first place. Big swings happen, variance is a bigger bitch than most of you probably realize. I've played a lot of poker so I have a pretty intimate relationship with variance. The most consistent top-tier poker players in the world can have months or even years of break-even or losing play, despite the fact that 99% of the time they are making optimal decisions. Sometimes you get hit by a metric shit ton of bad luck that just doesn't let up. The most important aspect of improving is maximizing the metrics you CAN control.
In poker that means refining your decision making process so that you consistently make the most EV+ or optimal decision in any given situation.
In DOTA that means working on your last hits. Stop dying so much. Are you doing enough tower damage? These stats are all available on Dotabuff, it's not hard to find them. I'm of the opinion that 60% of any given players problems in dota can be solved by improving their last hits. It is SO EASY to spend 5 minutes working on your last hits in an empty lobby before you commit to playing a game. This goes for carries AND supports.
As a support, do you know how to pull? Seriously... do you know how to pull? It sounds so stupid, but there are basically THREE pulls that every support player should know, and you should be able to pull them off properly 90% of the time. If you get every last hit from an easy camp that equates to about 75 gold, that's a whole extra ward! If you get the last hits on the pull through, look at that, you are already halfway to boots. This is something you should be able to do every time, and if you aren't, you are leaving a ton of gold on the map.
The three pulls you should be intimately familiar with:
1. Radiant Easy camp pull through into medium camp. This one is easy, and has the largest margin for error. All you need is a tango to cut down a tree.
2. Dire Hard Camp pull. It blows my mind how many players don't use this pull, and it's just as easy as pulling the easy camp into lane. Eat a tree to make a path, aggro the creeps @ :23 or :53 is nice because the camp stacks too! Wow! efficiency! ) then pull straight up into the lane. Watching pro games lately they use this pull almost exclusively over the easy camp pull through, it is nearly impossible to mess up.
3. Dire Easy Camp pull through into hard camp: This is the tricky one, but it isn't so bad after a bit of practice (Keyword PRACTICE). Pull the easy camp, then pull the hard camp into the easy camp. The tricky part here is that the trip from the hard camp to the easy camp is long, so it's easy to accidentally pull the hard camp too early or too late. The trick here: aggro the hard camp when the easy camp has ~400 HP left. You might have to do some fast math. I consider this a 'greedy' pull since it has more potential to fail. You are basically saying "I want the gold/XP from the easy camp AND the hard camp", and most of the time it's probably smarter to only pull the hard camp (pull #2!) since it's nearly impossible to fuck up. If you mess up the pull through, the creep wave will push and that can sometimes cost your hard carry as many as four whole creep waves of last hits. It's a big deal.
Inexperienced support players have a terrible habit. They always stack the easy camp before pulling it, regardless of being on Dire or Radiant, because they don't know how to do the pull through. Their intentions are good... They don't want to set up a double wave for their carry, and they know that a stacked easy camp will kill the whole wave. But this severely limits your options. What if you want to pull @:12, but you haven't stacked yet? The creep wave could be in a really dangerous place for your carry, and it's costing him last hits. But you have to wait a whole fourty seconds to stack the camp, THEN another twenty to finally pull the wave. Good lord you just wasted a whole god damn minute, and your carry picked Spectre into a Windranger +1 lane so he can't even touch the creep wave unless it's in perfect position. Worse still; taking the time to stack THEN pull is time spent away from your carry, he is being peppered by windranger arrows and you aren't there to do your job zoning. All of this could have been avoided by using a better pull.
Practice pulls! Get Last hits! It sounds dumb but are you really doing these things effectively? As an exercise: consider when certain pulls are stronger than others. When would pulling the dire hard camp be inferior to pulling through/stacking the easy camp? How does the enemy lane factor in? How should you approach these things if the enemy Mid isn't on the map?
I like to practice this stuff as crystal maiden in an empty lobby, because she is sooooo slow. You have to be really crisp with your timings, especially the dire pull through. Her auto-attack is garbage (37 DMG wtf!), so it helps you get better at last hits. But this is the stuff that gets you more dollars, gets more dollars on your carry, and helps you win lanes. And you can practice it for 5 minutes before you play risk and stress free! Why wait till you're in the middle of a ranked game to mess it all up?
