Dota 2 Discussion (~Boston Majors & Road to TI7~)

[Damned Registrations]

Old pl always felt like that to me. Once you hit level 16 your illusions will just autopush lanes for you, and probably can't be stopped by a single player unless you were specifically drafted against. But even if they do stop them, thats all they did, they earned no xp, and you are farming the whole time.

I'm gonna miss old bloodseeker the most though. 140% damage buff with no cooldown was disgustingly good, I could often push a lane and towers faster than the rest of my team combined. But now he's just a whore for zeus and prophet (who he already helps massively with vision on free kills). Ugh.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Naga was a better version of PL because her illusions were on-demand, were tankier, lasted longer and did more damage. She had better base stats (although not a comparable Agi gain). Plus, she has a gamebreaking ultimate.

Actually the new bloodseeker is disgustingly OP, and not just because of his damage amp. Blademail is ridiculous on him, it was always a good item for him but now it's really fucking hilarious.

All things considered I'm having a lot of fun this patch, games definitely feel more back and forth and it's not retarded like it was soon after 6.82 hit. Plus it has the added benefit of people not spamming Tinker Doom every game.

I think the Void nerfs were nowhere near enough (in fact I think they're pretty insignificant because the problem isn't just Chronosphere but the fact that Void can lane anywhere, mid, offlane whatever with godly base damage and 7 armour, on top of being able to kill anyone in the game with just treads mask of madness and being able to carry harder than any other carry in the game) and same for Razor (although Razor was hit a little harder especially cuz of the Mek cost increase).

Still a nice change of pace.

 

[curry]

Push strats are no longer viable because it's so easy to turtle up. If you're playing with a stack, I really recommend going with 2 ultra late game heroes and 3 defensive heroes (such as omni and tree). Just defend and get farmed.

Spectre and Medusa are just ridiculously good now.

 

[Pope Amole II]

This game can be such a fucking shit when you play it without a stack. So here's the game I've played just now, 10th minute:

My battle bane build (null->stick->phase->maelstrom->whatever; in terms of skills - max out 2 first, 1 point in nightmare, then just + and ulti). Not a lot of last hits (because of this Dazzle, lol - she's my friend and she's fucking horrible and just can't stop stealing the farm), but otherwise I'm demolishing them - first blood at the rune (Bloodcyka came there and decided to trade hits with the null+3 branches bane, didn't end good for him), 4 kills in the lane (it was a bristleback & nyx assassin lane - yeah, see where they are on the networth chart). Midas coming to me in the chick - like, the hell not when I'm balling?

But, obviously, I got a paraplegic Clinkz & Weaver who, instead of farming their core items, just started to "gank" (i.e, feed) from this moment. So we had a 30 min linkens weaver (without anything else) and 25 minutes orchid clinkz (also with nothing). Whereas bloodcyka fed on their builds and was gaining slots rapidly. And I... Well, this bane build reaches stops being so pawning after 20 minutes or so (hence the midas - so I can leave farm to main carries while still having some item progression) and, in every teamfight, I was their target number one. Everything, everything was fired at me. Or we just had shitty teamfights because those farmless dumbfucks were always trying to gank as if they're leading the game. Dipshits.

Edit: and I've watched a little bit more of replay - it was another one of those dumbfuck clinkz who don't level up their ulti. Why am I always getting paired with those?

 

[Malakal]

Two support safe lane mate. Even if you tried for a carry bane or whatever at least have the decency of going offlane. This way you can also keep in check enemy carries.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Two support safe lane mate. Even if you tried for a carry bane or whatever at least have the decency of going offlane. This way you can also keep in check enemy carries.

Sound advice, mate. The only problem is, I was already standing in the offlane and those two fucks on bottom of net worth - they are the safe lane carry & support of the enemy team. And I've also done 2 kills on the bloodcyka at that point. So I'm afraid you'll have to invent another reason to justify why it's all my fault.

 

[Malakal]

Two support safe lane mate. Even if you tried for a carry bane or whatever at least have the decency of going offlane. This way you can also keep in check enemy carries.

