MMR hell and rustiness

Now to the great players out there I could really use some constructive criticism.
I've been furiously trying to shake off the rust, but both my solo and party MMR have been utterly crippled. I was off of Dota for a couple months, and these last few weeks I've lost over 800 MMR dropping to 2844 party ranking and another 400 in solo dropping to 2761. It's gotten to the point that I can't even hang with the people I used to play with.
Some of the games it's as if no matter what I do, I can't fix what's happened to the other lanes, and I'm lacking in answers, I can watch the game replays and can note mistakes I've made, like I go half ******, and others it's impossible to convince people to push when we gain an advantage.
It gets worse as the MMR drops. I can understand if I lose the mid lane, and I get smashed, but that hasn't happened since I was in the mid 3k tier. Generally I'll play Invoker Shadow Fiend or Mirana, unless I'm feeling the urge to Pudge. It just gets to the point where I get frustrated and start dying trying to do too much. At what point do you change the approach? It worked so well to get my to higher MMR, I just can't influence the game as well as I used to, and instead of blaming my teammates I can spot in the replays things I could've done better. What can you do to stop making mistakes, and try to prevent your team from going panic mode 5 man.
Sorry for this unspecific rant, it's just frustrating, probably should've stopped playing rank awhile ago to get back into the game, 2 months made me to full ******.

Party mmr doesn't mean anything anyway, feel free to fall down to 1 mmr :D I had 4.2k party mmr and now I have 3.7k due to playing with people who have ~3k, or just russians/poles who are flaming in team chat when you don't gank @ 4th minute with exort invo or shadow fiend. Nothing to do about it, they will just keep feeding.

About solo matchmaking just play heroes that aren't so reliant on their team, with invoker and shadow fiend you want to stay on lane and farm instead of gank @ 1st night, you can use some stacks, midas **** etc. and you can't do that in typical pub.

Also it may seem obvious or ******ed, but if you want to easily raise your mmr a bit and go back where you once was, then just pick typical invis pubstompers. We all know that people <3k mmr and even above can't handle playing against them, and even if you don't have any experience with playing such ******ed heroes like Riki, Clinkz or Slark, just pick them and own.

You can't play the same way on 2.8k mmr as on 3.6k, it's like you must go back into the past and use ******ed tactics that you know won't work on higher mmr, so... carry Lina.

EDIT. Something about riki and axe pubstomp picks against tryhard prophet, shadow demon and phoenix: http://dotabuff.com/matches/641518833

Sigh first of all, this happens to us all. We just have to learn HOW to become atlas and carry our Team members. I've went from 3600 to 3000~ I can't recall it's been way too long. That trip took me a litter under 4 days and i slowly climbed back out by playing heroes with a high level of mobility or even playing a roaming support where i am able to gank every lane and create the space that is necessary to win.

So i'd just like you to answer a few questions and maybe i can assist you on your climb back up.
1. What heroes are you playing and in what lane?
2. Are you following a traditional build or creating your own? Show me an example of one of the builds you are using or link me your dotabuff profile so i can run some analysis.
3. Always try to keep calm when playing, getting annoyed does not help
4. have you tried playing support or any other hero?
Further questions will be asked and more tips will be provided when these questions are answered and i got your dotabuff profile to help you out a bit.




To your first point, that is entirely wrong! MMR gives you a basis of where you are, you aren't exactly at that exact location but you are somewhere WITHIN that range. If you get those the best step is to just mute them, the will bring down your morale or increase the rage bar.

That is entirely wrong as well with your second point. The purpose of a middle is to sustain their lane, preferably win the lane if not then just try to break even. Shadow fiend has so much potential with ganks as he has 3 different shadow razes for three different distances. A middle should ALWAYS gank every lane to create space for their comrades. When space is CREATED good things happen. Along with ganking you should learn how to create PROPER farm. I'm going to be using shadow fiend as hes the best example for farm. We all know hes dependent on farm which means hes extremely item dependent as well. Don't create farm on your way to gank unless you arrived to earlier, usually create farm going back to your lane and farming a bit more or even teleport to your lane which works fine as well.

I could some what agree with that, you're better off picking heroes that require an item to counter as everyone will be cheap and be like " no way you buy them, omg he has BKB GGWP " Another technique that is really fun to do is to farm off one single person and talk about his KDR, this will bring some attention to that individuals team and some trash talking will go on. It's all about the mind game, if you're able to get into your opponents mind, you've already won the early stages of the game.

Also a side note: To really put the game in your favour, you should learn about lane equilibrium. Learning lane equilibrium will help you a lot and teach you when to advance your enemy or when to back up. ALWAYS CREATE SPACE AS MIDDLE NO MATTER WHAT! SPACE IS IMPORTANT.

