How to Avoid Being Brought Down by Your Team?

When I first did the ten ranked matches to determine my MMR, I was pleased with my placement at about 3200. I had always heard that anything below 3k is less than desirable, so I was pretty happy. However, I still find that at my level you still get absolutely terrible teammates in most games. Every now and then I get placed with 4 other people who have great communication and work together, but there is almost always a turd in the match somewhere.

For instance, I played as Death Prophet last night. Their team had a Nature's Prophet and a Queen of Pain, and I felt like DP was a solid counterpick against both of them. Well, I was right. I dominated mid, pushed or helped push every T1 and T2 tower, and was 7-0 by the later stages of the game. Idk the exact gpm, but I had a Bloodstone, Boots of Travel, and Mystic Staff at like 25 mins or something crazy. Basically I was playing a really great game and they couldn't do much against the push I was laying down. Unfortunately.. my team was really bad. We had a Shadow Shaman who refused to ward anything and bickered with the rest of the team constantly. He pretty much just ran up to towers and placed wards, then left. He made a good blink shackle here and there, but was mostly just a plague. Not to mention our best lategame hero was Juggernaut, and they had a fairly farmed Spectre.

We played great during the mid game and I made a ton of space for our people to farm, but my team just did not follow up at all.

So how do you avoid this in ranked Dota? My MMR has been in a downward spiral and is barely above 3000 right now. When I play support, my carries do stupid things like Alchemist solo offlane, and when I play carry it's a fight to get anyone to buy a courier or place a ward. I've even started just playing ezmode heroes like Viper over and over just to give myself a boost back to where I was, because this is miserable.

So what to do?

Play lobby games. That's what I do.

Play an extremly versatile hero, like Earth Spirit, Visage, Faceless Void or even Clockwerk for that matter.

I've tried that as well. Go-to heroes include Doom, Beastmaster, and Windranger. I'm just starting to think that once you get to a certain point, you can't really go upward anymore.

And I'm not one of those people who thinks the number is the important thing. If I could play in the 2k bracket but have decent teammates, that would be fine with me. I just want a team who communicates and doesn't get mad and "gg ff report team" every match.

No Mirana?

My almost failproof tactic is playing radiance naga siren.

Saturday i played a game with a friend and we wanted to lane together since if we do that the chances of us winning are very high. Sadly someone picked a ****ty jungle lifestealer, and someone else picked juggernaut, who is garbage in 90% of all pub games.
So i went into the offlane and my friend went into the support role.

IT SUCKED.
The lifestealer only single pulled, ****ing up the lane equilibrium while getting no farm, and once he did start to jungle after i told him, it turned out his only item was a glove of haste.
And ofcourse the juggernaut couldnt lasthit at all.

Fortunately their phantom assasin DC'ed and we could leave safely.


We search for a next game.
AGAIN THE JUGGERNAUT AND NAIX PLAYERS. AND THEY PICK THEM AGAIN.

So at this point i tell me friend. ITS KOTL NAGA TIME.
We went to the offlane and i farmed with riptide. And told the juggernaut TOUGH LUCK YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. WE WILL WIN THIS GAME BY OURSELVES.

Got my radiance only at around 18 minutes but it was still ok.

Got manta, travels, splitpushed like mad with the help of KOTL, got 6 slotted, decided after i had 10000 gold that my diffusal wasnt doing much so i sold it and bacame more of a **** so i got a second heart.


From there on i trapped them into their base and chipped down all their buildings.
I also went in HARD twice in the game to suicide and buyback and force multiple buybacks since i couldnt die unless i wanted and i had unlimited money.

Aghs refresher mid warlock. Make items, Ult, refresh, ult. take towers, take rax. Repeat.

It's a tricky one for sure, and there are no easy answers. A higher MMR is not guarantee that your team won't suck or fail to even do basic things. For example, I had a 5k+ mid Razor on my team recently and he was terrible, poor decision making, bad last hitting etc.

The best thing I can suggest is to pick flexible heroes like scaling supports, carries who can peak mid or late, etc. And TALK, the more you communicate and encourage, the better results you generally get - obviously it doesn't work with complete idiots, but a lot of players can be brought round to play for the team if they feel motivated to do so.

Thanks guys. I'm just going to keep playing flexible heroes who I'm decent with and see where that takes me.

Hopefully up :(