The Noob's Guide to Raising Your Solo Ranked MMR

The Noob's Guide to Raising Your Solo Ranked MMR

Introduction

Hello everyone, I'm TEL9021, also known as The Dork Seer. When I'm not reviewing video games on YouTube, I like to write DOTA 2 hero guides!


The idea for this particular guide came to me when I was browsing the DOTA 2 thread on reddit. I remember a topic where someone was asking how to raise his MMR, and people suggested playing certain "OP hero" picks like Soul Keeper or Viper, claiming that playing only those heroes raised their rank by 1000 or more.

Of course, any DOTA player who knows this game can see the glaring faults here. First of all, there is no OP hero, only heroes that are difficult for noobs to counterpick. Once you raise your MMR to the point where your opponents know how to defeat your hero, you're stuck. And since you know how to play only that "OP hero" and nothing else, your rank will drop again.


This guide focuses on simple and legit ways to get stuck out of low-ELO hell and raise your MMR without using any "easy" methods that give you a rank you don't deserve. It may be more work than spamming Lifestealer and lvl 1 jungling to hope for a win through AFK farm, but you'll actually grow in skill as a DOTA player, and feel all the better for it!

Let's jump right in, shall we?

Step 1: How Far Do You Wanna Go, Kid?

The first thing you want to do is determine how high you really want your MMR to be.

Of course, you'll be asking: "What do you mean? Don't we all want 5000+ MMR?"

Well, yeah, but do you believe you can actually get that high?
Are you willing to spend the time necessary for it?
Always remember that people like WagaGaming and Arteezy may be at the top of the Ranked Leaderboards, but they play DOTA professionally, and don't spend time working or being in school.

The key here is baby steps:

1)Set a small goal first, like +200 MMR from the level you are already.

If every win gives you +25 MMR, that's approximately 8 wins.

2)Determine if this level of play is hard enough.

Now that you reached you first goal, are you finding your opponents way tougher than you, or do you think you could easily beat them with a little more practice?

3)When ready, set the next goal.

Be it staying in the MMR zone you are in now or raising it further, keep in mind that you'll need more practice to raise your rank and patience to keep it high.


Another important thing:

Backing down is an option.

Don't force yourself to raise your MMR into levels you can't handle. Remember that you play DOTA for fun, not to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Step 2: Picking Your Core Heroes

Picking Your Core Heroes

From Valve's Free to Play movie.

Instead of picking a single hero to play Solo Ranked with, I suggest having a small pool of heroes that you feel comfortable with, and picking only from that pool when you're going ranked. A few tips regarding this:

Versatility wins wars.

While this isn't fool-proof, you should always prefer having a versatile hero pick in your Ranked Match hero pool. Why? Because you're not playing alone, and people can be huge idiots when it comes to calling lanes.

If I pick Puck, for instance, and call mid, there's always gonna be that one guy who picks Pudge or Invoker with no jungler in our team, forcing Puck to dual-lane, screwing up the lanes and the game before it even begins.
In this instance, if I had picked Mirana, the game would still be very winnable, as Mirana can also offlane AND work in a dual lane.

Prefer heroes that can also be played as supports.

You may think that it's better for your MMR when you play a hard carry hero and the outcome of a game depends more on you. While this is true, it leads to most Ranked Matchmaking teams being comprised of at least two hard carries and a Pudge. Is another melee carry or mid-only hero picked by you going to be a worthy addition to the team? I think not.

I know playing support is annoying, and it's true that you may very well lose a game eventually due to your carry being an idiot, but it's still better than picking yet another carry or solo mid hero and losing the game from the get go.

This is why you should prefer going support over going carry or mid, unless, of course, you are THAT damn good at playing solo mid, in which case, Hello Dendi! Yak pozhyvayete?

Never try a new hero (or crazy build) in a Ranked Match.

There's a time for experimenting, and it's called college unranked matches.

It may sound harsh to say this, but if you try playing a hero that you're even in the least bit unfamiliar with in Ranked, you're already in a disadvantage compared to a guy following the elite "I only pick Viper cause he is OP" strategy. This is because you are basing your victory on luck, not skill.

If you DO want to try a new hero so you can add him to your Ranked Match hero pool, you should train a lot beforehand, and I'll explain how to do so in the next chapter.

Fear The Roamer

(Thanks to commenter Xyrus for reminding me of this!)

A excellent way to change the tides of a DOTA 2 match in your favor is outnumbering your opponent in a fight. That's why there's the whole concept of ganking: You're in a 2v2 lane, but then the opposing mid ganks you, and suddenly you're fighting 2v3.
If the gank succeeds, the lane ganked will most likely be won, but if it fails, the core mid hero lost tons of farm, and possibly lost his lane against the opposing mid hero who was free-farming.