Sound advice, mate. The only problem is, I was already standing in the offlane and those two fucks on bottom of net worth - they are the safe lane carry & support of the enemy team. And I've also done 2 kills on the bloodcyka at that point. So I'm afraid you'll have to invent another reason to justify why it's all my fault.

I thought you went safe lane since on the screen you are there. But if you went offlane then yeah, you did what you could have done.

 

[Malakal]

Oh right you were dire, sorry, my bad.

 

[Coriolanus]

Check out what I've found. This guy is the highest-ranked US player, so he probably knows what he's talking about:

http://www.dota2.com/leaderboards/#americas

http://www.playdota.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1424646

===


Wonderful day, isn't it? Have a seat.


I want you to read this VERY carefully, as what I'm about to type are the words of ^^DragonFist^^ himself. (Feel free to sticky this instead of infracting me p1louxxx or whoever else thank you)


Alot of people pass by here... make a thread like they own the place... talk about their troubles in RANKED matchmaking. Here's a few examples I'm sure you'll recognize or even relate with :

"My team is noob" (a classic, generally said by people whose english is their 7th language and are of ages 11-14 mentally)

"Peruvians should all be nuked!" (the white supremacist, usually a guy who favors the use of voice chat ingame to call out the most insignificant actions he will partake in)

"this guy is level 32 and im lvl 55 more battle point BOOSTERS! why is he in my game???? " (despite popular belief the person typing this is actually a human)

"my friend is 4.6k mmr and i know i play better than him" (in this particular case you have mr 3k with some fucked up concept of what dota is or at the very most a decent concept but abysmal execution who believes knowledge = skill)

"my team is all feeders and when i see other team, all very good teamwork ;O" (well this is just some display of low IQ as you have to completely ignore every game you win where your team has to showcase some form of teamwork and the enemy team has to not do so)

"if i play carry my support dont put wards or don't want to upgrade courier and feed, if i play mid i cant gank other lane cuz they all fed, when i play support my carry dont know how to cs and our mid lose". (if everythings crumbling around you every god damn game I think u got to be the problem at some point)

sometimes you get shit like this : http://puu.sh/9poMS/9a6e1f571b.png / http://puu.sh/9poO7/4e166d670e.png
the person behind the computer has to willingly pick necrophos once and omniknight 3 times before deciding to quit dota again after an unsuccessful venture into his 2.5k mmr bracket


So I've been sitting behind my computer screen laughing maniacally at the entertaining content you guys have provided and will surely continue to provide so I thought I'd give a little something back.

As of right now I'm sitting at 6716 mmr when I calibrated at 5600 in December. All these concerns you express have quite the simple solution you see... just gotta keep in mind two words.


Shut up.

Mute your team at loading screen, communication is the most overrated aspect about dota without a doubt. Don't type anything the whole game. Pick what you want to practice and play your game. Anyone who has below 4k mmr right now probably hasn't played dota in general for very long. You have life so much easier, improving in Dota 1 was such a nightmare, every player in your game had different skill levels, the most popular platforms had no form of matchmaking, tools were limited in regards to learning the game.
Now you have player perspectives of high mmr players through streams or replays, there's no excuse.


There's no magic trick to get good at the game, you play and watch dota for a couple of years, keep a steady balance between the two, if your mmr is still below 5k you're just not cut out for this type of game or you learn slower than others, nothing wrong with that. I don't give a shit what your mmr is until you have the audacity to blame anyone other than yourself.

Even in the case of a tide blinking in to 5 with ravage up and he casts anchor smash instead and you're sitting there wondering what the fuck is going on you need to remember that that's just a miniscule part of the entire game.
Every click you made is either efficient or inneficient, focus on what you did wrong because that's the only thing you can control. I go 9-1-18 and still lose? Wow my team really sucks!!! But at this mmr I get 4.3k allies and 5k enemies, why the fuck would I blame them.
I need to focus on my death, on why I did not get more kills, on why I only have 220 cs on storm at 36 minutes and not 300.

It's an attitude thing. I don't care about what your stance on MMR accuracy is but you have to wonder why every professional player has at least 5k mmr (exception of mason for throwing away 1k mmr due to nonchalantness).

