Seeking Insight

So, a while back I made the goal for myself to win 300 games and now that I am closing in on that goal, I've begun to wonder; what about ranked? The thing is: I'm not presently ready for the salt inducing experience of ranked matchmaking again. Rather, I decided that I will only attempt it again when I'm truly prepared. The question is: when will I be ready to try ranked again?

I'm not too good at self-assessments and the last time I thought I was ready for ranked, I was clearly wrong. So I figured I might as well seek the insight of the folks here at Dotafire. What things should I be able to do or what knowledge and abilities should I possess before diving into the tryhard trenches once again?

You will be ready to play ranked again once your performance in normal matches will constantly be satisfying. Also, confidence and comfort is important when you're playing ranked, make sure you trust yourself and your skills and always look to improve, whenever something goes wrong try to figure out how you could've played better and so on.

Also, to avoid toxicity just use the mute function, play your best and always "kill" your teammates with "kindness", as ppd of Evil Geniuses says.

What's worth mentioning is that you find better players in ranked, playing against better players than you will help you to improve faster.

You will always think you are unready.

So face the challenge head on...

With some help of course.

Go into a stack and play ranked, and see what it feels like there.

I voted for the 3rd option xD.

But seriously, as sofa said, you are always gonna think that you are unready. Just try it once or twice. Also, the mute advice by hades is golden. I tend to do that a lot when playing ranked.

I hardly ever mute in ranked, even when i'm getting raged at. Because in the midst of all the raging, there is almost always something to learn. But yeah, if you feel you really don't want to listen to ragers, or if you can't stay positive and not flame back, you should mute him.

Or just don't play ranked at all and be happy on the All Pick trenches :)

(But I agree 100% with Hades. Consider that there are people that play ranked with only 20 games under their belt. Ranked is just like the other modes, except your mmr is visible and not hidden. Just go there and do your thing as you would do in any other place. But if you want to feel more comfortable, consider picking the hero with which you have more experience, if he fits the picks)

The best time to play Ranked is once you've got the basics down, i.e. when you...:-

• can get 82/82 Last Hits from the 1st 20 Creep Waves with no Stats and no Items in a practice lobby on at least 1 Hero
• can Quad Stack every Neutral and Ancient Camp with ease
• know exactly how much Damage you can put out in a set amount of time in Teamfights/Ganks
• know the common ward spots
• etc.

As for not Feeding. This is all down to your decision making, map awareness and mechanical knowlege.

Improving your mechanical knowledge is easy, if you get owned by a certain Hero constantly, study that hero a little bit, is there a certain Range they can Initiate their combo from? How much damage do they do in 5 seconds? Does your Hero outperform theirs under certain conditions?

Improving map awareness is a little harder. Try watching a game that you've never seen before in-client (any game, doesn't matter which) and set the view to Player Perspective for any player in the game (it's usually better to pick the Solo Offlaner as they're the most likely to die). Mimic their actions as though you are playing that Hero, i.e. if they're Last Hitting, keep an eye on the Creeps and try to Right-Click whenever you think they should begin their Auto-Attack animation. While you're mimicking them, see if you can anticipate when something is going to happen and Click to move back if you think "your" Hero is about to get Ganked and die. See if you were right, if not, why did nothing happen? If you missed a potential Gank and "your" hero ended up Feeding, what warning signs did you not notice? How long were Heroes missing for, what was the last thing you saw them do? etc.

As for decision making...just play games and YOLO...you can always speculate over whether you should have done something, but you can usually tell when what you actually did was right or not.

**** mmr. Noone needs that ****.
Also if you played a lot of unranked you will not be happy with going back to ranked, because the skill difference will be big. For me the difference was so big I decided to drop ranked completely. (Unranked very high skill, ranked normal skill on dota buff)

Guess everyone should quit Ranked then, because that's impossible.

Yeah, these "basics" seem to me not basic at all :)

And also: for basics you have to get every single hit, but only know "common ward spots"?! What is this, to be coherent you should have said "know all the warding places and deward properly also", because I'm sick of people that ward and counter ward always on the same place :D