[Megathread] DotA 2

[Hermanni]

I'd say the fastest way to climb solo ranked is to pick a high impact hero, and if your team fucks you with their picks be the good guy who repicks into appropriate support or semi-support. I wouldn't recommend carries that require reliable support (Sniper, Drow...) and definitely not junglers other than Chen/Eni/Ench. If your skill is way higher than that of other players then you should use it to win a lane.

I'd recommend good offlaner against weak carries, people don't generally instalock that role so you can go Phoenix/Timber/Nyx/BH/whatever and announce "solo mid or off" and potentially win that lane and/or put a dent in enemy carry while hoping at least one of the other players in mid/safe/jungle are capable of getting good farm with the space you create.

[Charge me Doctor]

I pick WD and win rankedz by getting shadow medallion. Ult rockz.
Ohhh, look, this blood seeker got his health back from assists, now he can destroy our wounded left-overs of team, nope, curse if maledict says "-900" it means you are dead.

[Deleted]

Personally, I'd say over 3/4 of games at low mmr are decided based on picks only, 'cause it doesn't really matter how bad you are, when all you need to do is push 1 button, Eclipse and a few Shukuchi's and their whole team is dead.

Disagree completely. You can win every game on low MMR if you play better. Saying it's over on picks is just wrong in my opinion. Put a guy like me in 2-3k MMR and I won't lose a single game unless my whole team leaves or purposely feed but even then I think I got a good chance of winning.

I agree with Hermanni- on a strong off laner. Timber just rapes any incompetent support. You can just run at them and they don't know what to do. I also pick BH when I don't get mid and really want to win. His presence alone wins you games. Got like 70% win with him I think.

[Lysah]

It's not the system but rather the game though. Some positions have more impact than others. I'm not sure that it is impossible to play support and get up your rating, I just think it will take longer. I'm not a support player myself so I don't know how to win as support in pubs but I assume good support players do. And it's pubs. You have to rely on yourself at lower levels. Dota 2 wasn't designed for pubs in mind only so when the teamwork factor gets taken out you have to adapt.

The system could find a way to reward supporting if it makes a difference. I'm sure you could analyze data between good support players and bad ones to see noticeable trends in overall team performance, i.e. good supports have teams with higher GPMs and XPMs, so that even if you lose a game as a support, you lose less rating if you did a "good job."

I don't know how difficult it would be, but all modern MMR systems seem inherently based on raw personal stats which means you have to be the leader of the team or you will not be as rewarded. Only 1 in 5 people gets to be the hero of a 5 man team so what does the other 80% of the community do?

Anyway I don't actually take solo ranked seriously at all, if you can't tell by randoming the first pick in ranked AP every game, and I don't think anyone else should, either. A huge portion of your MMR will simply be what your hidden MMR was before you played ranked, and out of the remaining factors the biggest one is going to come down to luck of the draw with teams. As long as solo rating is not truly solo it is meaningless.

[veiledy0]

I'd recommend good offlaner against weak carries, people don't generally instalock that role so you can go Phoenix/Timber/Nyx/BH/whatever and announce "solo mid or off" and potentially win that lane and/or put a dent in enemy carry while hoping at least one of the other players in mid/safe/jungle are capable of getting good farm with the space you create.

This is how I actually win more than half of my won games. More often than not I kill both of their easy laners as soon as I hit lvl 6, but then there's the "russian pudge mid" syndrome on my team, and my easy lane farmer is Trax with a quelling blade, per say. If I manage to TP in on every single engagement by 10th minute, and snowball hard enough off of it, we win. If I don't, we lose.

And then there's games where I go mid, rape their midder, start with a 9-0, but the overall score is still 11-10 in the opponents favor, 'cause my easy lane finds it too hard to resist farming under their tower.

Disagree completely. You can win every game on low MMR if you play better. Saying it's over on picks is just wrong in my opinion. Put a guy like me in 2-3k MMR and I won't lose a single game unless my whole team leaves or purposely feed but even then I think I got a good chance of winning.

It's not always over on picks. But even the games you win with awful picks is because their pick was even more awful, because, as someone already mentioned in the thread, everyone thinks they can carry their team to victory so we get 3 carries, but they have 4! Oh, and if my team's feeding was at least on purpose, I wouldn't even be mad.

[Drunkenvalley]

I'd say the fastest way to climb solo ranked is to pick a high impact hero, and if your team fucks you with their picks be the good guy who repicks into appropriate support or semi-support. I wouldn't recommend carries that require reliable support (Sniper, Drow...) and definitely not junglers other than Chen/Eni/Ench. If your skill is way higher than that of other players then you should use it to win a lane.

What heroes come to mind? I like picking Jugger/Luna with a side of Clock.

[Jester Joe]

I will say again, I seem to be the only enjoying the game. (From the looks of this thread as of late) Due to not giving a fuck about having a visible "rank"...

I don't even touch ranked, I'd rather not deal with any people acting like it's a life and death situation, I'm there to have fun. Maybe when I get more experience I'll try it though.

Sadly my experience is also that most people that play a lot of support don't really know how to make most out of their role.

Whenever someone else picks a support with me, I become very happy, and then I buy courier, and wait to see them buy wards.
Most the time, it plays out that they'll buy another courier 20 seconds later, or they'll buy boots and leave.

I pick WD and win rankedz by getting shadow medallion. Ult rockz.
Ohhh, look, this blood seeker got his health back from assists, now he can destroy our wounded left-overs of team, nope, curse if maledict says "-900" it means you are dead.

I thought Maledict goes by health missing at the end, so if you're healed up, it won't do any extra damage at the end?
"Damage is based on the difference between the HP values currently and when Maledict was cast. You can use burst heal such as Magic Wand charges to heal up and reduce damage from the next ticks."
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Witch_Doctor

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.