I almost always play support, and the other thing that comes to mind is the assumption that pulling is a good thing all the time. It's not.
1) Sometimes you need to be in lane helping your carry, regardless of which way the lane is pushing
2) If the enemy lane is pushing into your tower already, for the love of god don't pull. You have what you want anyways, and the only effects are
----you get some amount of gold (maybe),
----you risk dying because the enemy lane will notice, and has time to come kill you.
----your carry takes a ton of damage for no reason
----your carry has a harder time last hitting under tower
3) if your lane is pushing into their tower, then pull if
----you don't think the tower damage you'll get is worth the exp given to the enemy
----having the lane push puts your carry in an unsafe position
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I almost always play support, and the other thing that comes to mind is the assumption that pulling is a good thing all the time. It's not.
1) Sometimes you need to be in lane helping your carry, regardless of which way the lane is pushing
2) If the enemy lane is pushing into your tower already, for the love of god don't pull. You have what you want anyways, and the only effects are
----you get some amount of gold (maybe),
----you risk dying because the enemy lane will notice, and has time to come kill you.
----your carry takes a ton of damage for no reason
----your carry has a harder time last hitting under tower
3) if your lane is pushing into their tower, then pull if
----you don't think the tower damage you'll get is worth the exp given to the enemy
----having the lane push puts your carry in an unsafe position
eh, I like pulling the enemy creep wave past our t1 tower. Usually you get a friend creep wave to intercept them between the t1 and t2 and you have all the time in the world to last hit/deny while the enemy lane sits and twiddles their thumbs.
But like most things, it depends on allies/mmr/phase of the moon.
Another thing to keep in mind is there is a lot of variance when trying to raise your MMR. The game is trying to give you as even a match as possible, so if everyone's MMR was perfectly balanced and correct, you would win 50% of your matches.
Let's assume you are the only person in the match whose MMR is out of balance, i.e. your true rating is higher than your current MMR. You will still be expected to lose around 40% of your matches due to circumstances outside of your control. A player on your team decides to feed, a disconnect happens, your carry makes a game losing mistake at the 50 minute mark, etc. etc.
So with a winrate of 60% (which is exceptional), you could still lose 5 matches in a row and might have just had bad variance.
The opposite is also true, you could be playing heroes that are just not strong in the meta right now and your winrate could be sub 50% due to that. I can definitely see someone attempting to only play hard carries (Medusa, Antimage, PA, etc.) having a VERY difficult time winning right now due to the current patch incentivizing early teamfighting so much.
I think the meta change is a big part of my MMR plummet. Leaving aside the question of how good or bad my fundamentals are - except to say that they're undoubtedly better now than when I was ~1800, because I've actually been practicing them lately - I think the problem started basically bang on when 6.84 hit. I noticed that the patch was really fun but also seemed somehow harder to me. And I think it's the emphasis on early teamfight.
The thing is, I'd evolved a playstyle of getting shit done by myself in the early to mid game. Sure I'll tp to some of the early teamfights that seem winnable, but I began prioritising split push, aggressive jungle farming and ganking when I realised that my fellow low MMR players were wasting time looking for way too many fights. The thing is, now they're not wasting time, because that's what the meta is about.
So maybe I need to adapt and just get stuck in more.
Another thing to keep in mind is there is a lot of variance when trying to raise your MMR. The game is trying to give you as even a match as possible, so if everyone's MMR was perfectly balanced and correct, you would win 50% of your matches.
Let's assume you are the only person in the match whose MMR is out of balance, i.e. your true rating is higher than your current MMR. You will still be expected to lose around 40% of your matches due to circumstances outside of your control. A player on your team decides to feed, a disconnect happens, your carry makes a game losing mistake at the 50 minute mark, etc. etc.
So with a winrate of 60% (which is exceptional), you could still lose 5 matches in a row and might have just had bad variance.
The opposite is also true, you could be playing heroes that are just not strong in the meta right now and your winrate could be sub 50% due to that. I can definitely see someone attempting to only play hard carries (Medusa, Antimage, PA, etc.) having a VERY difficult time winning right now due to the current patch incentivizing early teamfighting so much.
