+1 great advice. As a trench player I have just started learning some of these things myself.
One thing you can't usually control is the other players.
But you can react to their bad decisions.
1. Pick support if nobody else does. Five carries usually lose.
2. Pick ranged if most of your team is melee and most enemies are ranged.
3. Always ask who's mid. Don't assume you will get it.
3. If you are winning your lane well and another lane is feeding, offer to swap lanes. In the reverse situation, you can ask for a swap or a gank, but don't expect a reply.
Questions:
What is your opinion of supports roaming to gank early, for instance Lion or Crystal Maiden?
What do you do when you start losing your lane and your team ignores you? Hang back and get exp but no gold? Change lanes and leech exp?
Great OP gives rise to interesting thread and discussion, thanks Havoc.
I am also a trench tier player, with what I can only describe as decent game knowledge and communication and what must be horrible decision making and mechanics.
I have typically relegated myself to support roles because as others have said, it often feels like if you dont support in trench tier, noone does (or worse, people will pick supps and then contest last hits claiming 'I just need my arcane then Im good".
I think carries in trench tier dont understand how big a difference it makes every time they only manage to get 2-3 last hits out of a creep wave that they have uncontested access to, same way a lot of supports dont understand the idea of not contesting farm from their no.1.
The other 2 big things I've noticed lower tier players seem to be oblivious to are:
1) Team composition matters. 4 hard carries being picked one after another is a common theme in this bracket. Even 5 hard supps is not unheard of. Horrible, innefective double melee lanes against strong ranged harassers often ensures lanes are lost within the first 3-5 minutes of a game.
2) Once a lineup has been finalised, most players in this bracket have no idea of timing windows. These thoughts are foreign to most trench tier players "with our current lineup we *need* to finish early" or "if we can get through the next 10-15 minutes without getting picked off repeatedely, we will still be able to go into mid/late in a good position even if we've got a tower disadvantage".
Being able to look at a matchup and determine who has which ideal timing windows and which team is likely to need to play offensively/passively in which phases of the game requires a fair amount of experience, but even if you do get it, trying to explain these concepts to people who have no idea what they are is usually fruitless.
if ur anywhere below 4k (i'd say 5k but for technical purposes and for some odd reason people consider 4000 to be the line between "trench" and "non-trench") i wouldn't bother supporting
learn 2-4 core heroes, practice your mechanics, train yourself to watch minimap, and 4000 MMR is going to be easy to attain.
i mean you just said it yourself: people in the trench tier don't know how to farm at all so why the fuck would you bother supporting them? makes 0 sense. just think about it and you'll come to the right conclusion.
One flipside to the above is if you want to pick a (4th or 5th) carry and farm, you will still more than likely be contesting with another heavily farm dependent core, or an auto-attacking support. There could be an argument for "if you can eek out some decent farm in these conditions, you will be that much better once you get a real support," but that can be a long road.
I guess the lower brackets can almost be put down to a "how well can you last hit?" minigame in a way, where the only solid way to improve your own play and by extension MMR is to work almost exclusively on your mechanics.
if ur anywhere below 4k (i'd say 5k but for technical purposes and for some odd reason people consider 4000 to be the line between "trench" and "non-trench") i wouldn't bother supporting
Every skill bracket is a trench if you're a higher level player. 5-6k would be trench for 6k+ players. Whether you actually are stuck in the trench or belong in the trench is another thing.
Yes, you should contest your allies' farm. That's essentially what I'm advocating. It sounds malicious but it's a great way to improve your last hitting and mechanics. I do the same thing in 4.5k+ games if I feel my carry sucks ass (gets QB as starting item instead of stout on melee carry, whines about "difficult lane," etc.)
Swiftending, a 6k player, put it nicely on Playdota Forums:
Original Post:
If I can't go up in MMR because supporting at these levels (2k/3k) is less effective due to these people, I'm not ok.
His response:
Then you should complain to icefrog, not me. Support being obsolete in the trench is the way this game works, the intricacies of smoke ganking, roaming, warding the proper spots, dewarding, efficiently pulling are all irrelevant in games when 1 good player can exploit the opposition so much that he can win purely by himself. This isn't my concern and you need to climb a higher MM rating to enjoy playing support (heh, not even then is it guaranteed), so I can't help here
If you want to improve then mechanics is easily the best thing to work on. I can guarantee you that after 4500~ rating, it's all about map awareness, efficiency, making good decisions, etc. which is MUCH harder to improve on, than simply last hitting/denying better. (Although of course there is always improvment possible in that area as well - it's just more "saturated" than the other things I just mentioned)
@frostychee i guess ur right, lol. But for all intents and purposes 2k/3k is used in this discussion. Trench is a relativistic term anyways.