[Deleted]

What heroes come to mind? I like picking Jugger/Luna with a side of Clock.

Storm, TA, Slark, Puck, QoP are examples.

It's not always over on picks. But even the games you win with awful picks is because their pick was even more awful, because, as someone already mentioned in the thread, everyone thinks they can carry their team to victory so we get 3 carries, but they have 4! Oh, and if my team's feeding was at least on purpose, I wouldn't even be mad.

It's never*. Doesn't matter if your team got more awful heroes. You still win by just being better at very low MMR.

[Drunkenvalley]

They actually kind of do. The courier goes briefly out of stock when purchased at the start, if I recall right.

Storm, TA, Slark, Puck, QoP are examples.

Hmm. I'll have to give them more tries. I can't seem to get most of those right. My Puck in particular never seems to do damage, which makes me sad.

[veiledy0]

It's never*. Doesn't matter if your team got more awful heroes. You still win by just being better at very low MMR.

What happens if they have one player who's equally as good as I am, and we're both stuck at the same mmr, but his team just feeds less? Practically, it's the 2 of us praying to get less clueless teammates than the other one, and as soon as all heroes are picked, you can automatically tell who had the luck of that happening, because one of us is almost guaranteed to get a team consisting of Dusa, Drow, Antimage and a casual Pudge mid.

They actually kind of do. The courier goes briefly out of stock when purchased at the start, if I recall right.

Not really. There have actually been professional teams, mostly in the Chinese scene, known to play with 2 couriers, 1 for mid, 1 for the rest.

[Deleted]

What happens if they have one player who's equally as good as I am, and we're both stuck at the same mmr, but his team just feeds less? Practically, it's the 2 of us praying to get less clueless teammates than the other one, and as soon as all heroes are picked, you can automatically tell who had the luck of that happening, because one of us is almost guaranteed to get a team consisting of Dusa, Drow, Antimage and a casual Pudge mid.

That never happens. You will never ever have two identical players. The probability is zero.

[LiiLoSNK]

How to hit 5k mmr

1) Pick furion/timber every game
2) Tell the bad players on your team that they are good
3) Since you're OP, you'll likely win at least 3 out of 5 games
4) Slowly coast for weeks

Ridiculous heroes combined with irrational positivity can go a long way. Since the mmr brackets settled down, 5k is the new 4k so you're still gonna see bad players. Maybe a month ago 5k was good.

[veiledy0]

That never happens. You will never ever have two identical players. The probability is zero.

Your dragging out of the context never seized to amaze me in the past 3 or so years, but you get the general point. It doesn't even matter if those people picking 3 carries can play those heroes, as even then they'll just be taking each other's farm, and there's no way for either of them to surpass 400 gpm, and in "normal" games, I get that much on Crystal Maiden.

[Drunkenvalley]

Not really. There have actually been professional teams, mostly in the Chinese scene, known to play with 2 couriers, 1 for mid, 1 for the rest.

Err, what is this a response to? The courier does go out of stock for 10 seconds when purchased, that's just how the game works. It's not very consequential if you really want more couriers, but is convenient if you have two players trying to decide who buys what.

In my honest opinion? Buy wards first, they'll go out of stock anyway. Then see if courier's purchased.

[Deleted]

What heroes come to mind? I like picking Jugger/Luna with a side of Clock.

Mostly mid gankers such as those Ariadne mentioned. Pudge also works well when you learn to land them hooks. Though he was nerfed recently (in my opinion at least, the night/day duration hurt my favorite gank timings pretty hard), Nightstalker also destroys lower MMR games.
What I also love is going offlane with Viper. He's pretty hard to lane against if you make maximum of your orb-walk potential with poison attack. Get aghamim first after power treads for maximum awesomeness, the ulti range and cooldown with scepter is a joke.

I thought Maledict goes by health missing at the end, so if you're healed up, it won't do any extra damage at the end?
"Damage is based on the difference between the HP values currently and when Maledict was cast. You can use burst heal such as Magic Wand charges to heal up and reduce damage from the next ticks."
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Witch_Doctor

You understand it correctly, it takes the difference between HP when it was applied and the current health to calculate the big ticks. It's common misconception that even if you get healed to full, you will still get big damage.

[Deleted]

Your dragging out of the context never seized to amaze me in the past 3 or so years, but you get the general point. It doesn't even matter if those people picking 3 carries can play those heroes, as even then they'll just be taking each other's farm, and there's no way for either of them to surpass 400 gpm, and in "normal" games, I get that much on Crystal Maiden.

It doesn't matter at low MMR. People can't play Dota. My whole point was that doesn't matter what heroes you have, you still win by just being better. If you aren't better then of course you might lose. That was never the argument so I don't know why you bring that up. There not being enough farm on the map for 5 carries is a non-issue because people can't farm in the first place.

[Lysah]

Ridiculous heroes combined with irrational positivity can go a long way. Since the mmr brackets settled down, 5k is the new 4k so you're still gonna see bad players. Maybe a month ago 5k was good.

I'd love to see Valve with real numbers on this, I think people would be amazed to see just how few people there are above even 3k.

[Jester Joe]

You understand it correctly, it takes the difference between HP when it was applied and the current health to calculate the big ticks. It's common misconception that even if you get healed to full, you will still get big damage.

Alright because WD is one of the few heroes I consider myself decent at lol.

Also just got out of a game where a Bounty Hunter was telling me I was a bad CM because I was "wasting mana"...wat

[Mithfin]

They should really disable picking more carries once one was already picked in your team

Won't help. Didn't you see these aghs-rushing Lions, carry-shakers, sb-Maidens and so on?

[Lysah]

Is there something wrong with carry-shaker?