So I recently started playing role queue ranked, and I have no idea how I can get better, or whats the difference between lower and upper MMR players.
I used to play Starcraft, and I always knew in each league what was my problems, what went wrong in the game, and what I could do better in the next one.
In guardian level games I can see players stopping spirit breaker using charge of darkness with rod of atos in the blink of an eye, using tinker perfectly, starting and finishing every teamfight perfectly, and other plays that I don’t know how can get better. And still its only guardian, and can’t imagine what they do better in immortal.
But dota has so much more factors, like games can get decided during picking heroes, there are 4 other players in the team that I don’t always watch / know what they are doing. Is it even possible to judge a players skill correctly in dota?
In my current league (around guardian 2) 90% of the games are about one team absolutely destroying the other. I feel like whatever I do is pointless, because either the team is doing fine without me, or can’t do anything that will turn the game around, because of bad picks or that 1 or 2 players with 0-9-1 at 8 minutes.
I prefer to play soft / hard support. Not sure how much this sound like “everybody is bad except me”, but I’m totally open to the idea, that I’m just bad. But as I said, I have no idea what I’m doing wrong.
So I was wondering what could I do to get involved in better games. I don’t even dream of getting a high MMR (though it would be pleasing), I only want to play fun and close games where the team works as a team. My only guess / hope is that at higher levels games will get better.
Just attempted to watch one of the Undying games, 7263284766:
-2:00 - Why did you start with Wind Lace? It’s honestly one of the worst starting items for Undying because Undying is all about fighting early and establishing lane dominance. Wind Lace is 250 gold, almost half your starting gold, and gives you exactly 0 fighting power. An enemy that is usually weaker than you, can, with those 250 gold in actual fighting items, be stronger than you. Instead get some Blood Grenade action going on there.
Also, Sentries are really important in the offlane because you really want to pull your large if possible or block the enemy pulling small, so it’s always useful.
0:48 - The enemy just made the fatal mistake of letting your wave go into their tower. You’re Undying with +8 Strength already, you’re incredibly strong, you can literally bully them out of the lane now. Just wrap around those trees to your left and get them from behind if they want to farm the wave. Instead, you retreat some more. stand around a bit, let yourself get hit by techies, and don’t even try to run at him.
1:07 - The fuck dude! You have +24 Strength, you’re a literal raid boss, you have 1176 hp, the enemy has 318 and 406, you alone have literally 1.6 times as much HP as both of the enemies combined, with your Legion you have 2.7 times as much HP on your side as the enemy. RUN AT THEM! They should be doing literally nothing right now except running from you. But you run back and let yourself get hit some more. You’re even at 100% HP the whole time!
I’m sorry, I have to stop watching here. You’re completely unaware of your early strength as Undying, which is basically the whole concept of why the hero is any good. The next time when you play Undying, you should run at them and don’t stop until they are dead or cowering in fear under their tower. If you had one or two Blood Grenades as well. you could have easily gotten a double kill at 1:00 in and then with the lane so far back kept denying them everything. Really, just try running at them always, if you die, it’s fine, then you can learn why in this particular situation Undying was not a raid boss. But it should be your default at least 90% of the time.
Of course, this doesn’t always work as Undying, but like 80% of the time. If the enemy here would have kept the creeps at their tower and stood under the tower, then you wouldn’t have been able to do much. That’s why Undying is almost exclusively played in safe lane, since there the creeps are at your tower and the enemy is by default far from their tower, giving you lots of room to run them down. You also have very little mana and as soon as you used your Decays and don’t have mana for them anymore, you’re like a fish on land. Of course there are also some enemy heroes where the early game is not completely free, but Techies & SF are incredibly bad against you.
I expect the other Undying game to be similar since you really seem to be unaware of his strength, so I don’t think it makes sense to look at that.
Remember my other comment where I said that it’s harder to learn since heroes play so differently? That’s basically what I meant. You play like a Crystal Maiden but you are an Undying. Playing like a scared Crystal Maiden as an almighty Undying is one of the worst things you can do to that poor killing machine.
Thanks for the detailed analysis :) I don’t have much to say about the CM game. You are right about me not using undying as I should have, but I’ll try next time.
I watched few of BSJ-s coach videos, and thought that I’ll try windlace first, because of the mobility it provides, because supports move a lot. Maybe would have been good if I actually ran at them. I know he coaches pos5, and I played 4 here, but still wanted to try new things.
Yeah I mean Wind Lace is good, just not as a starting item. By choosing that item, you’re basically saying “I expect to need perfect positioning to survive this lane”, which is just not Undying. As a Crystal Maiden Wind Lace is much better, but you still only want it as a starting item if you don’t/can’t fight, since it’s 250 gold into only positioning, not your strength as a hero.
But as Undying you want to just run at people, while that is “running” as well, it’s more about area control. If you run at them and they run away, it doesn’t matter if you catch them or not, they’re not farming during that time, which is already a win for you.
You can add me on Steam if you want: https://steamcommunity.com/id/azzu