I get what hael was trying to point out (i think), albeit i don't find it relevant to havoc's thread nor do i agree with his first post
Basically, people like to point fingers.
People like to put the blame on someone else to avoid responsibility.
Normal human characteristics, is it not?
It's just that it's gotten to the point where people start hammering each other with malicious insults (sometimes).
Which is fine (to me), but it's a different story when you have people expecting to abide/listen to your rule of thumb... especially when you're calling him/her a piece of shit.
Then you have people reporting left right and center, people get muted, people get angry that someone is muted, and they're more inclined to report you again. (I'm not saying I have a better solution, but I still see this as a likely potential problem).
As for the contradiction thing, I'm assuming he's talking about the people who say one thing, and then do the complete opposite.
i.e. Person A: stats don't matter, you're such a noob scrub
Person A: bro, you don't even have a 50% winrate and your stats are garbage
Person A: i'm not even good and i can do this with my eyes closed
Person A: i'm telling you what to do and how to play, "but i swear i'm not good and this is suppose to be super easy, you're just bad"
I'm being vague here, but I hope this is roughly what he was trying to say.
Havoc,
Not exactly accurate but very good guide for 2K-3K and 4K also MMR,the only problem is that you can not make players to read/behave as it should.They don't know the basics about lining,item builds (> No Battlefury on every single hero you play
> Midas only where viable) BKB is myth on carries,and most of the funniest things-finishing the game,people do not realize that,but that is the one of the main problems in the low MMR,after finishing one and two tier of towers players just go back and jungle-roam without clue what to do next.....
But,the Game is hard,i give up chasing MMR and enjoy the diversity of SD/RD,no more yelling,wonderment and ''try hard'' moments.
@Yikes No I am still mid 4K, I don't solo queue hardly ever and my party rating is comprised of games with 2/3/4/5K people so it's not really gonna get all that much better. It should sadden me but it doesn't, however at some point I will probably drop any kind of party gaming to solo queue solid for a week to see how high I can climb.
I do also agree that maybe having a couple cores you're profecient in would be the best idea. I will confirm that when trying to climb supporting can be one of the most frustrating roles to play and will probably cost you the most winrate wise so I wouldn't recommend this for anyone who is trying to climb.
Sadly a good example of what to play and how was from a game last night where my BT line went down towards the end and on DC I was 6-3, I wanted to carry but ended up doing some weird ass hybrid build http://dotabuff.com/matches/683941257 stuff similar to this is how you can squeeze wins when you have a PA mid and void and naga are free farming.
1. Pick what's best for your team and what you are most comfortable with, this will be heroes you have high impact with minimal collateral.
2. Pander to your teams need, does you playing a semi support NP or utility mirana really hurt you that much if you get a win?
3. Try and gravitate to someone in the game who is trying, if the mid has a like mindset and is trying to gank around, try and give him as much assistance as possible so he doesn't get discouraged and you can ensure kills for your team.
.....there are many small things that can have a big impact on a game if you keep them up in the similar way small mistakes can lead to a loss. A lot of times there is no "big throw" just small stupid decisions and miscommunications that end up getting people killled.
------------------------
There have been some interesting comments from people and I will take the time to read them thoroughly when I get the chance later on today
Also just as a small note, I can see a lot of people are getting way into this and doing a lot of "theory crafting" and getting really deep about the subject. My original post was not theory crafting but sound advice on what you can do to improve your game. This is not a "help me escape elo hell" post or even a quick fix, there is not quick fix and the only solution is hard work if you want to improve your game and become a better player.
If you want a higher rating this post isn't for you (just go buy an account) this is advice for people who want to make the most out of their bracket (2-3K) and want to really strive for improvement in their little world.
@Havoc:
Could you give some advice on improving positioning?