I think the meta change is a big part of my MMR plummet. Leaving aside the question of how good or bad my fundamentals are - except to say that they're undoubtedly better now than when I was ~1800, because I've actually been practicing them lately - I think the problem started basically bang on when 6.84 hit. I noticed that the patch was really fun but also seemed somehow harder to me. And I think it's the emphasis on early teamfight.
The thing is, I'd evolved a playstyle of getting shit done by myself in the early to mid game. Sure I'll tp to some of the early teamfights that seem winnable, but I began prioritising split push, aggressive jungle farming and ganking when I realised that my fellow low MMR players were wasting time looking for way too many fights. The thing is, now they're not wasting time, because that's what the meta is about.
So maybe I need to adapt and just get stuck in more.
Just play spirit breaker and never stop going ham.
Posts
Played a few matches outside of my comfort zone and did ok! Basically tried both carry and mid roles and did well early enough to get some advantage and push for wins. I really suck mid and late game. Remembering to use items at the right time is a lot of times the difference and I need to work on that. But otherwise feeling good.
Mid and late game are the hardest game stages to learn because factors everything gets much more situational. Like, I can tell you, "if you're laning against Bristleback, buy a wand early", but I can't say, "in the mid game against Bristleback you need to X". Is the Bristleback snowballing or not? How much physical damage does the rest of his team have? What items has he built? Who has map control? Too many factors.
It's why working on your early game and last hitting and farming gets such good results: you enter the mid and late game with a better overall position, giving you slack to make more mistakes and learn more than just "entering the mid game underfarmed is kind of shit".
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Mostly I have compensated by playing characters with traps or disables. My focus late has been securing assists and staying alive. Haha
Here's game one, hopefully game 2 goes up shortly.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
I blame the moon, or maybe ISIS.
A: Razor mid that build went brown boots-deso. That's it/ No aquila, urn, wand.... Nothing. This versus a shodow fiend that was roaming the map and grabbing runes freely.
B: I was Gyro and was in lane with Pugna. That did not skill his Q until L8
C: A Spanish speaking night stalker that informed us from the 30 second mark that we sucked.
That's 41 min & 22 seconds of my life I will not be getting back.
Grinding Solo-queue for MMR kills your soul. I wish I had a group of more competitive people to play with, I love the structure of a prepared Captain's mode match, but I haven't had great experiences with TeamLiquid teams or the Reddit Dota League. The teamLiquid stacks were some of the worst ragers I've played with. RD2L was frustrating because everyone on the team wanted something different out of the experience, some players wanted a beer/chips softball experience, others were after something more competitive and our randomly assigned team captain was not a strong enough leader to get everyone on the same page. Even though the atmosphere was friendly, we would lose game-after-game for exactly the same reasons. The last game of the season our supports still didn't know how to stack and pull, nevermind have a concept of when/why they should be doing it.
One of the biggest problems with the game is that the skill range is sooo ridiculously wide. This forum is a great example of it: the range of experience and player skill is huge, to the point where it's hard to set up PA stacks. At a certain point you have to accept that for what it is, and need to play the game in a way that's fun for you, it is just a game after all.
That being said, don't be afraid to hit me up on steam if you want to play, or even if you just have questions/want to vent some rage. @Musicool and I do some 1v1's every now and then, I usually feel like we both get something out of it (I'm still salty about the time he beat my QoP with his Puck
Something is off though. I have a decent record so far. 55/40 win/loss. But I'm now getting matched up with people way above my profile level. Is my invis MMR just increasing? I'm not sure how that works. I'm not even in ranked yet. Profile level is 15. Most games I'm matches with 17+ now.
Your 'hidden' MMR works the exact same way as the real one would, so if you've been winning games overall it will put you against stronger players.
We still play pretty often, you can join us whenever you like! I also have a low level alt that I use to play ranked mode with my buddies because my main account has too much of an MMR difference, the alt's name is Spambroker if you want to add me.