I've heard every possible excuse in the book, your situation isn't special, I probably had your skill level in 2007, 2010 or maybe 2012 but you get through it with the right mindset, I can probably pass your mmr on a new account with my right hand only.

So basically, shut up.


Thank you.

===

 

[Damned Registrations]

In other words, your rank has nothing to do with your skill at playing the game, and everything to do with your skill at keeping your shithead team from tilting out. Wow, thats reassuring. Especially since no matter how high your rank gets, you'll always get paired with shitheads, so at no point is everyone in the game good at keeping their mouth shut so actual game skill comes into play.

 

[Psquit]

in other words, Row Row fight the powah

 

[polo]

Mute everyone and dont talk shit. Dota2 is a 1 player game, fuck your team, fuck the other team, fuck you, fuck everyone!
Great advise.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The only way you could really have proper ranking in a game as assymetrical as Dota would be to have human judges watching the games and determining who had what impact, made what kind of mistakes, etc. A computer has no way of knowing if a death was caused by exceptional play from the killer, poor play from the victim, or awful play from the ally of the victim who force staffed him into the enemy team. And not taking the actual events of the game into account at all is like measuring the value of a baseball player by his game winrate alone, while ignoirng his batting average.

 

[Ninjerk]

The only way you could really have proper ranking in a game as assymetrical as Dota would be to have human judges watching the games and determining who had what impact, made what kind of mistakes, etc. A computer has no way of knowing if a death was caused by exceptional play from the killer, poor play from the victim, or awful play from the ally of the victim who force staffed him into the enemy team. And not taking the actual events of the game into account at all is like measuring the value of a baseball player by his game winrate alone, while ignoirng his batting average.

If he wins more than anyone else regardless of what team he's on, it should tell you something. That said, pretty obviously MMR =/= skill but there seems to be a correlation (players who are skilled are rarely low MMR, players who have high MMR are not always skilled).

 

[Coriolanus]

In other words, your rank has nothing to do with your skill at playing the game, and everything to do with your skill at keeping your shithead team from tilting out. Wow, thats reassuring. Especially since no matter how high your rank gets, you'll always get paired with shitheads, so at no point is everyone in the game good at keeping their mouth shut so actual game skill comes into play.

I don't think that's what he's saying. "My team is bad/shitheads/noobs/russians, I can't carry/support them!" is a classic excuse of players who are stuck at their skill level and don't know how to improve further. Their ego gets ahead of them.

The right mentality is to think: "what did I do wrong?" and "what could *I* have done better?". This 7k rated guy may get a team of five 5k guys on the other side and four 4k's on his - a massive skill difference - yet he is still capable of winning his games with remarkable consistency. Clearly, it's achieved not by blaming your own team but rather by being good enough to win no matter what. A 7k player will completely run over a 5k player in 1v1 situation and will probably make 'big plays' vs. 5k's all throughout the game.

It's not even just DotA. It applies to any competitive pastime, really. If you want to get better at anything, you have to humble yourself to see your mistakes. I'm sure you know that already and I'm sorry if that sounded a bit patronizing.

His second point is that an average player who has played this game for any length of time (1-2 years?) should be able to carry himself up to 5k with relative ease. By that he means actually winning games at below 5k level and being able to hold his own vs. other legit 5k's, not abusing MMR by spamming Zeus or some such. It took me 3 or so years but I'm way past my prime anyway (I'm 26).

 

[Damned Registrations]

The problem is, it doesn't tell me the things I want it to. High MMR tells me that the player is probably polite and doesn't piss other players off much. I don't give a shit how polite my lane partner is, I want to know if he knows when it is a good idea to do a pull, when we can score kills, how to build his character, how to cs, etc.

Edit: It's pretty hard to focus on what *I* could have done better when one of my allies goes afk in the base until he disconnects 5 minutes in. Gee, if only I had gotten all my last hits, we could have won! MY BAD GUYS.

 

[Coriolanus]

The problem is, it doesn't tell me the things I want it to. High MMR tells me that the player is probably polite and doesn't piss other players off much. I don't give a shit how polite my lane partner is, I want to know if he knows when it is a good idea to do a pull, when we can score kills, how to build his character, how to cs, etc.