I generally die a lot and can't come out of a team fight alive. Which results in feeding enemy and being underleveled/underfarmed
I think it's because of bad positioning and decision making on my behalf
u reach 5k easily by not suiciding when u know your team can't win a fight. Supports like treant protector, dazzle are also pretty good for climbing mmr
Watch the minimap and pick heroes with reliable escapes (void/morphling/naga are good carries in that regard)
A while back I was asking a bunch of my 5k+ friends "how do you get better?" Their unanimous response was "idk dude." The only person who answered differently was wave who told me to pick wisp (sigh...no I'm not a wisp player xD)
If you're sub 4.5k and u ask me how to get better, I will just answer the same way. You need to learn the game through experience and mistakes. Avoid raging (I'm a hypocrite since I rage a lot) at teammates since you cannot affect the way they play, and if you can't help it just remember that you're far from playing perfectly yourself. Yes you are going to get shit teammates, sometimes several games in a row (statistically speaking that will happen the more games you play).
Havoc I was gonna ask you if you wanted to play eventually. I've been stuck in the 4500-4900 trench for 5 months now, but I'm changing the way I think and execute the game. Once I get 5k solo maybe we can play and whatnot, otherwise I have nothing to offer you that your other friends can't.
A thing I learned about positioning / being effective in teamfights as a support: Hang back, especcialy if you have a mobility-item like forcestaff or blink. Hang back, wait for the first hail of spells to rain down, then go in or just throw out yours and back off to wait for cooldowns even if you're low. Pay attention to which spells get used / who's close to you. You wanna be close enough to use your spells, but ideally far away enough so they can't kill you / tie you down. If you get blown up in the initiation, you have no chance to contribute which puts your team at a disadvantage. Even if you play big initiation heroes like ES or Tide it's most of the time smarter to hang back and wait for the enemy to position right / somebody else to go in so they clump up. Positioning wins teamfights and even games.
Also Havoc, I did add you and I'll ask you out for some coaching eventually, but you're playing most of the time, so I don't want to disturb you. Don't get creeped.
Thanks for the OP and topic, very interesting replies and advice. I'm a relatively new player, just played my 11th solo ranked game, got 2270 mmr. What's quite frustrating about dota though is the lack of statistics to analyse play, if it weren't for dotabuff plus and this forum i think i would be a considerably worse player.
For example, you can only see others MMR if they are on your freinds list, and the percentiles even from valve are so vague, it is hard to know how you are doing. (i originally come from world of tanks, dont know how many people are into it, but there is basically nothing statistics wise you can hide. You see damage per battle, wr, frags, per tank, per player, there is even a mod that lets you see the stats of all 30 players in the game. So that is why i find the lack of stats strange). That being said i don't think it is too big a deal, I just like competition as a good motivator.
Back on topic, a lot of people have said supporting gives you less wins at a lower bracket, but to me it seems the opposite. In comparison with my friends, the carries generally get less wr than those who play supports. My favourites are lich (no surprises there :D), venge, ogre magi, dazzle and jakiro, and these heroes tend to do quite well in pubs and the few i've played in ranked. My (rather inexperienced) theory is that you can generally rely on the carries on both teams being roughly equal ability combined. Therefore, if you can find and support the best carry on your team, better than the enemy supports their best carry, you create a kind of 2vs1 situation. At least that is what i've been trying to do and it seems to be moderately successful.
Also, regarding trilanes: I only saw one in my 11 ranked games. Dazzle, cm + lifesteal, against enemy duallane britsle and WDoctor. The trilane lost the laning phase due to bad coordination but a strong sf mid played very well mid-late game and carried hard.
They are virtually non-existant and when they do happen the lack of experience of both the trilaners, and the solo offlaner, tends to put them at a disadvantage to the dual lanes.
Although telling people to build mek and urn on supports is decent, aren't they sometimes more effective on carries or at least offlaners? OD/Razor/Viper/WR with mek seems to win games and Burning build Urn on a Spectre and proceeded to get a huge killing streak.
Getting a 30 minute Mekanism on CM is a waste as mekanism has its highest impact earlier on, if you are a solo support CM then one of the utility heroes should get it.
[size=+30][color=Crimson]Mekanism is no longer reserved for supports.[/color][/size]
Urn is used better on DOT heroes.
Edit: Urn has stat properties that some find helpful, I build urn on carries like Kunkka, CK, Sven etc. It can be used as much offensively as it can defensively.
Strength gain and mana regen is always beneficial.
Dire top lane lion had no clue what to do, just keep pulling the small camp leaving lycan alone, he couldn't get any last hits vs me and lich, but he played very safe and didn't die. We managed to kill lion a couple times and this should've led to a huge advantage there, which is a prime example of safe lane support not protecting the carry.