I totally feel you about the skill disparity, though. I'm about a low 4K player, and most of the people I play with are 2K or below, and it definitely leads to some frustrating moments. If we want to win and I have to tryhard, I usually have to take the carry or mid lane role and just farm my ass off because I can count on just having better farming patterns than my opponents. This has the unfortunate side effect of leaving all of my friends with little practice at these roles, which just exacerbates the problem.
I've been grinding solo MMR for kicks lately, just because I want to improve my play. A big mindset shift that helped me was that I no longer attempt to help people who are worse than me; I can't change the behavior of others. What I CAN change is how I play and how I approach the game. If I can improve myself enough, the rest doesn't matter. There is plenty I am doing wrong in every game of dota to look at before I look to blame others for bad play. Sometimes I slip up and something nasty comes out, but I try REALLY hard not to let that happen.
Giving a "Well Played!" every once in a while or silently directing your team with pings and emotes will have a direct correlation to at least a 5%-10% win rate increase for you.
Your invis MMR is probably higher. It's an unfortunate part of the learning experience and every matchmaking system out there. You're learning new skills, and using them, so you win more games and do better. But if you want to turn around and learn something else, you're already too high to learn it. It's why I had to play bot matches for a long time after I hit the 300 game mark, because there was just zero patience from teammates.
That's probably the point I'm at again, and this is probably the time for me to pick 5 Heroes I'm really good with and just hone them, but that sounds an awful lot like homework to me and I'm not interested. Plus Dota bots are awful. They don't do anything right, they don't contest runes, and since Reborn they've been less responsive to pings.
Just write back in chat "kill secured" and move on. If they keep whining about it mute em.
I think I'm actually finally done with Dota for good. It's too much like crack when you're playing it and doing well. It ruined every other video game for me since it literally hits every gaming pleasure center there is when you play a round. I can't justify the time anymore and I'm tired of dealing with shitty players. Been on a 3 or 4 week break and it's been heaven. But I'm still all about watching it played competitively.
I now only play with a 5 stack of friends.
If they're not getting a game going, I don't play.
Has done wonders for enjoying the game again.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
i'm the same. i don't mind losing but the pure toxic behavior is ruining what I consider the most complex game I have played. Been playing Fallout 4 and battlefront and just enjoying myself.
The games are just too long. I played a 75 min game with a team that decided to turtle exept our NP that always tried to split push with no vision and inevitably dying. That's an hour and a half of doing something that is in no way fun.
I've been trying it again, it really does not. There's lots of things dota does that it doesn't. Every single hero feels like bristleback/AA level of responsiveness/heft of abilities, everything moves at the same movement speed.
Yeah, it's obviously not going to be the same experience. And if things like perfecting your last hitting is something you really enjoy you'll be missing out on it, but if you're someone who likes teamfight heroes and the more PvP side of the game it's a good substitute, which is basically what I was looking for.
It's at least worth a try, is what I'm saying.
Lately I've just been playing through a haze of uncertainty. I don't know what to do in-game because DOTA doesn't make sense to me anymore. Should I split push? I don't know. Should I stun that guy? I don't know. Should I back or commit? I don't know. Where should I ward? I don't know.
I used to know. I used to be a whole 800 MMR better than I am now. I used to just sense what was a good idea most of the time. That knowledge is - or was - somewhere in my brain. I just don't know where it's gone, and nothing seems to be bringing it back.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
I still play to win, because winning is more fun, but it's at least possible to have fun in a loss that way.
And I'm pretty sure my unranked MMR is higher than my ranked.
Edit: I will say, whenever I get into a rut I stop playing ranked games for a bit and just random. Mixing it up reminds me how well designed the game is.
Whenever I feel this way, I read through Welcome to Dota, You Suck again to remind myself of the basics that I may be taking for granted.
It does to an extent. I'm 3.2K. Put me vs someone that is 2K and I will run circles around them. I will buy smoke and deward. They will not. I will place wards on high ground and possibly block camps. They will not.
So yes in a general sense mmr=knowlege.
Same with putting me vs someone that is 5K.
Let's assume you are the only person in the match whose MMR is out of balance, i.e. your true rating is higher than your current MMR. You will still be expected to lose around 40% of your matches due to circumstances outside of your control. A player on your team decides to feed, a disconnect happens, your carry makes a game losing mistake at the 50 minute mark, etc. etc.