I don't think that's true. There are a LOT of bad-mannered, high-rated players (famous examples: ppd, moon, arteezy, fear, envy in the 'kwan; dendi, alwayswannafly in CIS etc.). Try playing in a high-ranked league, you'll get flamed to oblivion and probably kicked out for the slightest mistake if the 'known players' are in a bad mood. Truth is, they're just good enough to win despite handicapping themselves by being emotional + psychologically hurting themselves and their teammates. It still holds them back considerably. Politeness is an exception, not a rule.

What it does, however, is it focuses your attention on *yourself* and your own mistakes. It's a valid path for a 4k to attain 5k and above, and all that.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I just don't find accruing rank a worthwhile goal though, knowing it's correlated with things other than pure skill at the game itself. It's the same reason I don't play LoL or HoN, where having a larger hero pool obviously has an important influence on your rank. The fact that even without those things, you have to metagame your own team's morale to have the highest chance at winning... fuck that, that isn't why I play dota. I want my skill and knowledge of the game measured, accurately. If all you want to do is self flagellate over missing cs, you can do that in practice mode against bots.

 

[Coriolanus]

I just don't find accruing rank a worthwhile goal though, knowing it's correlated with things other than pure skill at the game itself. It's the same reason I don't play LoL or HoN, where having a larger hero pool obviously has an important influence on your rank. The fact that even without those things, you have to metagame your own team's morale to have the highest chance at winning... fuck that, that isn't why I play dota. I want my skill and knowledge of the game measured, accurately. If all you want to do is self flagellate over missing cs, you can do that in practice mode against bots.

What do you mean by 'pure skill'? DotA is a team game so being good at it does involve not sabotaging your own allies by telling them how fucking bad you think they are. It's not some convoluted 'metagame', I think - just being a decent human being. Even so, a lot of times there is little need for explicit communication - simple to complex things get done 'in sync' from having game knowledge and experience - from chaining disables to knowing how a support is supposed to rotate. The higher the person's rank, the more 'in sync' he (in general) will be with other higher ranked players. Not to deny the recent influx of 5k smurfs and bought accounts but those usually fall back in rank quite quickly. Like the Canadian guy said, even not saying anything at all is sufficient to get to the top of the ladder - and far, far superior to falling back into the temptation of a 'fuck you all' diatriabe.

Still, there is a lot of room for 'pure individual' skill. Outplaying your opponent, so to speak. From experience, a 4k should easily dominate a 3k in a 1v1 situation, ditto 5k v 4.5k or 6k v 5k - cs, controlling the lane, skill usage, harass etc. A 7k TA player can absolutely destroy a 5k Viper or Razor (despite those being considered hard counters to TA). It's not just the midlane - there are plenty of offlaners, carries and support specialists in the top 200 who got there by doing the right things, at the right times, better than their competition. You can try watching any of the popular pro streamers - Arteezy, Wagamama, 2xSing etc. and note that they rarely if ever lose their lanes and make good calls throughout. If that's not clearly indicative of them being better than their opponents at the game, I don't know what is.

In other words, improving your MMR in public games is mostly about improving your individual skill. When it comes to competitive DotA, then yes - everything changes. You need outstanding teamwork on top of outstanding individual teammates to get anywhere. I agree that if you want to compete at the highest level (for $$$) with nothing but your own skill involved, DotA is not the best choice.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you think lying through you teeth about how it's totally ok your team just lost a 3v1 (when they're supposed to be higher ranked than you, no less) is 'just being a decent human being' I wish you all the retarded teammates in the world. May they disconnect in 80% of your games.

 

[Coriolanus]

If you think lying through you teeth about how it's totally ok your team just lost a 3v1 (when they're supposed to be higher ranked than you, no less) is 'just being a decent human being' I wish you all the retarded teammates in the world. May they disconnect in 80% of your games.

Look at it this way. If you played tennis paired up with your (hypothetical) little sister against your friend and his sister, would you still get angry at the little kid for making a lot of mistakes and having to 'carry the game' on your shoulders (I play paired tennis with weaker partners a lot, and trust me the attitude thing is similar to DotA in many ways)? What's the mature way to act?