However our safe lane support was even worse! Aimlessly tried to gank mid multiple times, starts roaming through enemy jungle looking for lycan and lion, snags a kill here and there but he left void all alone vs tiny. Tiny's avalanche, throw combo pretty much annihilates void early, void ends up feeding tiny, is way behind, we never recover.
Basically if you are a support your number one freakin job should be win your lane. KISS- keep it simple stupid, stop trying to do fancy roaming and shit, it almost never works in pub matches where there is little cooridination, just harrass in lane and get your carry farm and you will win.
Hey badger! I really like your thread because it really helps me a lot. But i am conflicted about a problem: lets say i did very good on a match, but the enemy team got fed i start losing my impact. Practically my problen is that even if i am ahead the enemies re all kind of fed so in the end i can't do much vs 5.What can i do in this situation?
Yeah IDK. I had to buy wards and courier, but not upgrade. What a craptastic lineup that is. I picked drow first just for the record, and then when i hit accept after time ran out, no one else had picked. Then it was a grab bag for the handicapable. I'm sure 2.6k or 5k this silly stuff happens.
EDIT:
And I agree with all what havoc says. My problem is i haven't been playing support lately and I need to stick with what what I'm good at and not carry or offlaner.
Simple advice i can give you is to get better. Supports buy curier, wards and zone out enemy hero to provide free farm for your carry. Carries learn to last hit and dont run over whole map for 1 support kill, then staying there doing nothing while oponents carry is farming. And watch damn minimap or you'll die a lot and miss a lot of kills.
There is no shame in supporting in fact it saddens me I don't get to do it more as like I have said before the Mid and the supports have the most impact early game and really help to shape the outcome of the late.
Yea caveman, that's the game I was referring to. My point just was, you really can't rely on your team to pick a good team composition, so instead of relying on good team roles, focus on improving your individual skill level. You should be able to make an impact on the game no matter what role you play.
I mean...pa/ember vs slar/bm, I know you would never have that lane by choice.
Yeah exactly. Can't do much about picks. Hence the problem with "all pick".
I mean I've had in the past month where I only pick carries or mids, then after I've already picked it everyone after the balls 0:00 marker picks all carries. Forces my hand to attempt a "support" role and buy wards/courier/smoke mek/pipe/urn whatever it takes. Sometimes it pans out sometimes it doesn't.
I know everyone will flame me but I played League of Legends while I was off for a bit a few weeks ago and I most certainly like their "ALL PICK" scenario. You queue up picking what roles you want and what lanes you need like "jungle/support/tank/fighter/" so it pretty much eliminates the issues EVERYONE has on here. I really think valve could at least learn something over that so everyone has a higher quality match in all pick instead of a grab bag of shit heads picking 4 more carries after the 0:00 timer is out so its a mad dash for whatever floats their boat. If people could pre-pick what they wanted, wait in a queue then load the game well problem solved.
Either way yes getting into all pick (and now my addiction to it over CM/CD for over 2 years) has diminished my MMR rating greatly. But I say after 2 years of playing support I'm just really tired of it.
@SLEAVE
I did the same thing and it worked fine for me too but I did that before ranked matchmaking was introduced so I can't tell you how much I've climbed, right now 4.3k solo (rarely play alone) and 4.7k party (with friends that are below 4k)
The key is make sure you have disables. On our carry win they had a crapload of disables but we had a lane of tiny and slark, pretty strong lane, with a puck mid ganking. All strong disables. On the more balanced team we only had venge and dark seer's vacuum for disable vs highly mobile heroes in weaver and bloodseeker. We also didn't play that great but cards were stacked against us.
You guys need to calm down about your mmr and worry about how well you do. And I'm not talking about kda since some of you thinks a high kda makes you a good player. Stop complaining and listen to havoc. You guys are all going on about your shitty teamates well, you would be the shitty teamates of someone higher. And FYI, you can climb mmr by playing supports only, it just takes more than just outzoning the offlane. Even if you let your carry get the last hits, at 2k you should be able to carry with a support.
In short, stop blaming your teamates, take a look at yourself, be honest and improve.
What is matrice????
+1 great advice. As a trench player I have just started learning some of these things myself.
One thing you can't usually control is the other players.
But you can react to their bad decisions.
1. Pick support if nobody else does. Five carries usually lose.
2. Pick ranged if most of your team is melee and most enemies are ranged.
3. Always ask who's mid. Don't assume you will get it.
3. If you are winning your lane well and another lane is feeding, offer to swap lanes. In the reverse situation, you can ask for a swap or a gank, but don't expect a reply.