So with a winrate of 60% (which is exceptional), you could still lose 5 matches in a row and might have just had bad variance.
The opposite is also true, you could be playing heroes that are just not strong in the meta right now and your winrate could be sub 50% due to that. I can definitely see someone attempting to only play hard carries (Medusa, Antimage, PA, etc.) having a VERY difficult time winning right now due to the current patch incentivizing early teamfighting so much.
And my solo rating is 4.5k and I never buy smoke. If you lose 800 MR it doesn't mean you know less all of a sudden. Unless you're 5k, maybe 6k you could know very little about builds/mechanics/whatever you want. I've seen a friend who hadn't played dota since WC3 sit down and outlane some dudes on a 2k account as timber mid with no items.
The truth is, game is hard. Getting better at it is hard. You need to know how you are getting better and why, or else you'll just sit where you are.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
I'm not quite sure what you are saying?
If you lose 800 MMR it means you lost... A lot. The how and why is usually case by case. Your friend that would beat a 2K I'm sure played a fair bit of OG Dota and while things have changed a lot of the fundamentals have remained.
But now it's like my hidden MMR shot through the roof or something, because now my teammates expect these extra activities from me regularly, but I've not practiced the timings, I still get a 25% participation on smoking, and my lane buddy still bitches about me not holding his hand while he solo-pushes against a duo-lane. And frankly, I don't have time to re-learn dota I prefer the dota I had been playing for 8 months without issue, but now I'm expected to play (I'm merely guessing here, I have no fucking clue) 3k MMR dota and my apathy kicks in hard. I don't mind the winning or losing, I just can't handle what I feel are rubber-banding expectations. This is to say nothing of the insane expectation I've recently been under, which is that I should have every Hero fucking MASTERED in order to play Single Draft or Random Draft, which has been a major point of pain for me lately. Okay, we're playing Single Draft. I see we need a mid, I have TA, I pick her. Does this mean I'm going to rock the house? No, I'm shit with her, but we need a mid, and I want to learn TA. This is unacceptable to everyone I play with nowadays. They see me try to attack someone from too far away when I'm hidden, and it's all "noob TA" and "TA uninstall pls".
Sorry, at this point I'm just bitching and it's not productive, I'll stop.
This is all true, but it doesn't take the sting out of losing a ton of MMR, especially since it can be so hard to win those points in the first place. Big swings happen, variance is a bigger bitch than most of you probably realize. I've played a lot of poker so I have a pretty intimate relationship with variance. The most consistent top-tier poker players in the world can have months or even years of break-even or losing play, despite the fact that 99% of the time they are making optimal decisions. Sometimes you get hit by a metric shit ton of bad luck that just doesn't let up. The most important aspect of improving is maximizing the metrics you CAN control.
In poker that means refining your decision making process so that you consistently make the most EV+ or optimal decision in any given situation.
In DOTA that means working on your last hits. Stop dying so much. Are you doing enough tower damage? These stats are all available on Dotabuff, it's not hard to find them. I'm of the opinion that 60% of any given players problems in dota can be solved by improving their last hits. It is SO EASY to spend 5 minutes working on your last hits in an empty lobby before you commit to playing a game. This goes for carries AND supports.
As a support, do you know how to pull? Seriously... do you know how to pull? It sounds so stupid, but there are basically THREE pulls that every support player should know, and you should be able to pull them off properly 90% of the time. If you get every last hit from an easy camp that equates to about 75 gold, that's a whole extra ward! If you get the last hits on the pull through, look at that, you are already halfway to boots. This is something you should be able to do every time, and if you aren't, you are leaving a ton of gold on the map.
The three pulls you should be intimately familiar with:
1. Radiant Easy camp pull through into medium camp. This one is easy, and has the largest margin for error. All you need is a tango to cut down a tree.
2. Dire Hard Camp pull. It blows my mind how many players don't use this pull, and it's just as easy as pulling the easy camp into lane. Eat a tree to make a path, aggro the creeps @ :23 or :53 is nice because the camp stacks too! Wow! efficiency! ) then pull straight up into the lane. Watching pro games lately they use this pull almost exclusively over the easy camp pull through, it is nearly impossible to mess up.
