Advices to improve, what to do next?

Hi people,

Been around reading for guides for a few weeks now, first of all being Purge's "Welcome to Dota, you suck". I've been playing around 170 games, and tried each hero at least once. (Advice taken from the previous guide). Played as a support with some good feelings, but I would like to move on to another role.

The thing is, as I go into all-pick pubs, and try to pick a hero that will fit the team (mostly a support because nobody takes them, never). Even though, our line-up is usually rubish. Yesterday I had Drow Ranger and Phantom assassin going safe, and leaving the hard lane to me (crystal) and a silencer... fine. And i was just like "ok, this time I'm fed up of this."

I tried the ranked matches with a partner (Brewmaster fan), but I know I'm a bit new to get in there. I tried to practice more of one or two heroes that lane well with brew (CM and Lina) but they're too squishy for pubs (and ranked).

I'd like to practice more of an aggressive support, maybe roam a bit, and be able to choose between 2 lanes in case I dont play with brewmaster. I think Windranger could fit (ranged, flexible, 1 stun...) but I'm looking for a B-plan (or even a C-plan).

So as I know there are a lot of wise players around here, could you please tell me what you think of my play (http://www.dotabuff.com/players/164944622), where I should play (pubs or ranked?), and if WR, or any other hero, would be a good idea to improve and practice.

Thanks for reading, and GLHF.

First of all welcome!

my first advice is to not play ranked, if you calibrate when you are a beginner you will be given a low MMR and it will be a pain in the *** to change it, since you will have to play a lot of low ranked games because the only way to make it higher is win games, regardless on how you have played.

I would find a group of people to play with, either IRL friends or find some on the internet. this forum has plenty of people who want the same.

as for supports, in lower ranked pubs the supports are more about laning and less about roaming and ganking. since pretty much all games will have duallanes the supports wont be together much.
ofcourse if you see that your laning partner sucks and you have a decent roamer, you can just leave him and try to find kills across the map.

a support who is good at both is Skywrath Mage, even though he is really squishy he is fast, has a long range slow, high damage with Arcane Orb and a silence/magic amplifier with Ancient Seal.

windranger is sort of a semi support, she has an unreliable stun, which makes her not that good at early ganking, and she needs some items to function well.

Personally i just started playing heroes that i liked in either appearance or playstyle, which would often be the same hero actually. (sand king, clockwerk and timbersaw)
so my advice would be to play heroes who's style you like, pick and few who have different roles and use those for the most part.

i started with clockwerk, timber, rubick, sand king, and storm spirit.
most have different roles, and i was comfortable with all of them.

later when you are more comfortable with the game you will be able to pick up a hero after playing 1 bot game if you are good at that certain role.


so TL;DR. find people to play with, play a few different heroes you like to get comfortable with multiple roles.
AND DONT PLAY RANKED!!!11!1111!!!

GL HF !

I feel your pain. In low level matchmaking supports are few and far between, that is why I also decided to default to a support role and honestly I couldn't be happier in this role.



Oh joy, my favorite kind of supports. A few of the similarities between aggressive supports are that they have some form of reliable or semi-reliable disable. These can include a stun ( Vengeful Spirit and Sand King), slow( Jakiro and Ogre Magi), or what I call banishment which includes abilities like Shadow Demon's Disruption or Bane's Nightmare. If you want to practice roaming, do it in pairs. One person with a reliable disable, and one person with an unreliable disable. A fun combination is Mirana and Bane. Bane nightmares a target and Mirana fires an arrow into the target, this lets you have a massive amount of hard lockdown making kills much easier.

But as far as ranked matchmaking, don't do it until you have quite a few games under your belt. I made the mistake of playing ranked matchmaking as soon as I got to level 13. So the game calibrated my mmr to about 2K and it has been a nightmare trying to bring that back up.

But anyways, welcome to the community. Hope to see you around the forums. Also if you wish to do a match sometime send me an invite on steam.

Steam: bkvoiceovergames
In-Game: [TMM] Tenor

See you on the battlefield,

-BK

Aggressive supports? Roamers? The ones who would fit those roles are probably the ones with high damage nukes and/or disables available early game. Skywrath Mage deals a ton of magical damage to enemies with Arcane Bolt, slow and silences which are really good to set up a kill especially on those popular Faceless Voids and Anti-Mages whose farm should be disturbed, but they keep getting away with blinks. Another good one is Earthshaker with that impassable Fissure and damage from Enchant Totem could really secure/set up a kill. Leshrac is also good. Has a nuke, that slows Lighting Storm a bit wonky to aim stun Split Earth and two high DPS nukes Pulse Nova and Diabolic Edict. Scales well through the game, best to play as a lane support, but not a hard support though. Jakiro is also good with 2 nukes, a slow and a stun. Bane is excellent with a high nuke that heals and a CC ability to set up a kill.

First of all, I don't think you should be afraid of Ranked - unranked games also have an influence on your MMR when you calibrate later, as laid out in this awesome thread by Smuggels. If you have 2-3 Supports you can play reasonably well, just go for it, one of them will fit the lineup. The benefit is huge, in my opinion, the 6.82 Ranked AP has vastly improved the quality of games in Ranked MM.

Secondly, I am about the same skill level as you I would think (http://www.dotabuff.com/players/28058863), and I feel that playing Support is the way to go until I have way more games under my belt. What it allows you to do is to get a feeling for the power of the different heroes, how creep waves work, when and how to do Roshan, how your enemies usually move across the map, how to gank, when to play defensively and all the other things that are important indepently of your role. Of course you can also do this as Carry, but learning that stuff involves making mistakes, which usually lead to your death - and if you die as a Carry, it is usually much worse for your team than as a Support.

If you can play as a stack, that's of course better, but my experience is that if you communicate, you can do well on your own (at least on Ranked). Of course you will meet the occasional (or rather, more than just occasional, this IS DotA, after all) person who you'll feel should rather not add his DNA to the gene pool for the good of mankind, but generally, people are nice and forgiving if you are too.

I can only agree that Skywrath Mage is a good choice if you want to play a versatile Support. HE can roam very well, but he is also one of the best lane Supports due to his amazing zoning ability. He also teaches you caution because he's so squishy, and one of the most common mistakes new players (including me) make with any hero is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Skywrath will be punished for that very hard.

first things frist: welcome to dotofire :3

yes, playing support in low level pubs sucks! Unfortunately it is a necessity for your team to be sucessful. There are a few things to keep in mind tho, if you are looking for more game impact. There are certain heroes that dont mind having a limited itempool (by buying Animal Courier or Observer Wards and still can manage to have a huge impact on the game ...they might even transition into carries if you really find a ton of kills / farm.

Vengeful Spirit; Tidehunter; Abaddon; Venomancer; Elder Titan and Witch Doctor come to mind.

now you coem to dotofier we teech u how to plae dont vory drink vodka win dotka :D

Thanks guys,

Since I first posted the thread, I tried a few heroes from the ones you suggested. Really like Earthshaker, and I will certainly have a close look at skywrath mage, bane, tide and vengeful spirit.

If you're looking for a partner, leave me your nickname or add me, I'm on EU servers most of the time. I think I'll stick to pubs, except maybe with the people I know I can lane with effectively. At least until I got a few other games under my belt.

GLHF !