Questions:
What is your opinion of supports roaming to gank early, for instance Lion or Crystal Maiden?
What do you do when you start losing your lane and your team ignores you? Hang back and get exp but no gold? Change lanes and leech exp?
^ Lion needs to at least have both disables to have a successful gank
I'm betting 5 bucks that the players in the trench tier that try to do this won't be successful.
[Img]http://i.imgur.com/InpPfLC.jpg[/img]
btw havoc are you 5k+? i remember a few months ago you were 4k
Great OP gives rise to interesting thread and discussion, thanks Havoc.
I am also a trench tier player, with what I can only describe as decent game knowledge and communication and what must be horrible decision making and mechanics.
I have typically relegated myself to support roles because as others have said, it often feels like if you dont support in trench tier, noone does (or worse, people will pick supps and then contest last hits claiming 'I just need my arcane then Im good".
I think carries in trench tier dont understand how big a difference it makes every time they only manage to get 2-3 last hits out of a creep wave that they have uncontested access to, same way a lot of supports dont understand the idea of not contesting farm from their no.1.
The other 2 big things I've noticed lower tier players seem to be oblivious to are:
1) Team composition matters. 4 hard carries being picked one after another is a common theme in this bracket. Even 5 hard supps is not unheard of. Horrible, innefective double melee lanes against strong ranged harassers often ensures lanes are lost within the first 3-5 minutes of a game.
2) Once a lineup has been finalised, most players in this bracket have no idea of timing windows. These thoughts are foreign to most trench tier players "with our current lineup we *need* to finish early" or "if we can get through the next 10-15 minutes without getting picked off repeatedely, we will still be able to go into mid/late in a good position even if we've got a tower disadvantage".
Being able to look at a matchup and determine who has which ideal timing windows and which team is likely to need to play offensively/passively in which phases of the game requires a fair amount of experience, but even if you do get it, trying to explain these concepts to people who have no idea what they are is usually fruitless.
if ur anywhere below 4k (i'd say 5k but for technical purposes and for some odd reason people consider 4000 to be the line between "trench" and "non-trench") i wouldn't bother supporting
learn 2-4 core heroes, practice your mechanics, train yourself to watch minimap, and 4000 MMR is going to be easy to attain.
i mean you just said it yourself: people in the trench tier don't know how to farm at all so why the fuck would you bother supporting them? makes 0 sense. just think about it and you'll come to the right conclusion.
One flipside to the above is if you want to pick a (4th or 5th) carry and farm, you will still more than likely be contesting with another heavily farm dependent core, or an auto-attacking support. There could be an argument for "if you can eek out some decent farm in these conditions, you will be that much better once you get a real support," but that can be a long road.
I guess the lower brackets can almost be put down to a "how well can you last hit?" minigame in a way, where the only solid way to improve your own play and by extension MMR is to work almost exclusively on your mechanics.
if ur anywhere below 4k (i'd say 5k but for technical purposes and for some odd reason people consider 4000 to be the line between "trench" and "non-trench") i wouldn't bother supporting
Every skill bracket is a trench if you're a higher level player. 5-6k would be trench for 6k+ players. Whether you actually are stuck in the trench or belong in the trench is another thing.
Yes, you should contest your allies' farm. That's essentially what I'm advocating. It sounds malicious but it's a great way to improve your last hitting and mechanics. I do the same thing in 4.5k+ games if I feel my carry sucks ass (gets QB as starting item instead of stout on melee carry, whines about "difficult lane," etc.)
Swiftending, a 6k player, put it nicely on Playdota Forums:
Original Post:
If I can't go up in MMR because supporting at these levels (2k/3k) is less effective due to these people, I'm not ok.
His response:
Then you should complain to icefrog, not me. Support being obsolete in the trench is the way this game works, the intricacies of smoke ganking, roaming, warding the proper spots, dewarding, efficiently pulling are all irrelevant in games when 1 good player can exploit the opposition so much that he can win purely by himself. This isn't my concern and you need to climb a higher MM rating to enjoy playing support (heh, not even then is it guaranteed), so I can't help here
If you want to improve then mechanics is easily the best thing to work on. I can guarantee you that after 4500~ rating, it's all about map awareness, efficiency, making good decisions, etc. which is MUCH harder to improve on, than simply last hitting/denying better. (Although of course there is always improvment possible in that area as well - it's just more "saturated" than the other things I just mentioned)
@frostychee i guess ur right, lol. But for all intents and purposes 2k/3k is used in this discussion. Trench is a relativistic term anyways.