3. Dire Easy Camp pull through into hard camp: This is the tricky one, but it isn't so bad after a bit of practice (Keyword PRACTICE). Pull the easy camp, then pull the hard camp into the easy camp. The tricky part here is that the trip from the hard camp to the easy camp is long, so it's easy to accidentally pull the hard camp too early or too late. The trick here: aggro the hard camp when the easy camp has ~400 HP left. You might have to do some fast math. I consider this a 'greedy' pull since it has more potential to fail. You are basically saying "I want the gold/XP from the easy camp AND the hard camp", and most of the time it's probably smarter to only pull the hard camp (pull #2!) since it's nearly impossible to fuck up. If you mess up the pull through, the creep wave will push and that can sometimes cost your hard carry as many as four whole creep waves of last hits. It's a big deal.
Inexperienced support players have a terrible habit. They always stack the easy camp before pulling it, regardless of being on Dire or Radiant, because they don't know how to do the pull through. Their intentions are good... They don't want to set up a double wave for their carry, and they know that a stacked easy camp will kill the whole wave. But this severely limits your options. What if you want to pull @:12, but you haven't stacked yet? The creep wave could be in a really dangerous place for your carry, and it's costing him last hits. But you have to wait a whole fourty seconds to stack the camp, THEN another twenty to finally pull the wave. Good lord you just wasted a whole god damn minute, and your carry picked Spectre into a Windranger +1 lane so he can't even touch the creep wave unless it's in perfect position. Worse still; taking the time to stack THEN pull is time spent away from your carry, he is being peppered by windranger arrows and you aren't there to do your job zoning. All of this could have been avoided by using a better pull.
Practice pulls! Get Last hits! It sounds dumb but are you really doing these things effectively? As an exercise: consider when certain pulls are stronger than others. When would pulling the dire hard camp be inferior to pulling through/stacking the easy camp? How does the enemy lane factor in? How should you approach these things if the enemy Mid isn't on the map?
I like to practice this stuff as crystal maiden in an empty lobby, because she is sooooo slow. You have to be really crisp with your timings, especially the dire pull through. Her auto-attack is garbage (37 DMG wtf!), so it helps you get better at last hits. But this is the stuff that gets you more dollars, gets more dollars on your carry, and helps you win lanes. And you can practice it for 5 minutes before you play risk and stress free! Why wait till you're in the middle of a ranked game to mess it all up?
RANT OVER.
1) Sometimes you need to be in lane helping your carry, regardless of which way the lane is pushing
2) If the enemy lane is pushing into your tower already, for the love of god don't pull. You have what you want anyways, and the only effects are
----you get some amount of gold (maybe),
----you risk dying because the enemy lane will notice, and has time to come kill you.
----your carry takes a ton of damage for no reason
----your carry has a harder time last hitting under tower
3) if your lane is pushing into their tower, then pull if
----you don't think the tower damage you'll get is worth the exp given to the enemy
----having the lane push puts your carry in an unsafe position
eh, I like pulling the enemy creep wave past our t1 tower. Usually you get a friend creep wave to intercept them between the t1 and t2 and you have all the time in the world to last hit/deny while the enemy lane sits and twiddles their thumbs.
But like most things, it depends on allies/mmr/phase of the moon.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I think the meta change is a big part of my MMR plummet. Leaving aside the question of how good or bad my fundamentals are - except to say that they're undoubtedly better now than when I was ~1800, because I've actually been practicing them lately - I think the problem started basically bang on when 6.84 hit. I noticed that the patch was really fun but also seemed somehow harder to me. And I think it's the emphasis on early teamfight.
The thing is, I'd evolved a playstyle of getting shit done by myself in the early to mid game. Sure I'll tp to some of the early teamfights that seem winnable, but I began prioritising split push, aggressive jungle farming and ganking when I realised that my fellow low MMR players were wasting time looking for way too many fights. The thing is, now they're not wasting time, because that's what the meta is about.
So maybe I need to adapt and just get stuck in more.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Just play spirit breaker and never stop going ham.