Now, what if there was a way for you to ensure winning lanes without having to force core heroes to stop farming? Well, there is, and it's playing the role of a Roaming Support.

What does a roaming support do? Instead of staying in a single lane, the roaming support constantly switches lanes, and provides lane control with fast and well-timed ganks, or simply harassing opponents out of their lanes.
If it works, all your core heroes will score kills against the opposition and win their lanes. If it doesn't, you will be severely underfarmed, but at least you're not a core hero.

In order to make the Roaming Support role work for you, you need the following:

- A hero that is entirely self-sustainable (i.e. never needs to go to the fountain to heal)
- Another hero on your team able to solo a lane when you're helping other lanes.
- Good team communication: Don't expect your allies to see you ganking, draw on the minimap, ping, or type "on my way bot/top/mid" to alert them.

A few notable examples of heroes that make really good roaming supports are:

Mirana, Nature's Prophet, Nyx Assassin, Alchemist, Crystal Maiden, Wraith King.


My winrate as a roaming support Mirana is pretty good!

Step 3: Training Heroes For Ranked Matches

Here's the method I use to train heroes to add to my Ranked hero pool.

Stage A: Lab Time

If a hero you want to add to your Ranked hero pool is one you've never played before, you'll begin at this stage. Lab Time is basically just offline practice with a hero, either with or without bots.

You may scoff at this, thinking it is unnecessary, but it really helps you to learn the basics about a hero and how he plays, and you can disconnect anytime you want, instead of being stuck in a losing online match for 40+ minutes being called a noob because you are learning a new hero.

Lab Time isn't really necessary for easier-to-play support heroes, such as, say, Tidehunter or Lich, but helps a ton if you're learing heroes with really hard micromanagement (like Chen) or tricky lvl 1 junglers (best example here is Lycanthrope).

For training with Blink Dagger users and initiators such as Enigma, Batrider, Invoker, and Earth Spirit, a really useful tool is -wtf mode training. To do this, start a local lobby with cheats enabled, then type -wtf in all-chat when the game begins. Your abilities will now cost no mana and have 0 cooldown, so you can freely learn your combos.

Stage B: Unranked Games

Now you've learned the basics about your hero, you're ready to test him in a online match. BUT NOT IN A RANKED MATCH YET. Even Unfair difficulty bots are deceptively easy opponents compared to human enemies, and when you switch to playing Ranked immediately after Lab Time, this will cause you to lose games and MMR.

The solution? Play a few simple unranked pub games, so you can test your metal against humans, but not suffer an MMR loss for any mistakes or bad plays leading to a loss.

The number of unranked games you play before moving on to ranked matches is not set in stone and is entirely up to you. If you are managing to correctly use your items and abilities, and overall feel that you're actively helping your team win, then that hero is ready for Ranked.

Stage C: Ranked Games

Finally you made it to Ranked Matches! Now this hero is part of your Ranked hero pool and can be picked by you in any game. Nothing more to say here, go get 'em!

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Pro Tip #1: Just because a hero made it to stage C doesn't mean you won't still benefit from a bot match or two. Training even the simplest skills like proper last-hitting is very important to fully understand a hero.

Pro Tip #2: There is such a thing as knowing too many heroes. Try to keep your Ranked hero pool at less than 10 heroes, so you can reliably train every single one occasionally. Some players like Mushi like being a Jack-of-all-trades player, knowing how to play nearly every single hero well, but I personally prefer being the best at playing 10 heroes than being good at playing 30.

Step 4: In-Game Communication

Since you're playing Solo Ranked, you're alone with four other players. However, all five of you are going to be a team for the next forty-odd minutes, and you're going to have to cooperate if you want to win. That's why you need to be vocal and use the chat to communicate from the very beginning of the match (i.e. the pick phase).
Talking to your teammates is essential to winning the game, be it deciding a strategy, whether to fight Roshan, attacking, defending, or anything else. Teams that don't communicate well will lose the match even when they're completely outdrafting their enemies.

Possible Problem #1: "Entire team is Russian!"

You will often come across teams that will speak a foreign language and refuse to use English at all. This hinders communication somewhat, but not entirely. Pings, drawing on the minimap and chat wheel commands are still very capable of getting a message across.
( And if worse comes to worst, you can always spam "cyka" )

Possible Problem #2: "Entire team is noobs!"

You will also often come across players who will be playing badly. For whatever reason this happens, remember that a player you deem a "noob" has roughly the same MMR as you.
The answer to this problem is NOT CURSING THEM. If a player is repeatedly dying, it's much better to say:

"Crystal Maiden, you should stay back in teamfights"
rather than:
"maiden stop feed omg"

Try to be as polite and clear as possible when chatting to teammates. It really helps your team maintain a winner's mentality.