I get what hael was trying to point out (i think), albeit i don't find it relevant to havoc's thread nor do i agree with his first post
Basically, people like to point fingers.
People like to put the blame on someone else to avoid responsibility.
Normal human characteristics, is it not?
It's just that it's gotten to the point where people start hammering each other with malicious insults (sometimes).
Which is fine (to me), but it's a different story when you have people expecting to abide/listen to your rule of thumb... especially when you're calling him/her a piece of shit.
Then you have people reporting left right and center, people get muted, people get angry that someone is muted, and they're more inclined to report you again. (I'm not saying I have a better solution, but I still see this as a likely potential problem).
As for the contradiction thing, I'm assuming he's talking about the people who say one thing, and then do the complete opposite.
i.e. Person A: stats don't matter, you're such a noob scrub
Person A: bro, you don't even have a 50% winrate and your stats are garbage
Person A: i'm not even good and i can do this with my eyes closed
Person A: i'm telling you what to do and how to play, "but i swear i'm not good and this is suppose to be super easy, you're just bad"
I'm being vague here, but I hope this is roughly what he was trying to say.
Havoc,
Not exactly accurate but very good guide for 2K-3K and 4K also MMR,the only problem is that you can not make players to read/behave as it should.They don't know the basics about lining,item builds (> No Battlefury on every single hero you play
> Midas only where viable) BKB is myth on carries,and most of the funniest things-finishing the game,people do not realize that,but that is the one of the main problems in the low MMR,after finishing one and two tier of towers players just go back and jungle-roam without clue what to do next.....
But,the Game is hard,i give up chasing MMR and enjoy the diversity of SD/RD,no more yelling,wonderment and ''try hard'' moments.
GG.
@Yikes No I am still mid 4K, I don't solo queue hardly ever and my party rating is comprised of games with 2/3/4/5K people so it's not really gonna get all that much better. It should sadden me but it doesn't, however at some point I will probably drop any kind of party gaming to solo queue solid for a week to see how high I can climb.
I do also agree that maybe having a couple cores you're profecient in would be the best idea. I will confirm that when trying to climb supporting can be one of the most frustrating roles to play and will probably cost you the most winrate wise so I wouldn't recommend this for anyone who is trying to climb.
Sadly a good example of what to play and how was from a game last night where my BT line went down towards the end and on DC I was 6-3, I wanted to carry but ended up doing some weird ass hybrid build http://dotabuff.com/matches/683941257 stuff similar to this is how you can squeeze wins when you have a PA mid and void and naga are free farming.
1. Pick what's best for your team and what you are most comfortable with, this will be heroes you have high impact with minimal collateral.
2. Pander to your teams need, does you playing a semi support NP or utility mirana really hurt you that much if you get a win?
3. Try and gravitate to someone in the game who is trying, if the mid has a like mindset and is trying to gank around, try and give him as much assistance as possible so he doesn't get discouraged and you can ensure kills for your team.
.....there are many small things that can have a big impact on a game if you keep them up in the similar way small mistakes can lead to a loss. A lot of times there is no "big throw" just small stupid decisions and miscommunications that end up getting people killled.
------------------------
There have been some interesting comments from people and I will take the time to read them thoroughly when I get the chance later on today
Also just as a small note, I can see a lot of people are getting way into this and doing a lot of "theory crafting" and getting really deep about the subject. My original post was not theory crafting but sound advice on what you can do to improve your game. This is not a "help me escape elo hell" post or even a quick fix, there is not quick fix and the only solution is hard work if you want to improve your game and become a better player.
If you want a higher rating this post isn't for you (just go buy an account) this is advice for people who want to make the most out of their bracket (2-3K) and want to really strive for improvement in their little world.
@Havoc:
Could you give some advice on improving positioning?
I generally die a lot and can't come out of a team fight alive. Which results in feeding enemy and being underleveled/underfarmed
I think it's because of bad positioning and decision making on my behalf
Any criticism welcome
Which hero? Each require different levels of involvement and positioning.
u reach 5k easily by not suiciding when u know your team can't win a fight. Supports like treant protector, dazzle are also pretty good for climbing mmr
Watch the minimap and pick heroes with reliable escapes (void/morphling/naga are good carries in that regard)
A while back I was asking a bunch of my 5k+ friends "how do you get better?" Their unanimous response was "idk dude." The only person who answered differently was wave who told me to pick wisp (sigh...no I'm not a wisp player xD)
If you're sub 4.5k and u ask me how to get better, I will just answer the same way. You need to learn the game through experience and mistakes. Avoid raging (I'm a hypocrite since I rage a lot) at teammates since you cannot affect the way they play, and if you can't help it just remember that you're far from playing perfectly yourself. Yes you are going to get shit teammates, sometimes several games in a row (statistically speaking that will happen the more games you play).
