Games26

Hi all. When ranked mm first came out I calibrated at 3.7k. I'm now 5.5k solo, though I've been hovering in and out of the leaderboards for the last week. I thought I might share some of my thoughts on gaining mmr that might be helpful/new to many of you. Everything here refers to solo queue, though most of it's also applicable to playing with friends.

There's been a lot of DotA related stuff to write about in recent times, but the conclusion of Starladder's reignited some foregone desires to share my perception of truth and insight. For anyone who is familiar with this monkey business, expect no difference, I do not know what being concise means. Welcome to Break the Metagame.

People will flame you (hopefully only occasionally)

That's part of the DotA experience, and especially so if you are new. It's inevitable but not as bad IMO as it used to be when there weren't matchmaking algorithms (WC3 DotA, where complete newbies could end up on teams with people who had been playing for years). The Valve matchmaking algorithms are actually pretty good so you should end up with people who, if not new, at least play at a similar level.

There are so many different factors to take into account here that it's really difficult to give a good answer here without more information. What hero/role are you playing, are you ahead or behind, what are the enemy heroes, etc?

Not necessarily. You need to have high impact on the game for the most part.

From my experience, there is a switching point in what you need to do for that to happen. That tends to rely on mechanics and farm.

Blink Dagger tends to be better and more flexible than Force Staff for initiation, but Force Staff is generally better for escaping since you don't get a cooldown on it by taking hero damage. It can also be easier to assemble a Force Staff since it's made of three different parts that you can gradually buy even inbetween deaths, while for the Blink Dagger you need to amass its full cost at once in order to complete the purchase. The intelligente and HP regeneration bonuses from the Force Staff can also be useful for certain heroes/situations, remember that extra intelligente provides a bigger mana pool as well as some extra damage if that's your hero's main attribute.

General Rules of Thumb

At Mid

• Bottle in < 2 minutes ==> need it by rune time
• TIP: general "Bottle Rush" build is Tangos + 3x Iron Branches, which puts you half way to Bottle with remaining gold (this won't make sense for every matchup and hero though)

Support

• Upgrade Flying Courier in < 2 minutes ==> for mid Bottle delivery / avoid courier sniping
• Town Portal Scroll  in < 4 minutes ==> this is one of my personal rules of thumb, basically just to help out against early roams

Carry

Farming Items

• Hand of Midas: (a) at most in < 8 min or so (for games that will be more late-game oriented / less early pressure), (b) ideally in 4-6 mins
• Battle Fury: (a) at most in < 15 min, (b) ideally in < 12 min or so

Note: @12 mins would put you around 360 GPM most likely

Death Prophet

With Death Prophet, a lot of the issues reside in the way her ult works:

It's good for pushing, but not so great for team fights

• DPS isn't necessarily great or focused

You only get the benefit of the heal after the spell ends

• A lot of players are calling for an ability to recall her ult and get the heal

They think Riki & Bloodseeker is a recipe for winning.

While other Brackets have "Support please", "I mid", etc. as common phrase during Hero Selection, for 500 MMR it's definitely "Pick Riki & Bloodseeker please! Pick Riki & Bloodseeker PLEASE!".

Forget about your kill stat - it's a terrible measure of your success as a support. If anything, look at your combined (kills + assists) / deaths. 3/5/10 is a decent score.

5k MMR is generally the minimal amount you'll see.

It gets kind of granular at that point though. There are some people that are really good at 1-2 heroes and spam them over and over. So on those heroes, they are basically "pro" level, while on another hero they may be the equivalent of a "4k" player.

Just some toughts about Leshrac against now common picks Faceless Void and Razor, keep in mind that this is more about Leshrac as a core (solo mid) and not as support, since support Leshrac dosent have the same damage output as core Leshrac and often lacks XP.

This is pure conjecture and probably not what the devs had in mind, but I think this is a cool headcanon/lore connection that isn't that much more spurious than the Bane/Darkterror connection:

After I've used my spells and the right-click contest has begun, what else do I do in a team fight as a carry?
Using Luna in the late game as an example, I typically do something like this:

1. Poke with Lucent Beam while I wait for initiation
2. When someone initiates, run in then Black King Bar and Manta Style and right click the closest non-tank until enemy creep wave is gone.
3. Use ultimate and keep right clicking while standing still.
4. If I get low, try to run away and most likely die anyway. If enemy tries to run, Lucent Beam them to stop them.

I guess my problem is that I feel like I need to do the most DPS so I can't position myself like a support and I die fairly quickly as a result even if I have more farm than the enemy carry. Should I back up earlier while I still have life to get away and Black King Bar is still on, and then come back when they switch targets?

Bonus question:

If we're defending T3 and a teammate gets drawn out of high ground, I should probably just let them die and try our best to defend 4v5. However, what if the rest of my team runs into that lost fight? Is it better to stay alive and try to defend 1v5 or get a couple of kills and hope our barracks can survive against 3 enemies?

 

Regarding Grand Finals being full Eastern

Besides the intense happiness and circlejerking fuelled by patriotism, there is recognition that the grand finals may not sport the same level of spectator entertainment compared to having Na'Vi or Alliance in it. Na'Vi and Alliance both have very large followings in the chinese scene - Dendi and Loda are extremely popular amongst the chinese and many players respect Alliance's superb map awareness and Na'Vi's unpredictable drafting. Nonetheless, both VG and NewBee are very well-respected in the chinese scene and it is a very anticipated matchup.