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Pro Tip #1: Bind chat wheel commands to keys. Using the chat wheel can be annoying sometimes, so you can just assign a button to something you want to say quickly. I have bound Missing Top/Mid/Bottom to keys Num1/Num2/Num3 on the number pad.
This allows me to instantly call "Miss!" for lanes I'm not even currently in.

Pro Tip #2: Learn how to read Russian. I'm not joking. It's saved my life in games, because most of the time people are just using Russian characters to type things like " Sniper mid", and you can easily decode this if you can read basic Russian.

Step 5: In-Game Strategy and Tips

In-game there really is only one rule: Play To Win. No fooling around, no picking any heroes just because, no giving up at the first lost teamfight or bad play. Here's a few tips regarding this:

When and What to Pick

First of all, during the pick phase, you need to be paying attention to what gets picked, both by your team and your enemies. This will allow you to spot a weakness in the enemy lineup that you can exploit ( i.e. Opposing team picks Storm Spirit and Windranger, a great counterpick is Bloodseeker ) or pick a hero that combos well with existing picks. ( i.e. Your team saw your Bloodseeker pick and picked Invoker and Ancient Apparition, thus creating a powerful Global Meltdown strategy. )

Concerning the time during the countdown to actually pick a hero, you should follow these guidelines:

- If you want to play carry, jungle, solo hard or mid, please call it beforehand.
- Don't insta-pick a hard carry: Enemies will hard-counter you.
- Supports should not be picked late, to ensure your team has a carry hero.


What if someone ignores your call and picks another solo/carry/jungler hero? Well, as I said before, people can be huge idiots. Judge the versatility of the conflicting heroes and see if you can't make a deal.

Example: You call jungle and pick Ursa. Teammate ignores your call and picks Enchantress. While Ursa doesn't need to always lvl 1 jungle, Enchantress really struggles without jungle creeps since she is a Summoner-Type jungler.

Solution: Enchantress goes to jungle, Ursa goes to the safe lane.

You better ward, b*tch.

In Ranked, you will never win a game without someone buying support items. Animal Courier + Observer Wards at the very least need to be bought before your team leaves the fountain. I know I'm stating the bloody obvious here, but it's maddening how many Ranked matches I've played where even this basic rule isn't followed.

Furthermore, if the enemy team has invisible heroes, fill the map with Sentry Wards! It's everyone's duty, not only the supports', to buy vision items to counter these heroes before they ever get any farm.

If your supports are not buying wards and giving you lame excuses for not doing so like "I'm farming a Mekansm" or "It's 5:06 and I've already died 4 times" then man up and buy those items yourself. You'll lose farm, yes, but not the game.

Speaking of Mekansm, it and other team aura items such as Drum of Endurance and Pipe of Insight need to be bought eventually by someone. Communicate with your team and decide who buys what item as soon as possible.

Winning the early game is crucial.

Fun fact: People give up easily. I'm sure you've played a lot of games where once you lost the first teamfight of the game due to a bad play, someone on your team typed "gg ff pls" in All-Chat, and stopped trying to play well from then on.

This is something you can capitalize on in Solo Ranked matches: Since you'll probably be queued against other solo players, they'll be way more likely to believe that "their entire team is noobs" if they have a bad start.

There are several things you can do to ensure winning the early game, including these:

- Pick heroes that have a high impact on the game at level 6 or below (like Visage)
- Ensure that your mid player has rune control and/or gank mid lane
- Call miss for all lanes, not only yours, and ping if you detect incoming ganks
- Use a Town Portal Scroll to save an ally who is getting ganked
- Use Smoke of Deceit to gank the enemy jungler before minute 6

Stow It, Don't Throw It

Even if you don't manage to win the early game, never give up! DOTA is a game of comebacks: Sometimes you can turn even the toughest situations around.

The exact opposite can happen as well: It is remarkably easy to lose a game you're winning (i.e. throw it) if you're not careful.

How can you ensure a victory? Simply put, you can't. What you can do, though, is use strategy and a bit of in-game knowledge to help yourself out of a difficult situation (or stop you from throwing a game). Here's a few tips conecrning this:

When Winning:

- Check your team's late game potential. If you're stomping with a Slark carry, you should end the match ASAP before the enemy Spectre farms up.
- Continue to place Observer Wards, and do so aggresively. (i.e. ward the enemy jungle)
- If facing invisible heroes, buy multiple Gem of True Sights and leave them in base.
- If playing support, don't forget to finish your support items first.
- Don't stand outside the enemy base forever! Consider killing Roshan or farming the enemy jungle.