Havoc I was gonna ask you if you wanted to play eventually. I've been stuck in the 4500-4900 trench for 5 months now, but I'm changing the way I think and execute the game. Once I get 5k solo maybe we can play and whatnot, otherwise I have nothing to offer you that your other friends can't.
Really good advice, thanks :)
A thing I learned about positioning / being effective in teamfights as a support: Hang back, especcialy if you have a mobility-item like forcestaff or blink. Hang back, wait for the first hail of spells to rain down, then go in or just throw out yours and back off to wait for cooldowns even if you're low. Pay attention to which spells get used / who's close to you. You wanna be close enough to use your spells, but ideally far away enough so they can't kill you / tie you down. If you get blown up in the initiation, you have no chance to contribute which puts your team at a disadvantage. Even if you play big initiation heroes like ES or Tide it's most of the time smarter to hang back and wait for the enemy to position right / somebody else to go in so they clump up. Positioning wins teamfights and even games.
Also Havoc, I did add you and I'll ask you out for some coaching eventually, but you're playing most of the time, so I don't want to disturb you. Don't get creeped.
Thanks for the OP and topic, very interesting replies and advice. I'm a relatively new player, just played my 11th solo ranked game, got 2270 mmr. What's quite frustrating about dota though is the lack of statistics to analyse play, if it weren't for dotabuff plus and this forum i think i would be a considerably worse player.
For example, you can only see others MMR if they are on your freinds list, and the percentiles even from valve are so vague, it is hard to know how you are doing. (i originally come from world of tanks, dont know how many people are into it, but there is basically nothing statistics wise you can hide. You see damage per battle, wr, frags, per tank, per player, there is even a mod that lets you see the stats of all 30 players in the game. So that is why i find the lack of stats strange). That being said i don't think it is too big a deal, I just like competition as a good motivator.
Back on topic, a lot of people have said supporting gives you less wins at a lower bracket, but to me it seems the opposite. In comparison with my friends, the carries generally get less wr than those who play supports. My favourites are lich (no surprises there :D), venge, ogre magi, dazzle and jakiro, and these heroes tend to do quite well in pubs and the few i've played in ranked. My (rather inexperienced) theory is that you can generally rely on the carries on both teams being roughly equal ability combined. Therefore, if you can find and support the best carry on your team, better than the enemy supports their best carry, you create a kind of 2vs1 situation. At least that is what i've been trying to do and it seems to be moderately successful.
Also, regarding trilanes: I only saw one in my 11 ranked games. Dazzle, cm + lifesteal, against enemy duallane britsle and WDoctor. The trilane lost the laning phase due to bad coordination but a strong sf mid played very well mid-late game and carried hard.
They are virtually non-existant and when they do happen the lack of experience of both the trilaners, and the solo offlaner, tends to put them at a disadvantage to the dual lanes.
Although telling people to build mek and urn on supports is decent, aren't they sometimes more effective on carries or at least offlaners? OD/Razor/Viper/WR with mek seems to win games and Burning build Urn on a Spectre and proceeded to get a huge killing streak.
@Yiran Last page I posted this.
Getting a 30 minute Mekanism on CM is a waste as mekanism has its highest impact earlier on, if you are a solo support CM then one of the utility heroes should get it.
[size=+30][color=Crimson]Mekanism is no longer reserved for supports.[/color][/size]
Urn is used better on DOT heroes.
Edit: Urn has stat properties that some find helpful, I build urn on carries like Kunkka, CK, Sven etc. It can be used as much offensively as it can defensively.
Strength gain and mana regen is always beneficial.
Here's another good example of shit support play.
http://dotabuff.com/matches/684417060
Dire top lane lion had no clue what to do, just keep pulling the small camp leaving lycan alone, he couldn't get any last hits vs me and lich, but he played very safe and didn't die. We managed to kill lion a couple times and this should've led to a huge advantage there, which is a prime example of safe lane support not protecting the carry.
