How do I escape 1.6k?

3rd ranked now actually haha. Played 2 accidental ranked the other day.

Hooray finally someone to play with. Also, do you play midnight matches? Because in my zone morning is night for you. (I counted)

I stay up pretty late. I don't have school until mid/late septemberish so I don't need all that much sleep :p

Are you sure? I think its going to like 2AM or something. Wish im not 13 and have my own home D:

Well let's figure it out when it comes down to it. Just message me whenever you want to play a match and we can figure out the times. I mean, I can stay up til maybe 11:00PM and then there are those times I can;t/don't feel like sleeping :p

If your day is my night, then is my day your night? We can probably sort something out, I play with a friend who lives in America which is a 5 hour difference.

While you may not want to hear this (and most people don't) but unless you are ONLY playing support heroes it's not your teammates fault that you are stuck at 1.6k. The Swiftending/Juice experiment(as well as ones done by other people) pretty much showed us that if you are truly better than the people you play with you will have a high enough impact to ensure you win games.

As I said most people don't like hearing they are at the MMR they deserve, but in fact it should be reassuring and liberating to know that you are in control of your MMR level and not at the mercy of 4 random people you get paired up with.

I was originally calibrated at 3414 MMR and after a couple months I dropped to 3k and hung around there not going up or down more than 100 points. After watching the Swiftending experiment and taking some advice from the thread I quickly rose up to 3.6k and I'm now at 3.8k. So I've gone up a total of 800MMR from where I was at and I'm 400MMR higher than my calibration.

So my tips for you...

1) Watch pro-twitch streams and matches. I got significantly better after watching TI3/TI4. I was relatively new to DOTA when TI3 was going on and I never even knew about creep pulling in the safe lane nor had I ever seen a tri-lane before until I watched TI3.

2) The highest impact position is typically the mid. I found my best mid hero (which was Viper) and raised my self 400MMR in a couple of days and went on some long win streaks. Don't avoid supports if your team needs them but typically Mids, carries, and offlaners are going to have a much higher impact on the game than a support.

3) Don't over extend...People tend to chase a single kill like the game hinges on killing that one hero at that exact time. Of course a lot of the time it fails and their either don't get the kill or they end up getting the kill than dying to the enemies team carry etc... Get kills but make it a sure thing. Even if you are being denied farm there is no point in rushing into a group of creeps for a last hit if you end up dying. You now have less gold than before and you just fed the other team XP and gold and made the gap larger. Be patient.

4) Mute negative teammates and you yourself don't be negative. The guys that call GG after the first team fight or who are constantly ranking on your item/skill build are detrimental to your team and their attitude will most likely contribute to a loss. Remember the people you are playing with are your same MMR so most likely their game knowledge is about the same as yours.

5) Did I mention not to over-extend and be patient?

Let's do not forget that Juice had a lot more MMR and years o DotA and Dota 2 experience. MMR boosters basically do the same - use their huge skill and experience advantage to raise the MMR of an account rapidly. Most of those who want to raise their MMR, however, rarely deserve more than a thousand more MMR than they have and as such their way is long and frustrating.

Let's assume nearly quarter of games are won or lost without any chance to influence this - extremely bad picks(famous 5 core heroes), or intentional feeders on either of the team.

Then, let's assume another quarter is very likely to be won by one of the teams from the start - excessive lane feeding, net worth disadvantage result in general weakness of the team and only a player with a high skill advantage, like Juice can carry them.

Juice's winrate decreased as he progressed that IMO indicated there were less games left he could influence with his skill.

But unless you have huge skill advantage over the players you face in ranked currently, this system will need a LONG time to work.

Dunno why I have written this, maybe to emphasis you should not bother increasing your MMR when you feel your advantage is only slight. Of course, this isn't the only variable, friendliness, communication, psychology and behavior helps too.

When most players talk about raising their MMR and having bad teammates I get the impression they want to raise their MMR more than 100-300 points. I think people want to go up 500-1000 which is a noticeable difference in skill. Since I went from 3k to 3.8k I've noticed a huge difference in skill as well as attitude(it's much worse...and my 4k friends say its even worse there)