When Losing:

- First of all, detect this early! It's too late when you're losing 0 - 20 in kills!
- If you are winning your lane, gank lanes in trouble.
- Place Observer Wards inside your jungle so you can farm slightly safer.
- If no lanes were won, consider going as four to create space for your carry to farm.
- If the problem is one specific hero (like Slark), counter him (in this case, with any Silence spell and/or burst damage). In teamfights, try to single him out and 5v1 him.
- If you have no late-game potential, go 5v5 doto and hope for a clutch teamfight win.
- 5-man Smoke of Deceit ganks inside the enemy jungle can be very useful for your team.

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That's it for the main part of the guide! Now for some extra stuff you can do that isn't actively playing DOTA!

Step 6: Stuff You Can Do Outside of DOTA

Here's some other things you can do (that aren't actively playing DOTA) that help increase your MMR.

Is Your Body Ready For Ranked?

Being in an unfit condition when going Ranked will cause you to lose matches like it's going out of style. Notable examples include:

- Feeling tired or sleepy, or being drunk (this has a massively negative impact on reflexes)
- Being angry or stressed (especially if the anger is because you lost a previous game)

You should always check before going for a game that you feel ready to spend 40 or more minutes of your time in front of the PC. Don't just blindly select "Find Match" before consciously deciding that you are ready to play, and more importantly, ready to win.

Watch replays of your losses

The first step to facing your mistakes is actually figuring out what the hell went wrong. In most games I've played, there's usually a certain turning point (that can be found by using the gold and XP graphs as well) that decided the game.

Rewatching a teamfight that went wrong for your team multiple times will show you exactly what went wrong and how, and if you're to blame, congratulations! Now you'll never make that mistake again!
(Right?)

Watching your replays will also help you spot enemy hero builds and teamfight positioning, and you can steal their moves to use them against your enemies in the next game.

Watching replays of victories is also useful. If you spotted one of your allies doing really well with a certain hero, you may want to try that hero yourself! After all, you already have play-by-play footage to teach you how to build that hero.

Watch Pro Games*

Watching a couple professional games on twitch.tv will massively help you become a better player. When I began watching games (a little before TI3 is when I really started to do so), I noticed the casters were mentioning things that I had never heard of before (namely, certain hero combos, and the intricate jungle camp warding metagame.) This is also where I learned appropriate times for purchasing core items.

(*)ATTENTION: Just beacuse you saw a pro player successfully win with a weird build or high-skill hero, it doesn't mean you can do so instantly! Remember the stages leading up to Ranked: Lab Time -> Unranked Games -> Ranked Games.

Read tons of guides

"I know my enemy as I know myself!" - Dark Seer

Yes, reading Dotafire (and other) guides about any hero, not just your picks, improves your skill in DOTA. Simply having a general idea about every hero's abilities, possible core builds and gameplay will give you the ways to counter those heroes when you're against them.
(It's also a must if you ever want to learn Rubick.)

Also, if your English is up to speed, try writing a guide here yourself! Didn't think about this one, did you? Well, reader, grab your pen and paper keyboard and mouse and get started! It has been proven that the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to someone else.

You can also find plenty of useful stuff in general DOTA guides, which don't specify on building a single hero, but focus on the more general mechanics of the game. In fact, you are reading one of those guides right now! Well done!

Good Reads

Here are a couple guides from Dotafire (and other sites) which I think are very worth your time. Check 'em out!

Duncan Geere's How to learn a hero in two hours
Quickly learn the basics about any hero with this simple method!

Rudd's Draft Unpredictably - How Versatility Helps You Win
A very useful guide for learning which heroes are versatile.

NinjaMovesPro's How to be a Pro
An all-round, really well written, guide to becoming a better DOTA player. This guide is heavily based on it.

SkyStormSpectre's TP Scroll - What to know
A ridiculously detailed guide to TP scrolls. It's a must read.

Hamstertamer's Countering Common Pubstomp Heroes
A newer guide with useful tips on how to beat those "OP heroes".

Sando's Drafting and Team Strategy
Become a master of DOTA tactics with this guide to proper hero drafting!

BurningSera's How To Play Support
A complete (and funny) guide to playing supports. Very detailed.

Conclusion

That's it! This guide is definitely still a work in progress, as I attempt to add more stuff such as tips, photos, hidden links, and more good reads.

I'm also looking forward to your rants constructive criticism! Please tell me where you think I might have missed something so I can fix it! Probably!

To the reader who managed to survive reading this wall of text, may you get out of whatever MMR-zone is your personal ELO-hell and top the Ranked Leaderbords!

Guide by TEL9021 - DotaFire.com