However our safe lane support was even worse! Aimlessly tried to gank mid multiple times, starts roaming through enemy jungle looking for lycan and lion, snags a kill here and there but he left void all alone vs tiny. Tiny's avalanche, throw combo pretty much annihilates void early, void ends up feeding tiny, is way behind, we never recover.
Basically if you are a support your number one freakin job should be win your lane. KISS- keep it simple stupid, stop trying to do fancy roaming and shit, it almost never works in pub matches where there is little cooridination, just harrass in lane and get your carry farm and you will win.
Hey badger! I really like your thread because it really helps me a lot. But i am conflicted about a problem: lets say i did very good on a match, but the enemy team got fed i start losing my impact. Practically my problen is that even if i am ahead the enemies re all kind of fed so in the end i can't do much vs 5.What can i do in this situation?
@ Frostychee
This is the game u are talking about and I'm the poopy 2.6k player you mentioned lol:
http://dotabuff.com/matches/682735943
Yeah IDK. I had to buy wards and courier, but not upgrade. What a craptastic lineup that is. I picked drow first just for the record, and then when i hit accept after time ran out, no one else had picked. Then it was a grab bag for the handicapable. I'm sure 2.6k or 5k this silly stuff happens.
EDIT:
And I agree with all what havoc says. My problem is i haven't been playing support lately and I need to stick with what what I'm good at and not carry or offlaner.
Simple advice i can give you is to get better. Supports buy curier, wards and zone out enemy hero to provide free farm for your carry. Carries learn to last hit and dont run over whole map for 1 support kill, then staying there doing nothing while oponents carry is farming. And watch damn minimap or you'll die a lot and miss a lot of kills.
There is no shame in supporting in fact it saddens me I don't get to do it more as like I have said before the Mid and the supports have the most impact early game and really help to shape the outcome of the late.
Yea caveman, that's the game I was referring to. My point just was, you really can't rely on your team to pick a good team composition, so instead of relying on good team roles, focus on improving your individual skill level. You should be able to make an impact on the game no matter what role you play.
I mean...pa/ember vs slar/bm, I know you would never have that lane by choice.
1 more thing is missing: Save money for buyback (especially in late game).
@ Frosty
Yeah exactly. Can't do much about picks. Hence the problem with "all pick".
I mean I've had in the past month where I only pick carries or mids, then after I've already picked it everyone after the balls 0:00 marker picks all carries. Forces my hand to attempt a "support" role and buy wards/courier/smoke mek/pipe/urn whatever it takes. Sometimes it pans out sometimes it doesn't.
I know everyone will flame me but I played League of Legends while I was off for a bit a few weeks ago and I most certainly like their "ALL PICK" scenario. You queue up picking what roles you want and what lanes you need like "jungle/support/tank/fighter/" so it pretty much eliminates the issues EVERYONE has on here. I really think valve could at least learn something over that so everyone has a higher quality match in all pick instead of a grab bag of shit heads picking 4 more carries after the 0:00 timer is out so its a mad dash for whatever floats their boat. If people could pre-pick what they wanted, wait in a queue then load the game well problem solved.
Either way yes getting into all pick (and now my addiction to it over CM/CD for over 2 years) has diminished my MMR rating greatly. But I say after 2 years of playing support I'm just really tired of it.
@SLEAVE
I did the same thing and it worked fine for me too but I did that before ranked matchmaking was introduced so I can't tell you how much I've climbed, right now 4.3k solo (rarely play alone) and 4.7k party (with friends that are below 4k)
You can win with all carries and lose with plenty of supports and a theoretically good setup.
Carry win: http://dotabuff.com/matches/688101233
Support loss: http://dotabuff.com/matches/689476415
The key is make sure you have disables. On our carry win they had a crapload of disables but we had a lane of tiny and slark, pretty strong lane, with a puck mid ganking. All strong disables. On the more balanced team we only had venge and dark seer's vacuum for disable vs highly mobile heroes in weaver and bloodseeker. We also didn't play that great but cards were stacked against us.
You guys need to calm down about your mmr and worry about how well you do. And I'm not talking about kda since some of you thinks a high kda makes you a good player. Stop complaining and listen to havoc. You guys are all going on about your shitty teamates well, you would be the shitty teamates of someone higher. And FYI, you can climb mmr by playing supports only, it just takes more than just outzoning the offlane. Even if you let your carry get the last hits, at 2k you should be able to carry with a support.
In short, stop blaming your teamates, take a look at yourself, be honest and improve.
Havic cares about his mmr though.