There will be people worse than you at things, and people far better at things as well. There's nothing you can do about it other than accept it as a fact and try to work on yourself while encouraging others to look up no matter how bad things may seem.

PS: similarly, anyone, even the best player, can have a bad game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Except this is more akin to playing tennis with your big brother vs your friend and his big brother, and your brother is chatting on his phone the whole time because he doesn't give a fuck and only plays to kill time.

This isn't a matter of less experienced players making amateur mistakes, it's a matter of players who give no fucks about the game throwing it because the part they enjoy is bopping creeps for the first 15 minutes so they can buy a dagon, score one kill, and pretend they're awesome. If I have to deal with players like that even at high ranks, and the rank itself is largely reflecting my willingness to chatwheel >It's okay, don't worry! when a teammate feeds for no reason at all, why should I care about rank either? Why shouldn't I be the asshole flaming his team and fucking around without trying to win? I'll be a lower rank, playing with exactly the same kind of people (the average player) with shorter queue times, and trading unsatisfying wins where I had to lick the boots of some retard who thinks his dagon sandking build carried the game for losses where I mocked him mercilessly while tossing him into the enemy team with Tiny.

Which do you prefer, telling a bad player he's carrying you so you can improve your chances of winning by ~20%, or telling him the truth and speeding up the almost certain loss when he tilts out and starts feeding couriers?

 

[Coriolanus]

Except this is more akin to playing tennis with your big brother vs your friend and his big brother, and your brother is chatting on his phone the whole time because he doesn't give a fuck and only plays to kill time.

This doesn't really apply to ranked games in 4.5-5.5k+ range, in my experience. 1 out of 10 games you'll get a troll or a hard thrower, perhaps. A really horrible player who bought his account. However, there's actually a *lower* likelihood of that person ending up on your team - 4 vs. 5 (since you're the 5th player on your own team, and presumably not a troll). The proverbial Zeus smurfs aren't that bad, actually. I play unranked a lot and even there, blatant trolls/game throwers are very, very rare. Bad players are still common, yes (and those still try hard, to the best of their ability, to win) - but as with trolls, the likelihood of a bad player being on the other team is higher than it is on yours.

The 'carrying your team on your shoulders' every game only really applies to the very best, those ranked 6k+. If you're good enough to be ranked this high, though, you can probably move on to 'higher level' DotA - beyond matchmaking - with ease (starting with inhouse leagues, finding a team etc.).

Which do you prefer, telling a bad player he's carrying you so you can improve your chances of winning by ~20%, or telling him the truth and speeding up the almost certain loss when he tilts out and starts feeding couriers?

Neither. If he's a bad player, there's nothing I can do about it. I try to win the game. If I lose, I try to analyze my mistakes and to perform better next game. This idea of gradual self-improvement is what makes DotA (and other sports) fun for me, in the first place.

I'm still a human being and I do rage, sometimes. I'm ashamed of it and I wish I were a nicer/calmer guy, but alas. Still, no excuse.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Actually, if you're the highest rank in your team, the likelyhood is that the worst player in the game is also on your team; to balance out your high rank. Say each team has 3 guys at 4k, you're at 6k, your other teammate is probably 3k or worse, while the enemy has 2 more guys at 4.5k. So your team is clearly more shit than the enemy team. This became pretty clear to me when I started recording how often people were disconnecting in my games- players on my team (excluding me obviously) were about twice as likely to disconnect at some point as those on the enemy team. That isn't fun, there's nothing you can do to play around it, and it's a really shitty 'reward' for trying to play seriously.

 

[Greatness]

If you're 6k then it makes sense that you'd get lower ranked teammates in order to balance the game out. There's only a small handful of 6k players in the entire world, how else do you expect to balance a game that they're in? Wait in queue for 12 hours for that one other 6k player in the same region to log on?

Besides dota is a game that's meant to played with friends. It's a team game, you can really only have so much fun in solo queue before things get frustrating. If you go into every game with 4 random teammates expecting them all to have the same mindset/experience/attitude as you then you'll be surely disappointed.