I don't have a lot of games on any specific hero but I have a decent amount played on a lot of heroes http://dotabuff.com/players/86187228/matches
That's a list of matches, on my main account, I have othersn. After awhile I just gave up on some heroes and strats. Honestly I'm just considering playing Ember and Invoker mid or if we need a carry, Terrorblade or Phantom Assassin

You got it!
Terrorblade is the way to go to push yourself out of "ELO-hell" (even though it is not really existent)

Pick Terrorblade -> Buy Radiance -> have 15 last hits per minute -> win game by outratting everything

Seriously you don't even need to take fights...just push rax, if they are 5 manning...easiest life ever.

Legit hero i'd say
(Note: One game i sold Radiance for Satanic at some point, don't want you to think i didn't buy Radiance o.O )


But seriously: If you are good, your rating will rise, blaming your team does not. even in a 3.5 - 4.5k area games are fairly easy to solowin, if you play 'high-impact' heroes very well (done it often enough)
Exception might be, when youre going mid and are getting permahated by enemy supports, but then your other lanes should have an easy time.

Feeders will always be present, either in your team or in your enemies team. Just find them and feed on them ;)

It's a tricky one, I haven't played a lot of ranked (got my 4k rating and sat on it, lol :)), but all the theory is exactly the same as normal, only hopefully your team is more motivated to win.

I don't doubt that there are particular heroes/roles you can play where you have a little more impact on the game outcome, but can't say I'm particularly happy with the "always pick a mid/carry" and snowball thinking. Unfortunately now there are too many people trying to do exactly that to boost their win rate, and end up either arguing over who's mid or playing inflexibly.

My advice:

- Avoid junglers unless the other team has picked weak lanes. Too many players pick junglers, their team gets trashed in lane and they lose.

- Pick what your team NEEDS. If you're a good mid player, call it early, pick something appropriate to play it. If somebody else picks first, or your team is picked all wonky, get what's needed most, even if it's Crystal Maiden.

- Try to get your team engaged, positive and talking early on (not always possible, I know!). After a couple of awful teams in a few games (competing in the offlane for hits with your own team mates is a sure sign, no supporting-supports etc), the next game I just basically said from the off "guys, had some awful teams, happy to play support, just please god make some decent picks - thanks :)". Everyone got talking, we communicated early and well, won a decent game convincingly and commends all round.

Ofc mmr shows you where you are, but only solo one, because party mmr is counted the same way if you're playing with people who have 2k more mmr and carry all your games, as well as when you play with people who have 2k less mmr and feed enemy carry 0-20, so...

And about shadow fiend - he don't have any stun or slow or gap closer or armor or hp or nothing, so can how you gank lane with for example sniper and riki, because that's majority of lanes you will meet at 2.8k? Saying that creating space with shadow fiend for spastic team mates that all pick hard carries and farm game for 100 minutes is just plain bad, cause we aren't talking about some >5k mmr ****. You have to win games solo here and you can only do that if you have tons of slows or stuns so that your ******ed sniper and riki can just stand and attack.

From what im seeing you could be the problem why you are losing, you're dying too much but saying that i could be wrong since your team could of fed worse. Anyways looking at other things such as your heroes, try playing heroes that are have more impact or follow the current meta pool.

That is just a quick glance of your score. Try to practice at becoming more aware of the mini map and never take chances because taking chances always ends in a failure majority of the time.


Doesn't matter, i play shadow fiend quite often and i always gank. My partners have a stun, slow or they even bait them which allows me to get close raze and auto attack them and raze when they run. Suppose the lanes are warded so they could see you coming, what's stopping you from buying smoke and going to gank? it's not a support job to do EVERYTHING for you. Yes, it would be nice if the support can buy it but they are very gold hungry early game so just buy the smoke yourself and go gank. See what just happened? it's like they didn't even have wards and you were able to get close! Sentries don't even reveal smoke so you're good on that too!

Rule of thumb is to farm your lane until you're about 6-7 and go gank. After ganking to back and farm or push for tower if you have the time. If they decide to teleport onto the tower then that's a free kill.

Of course is SF able to gank early, but that doesn't mean it is necessarily good.
SF is a farming hero and not a tempocontroller. If you want to play in the ganking roll, you should simply pick another Hero.
Obviously you should have TPs and help your team if someone gets dived, but the point of SF (and also E-Invoker, OD and TA) is that they have freefarm on mid as long as they are not getting ganked and they can easily take the tower if their enemy leaves the lane.

Ganking on those hero is just very risky, because if you actually get counterganked you are usually screwed without your core items.

Just like i said: SF is not a tempo-controller that needs to create space for your team. Your team should be creating space for SF.

I'd agree with all of this and I think even ganking mid should be like this to some extent early on. I see far too many players decide that levels (not items) dictate when they can start ganking, and this is completely incorrect.

The most common examples I see are Puck and Mag, who will try to gank with their ults at 6, but even if it works, they rarely get back quickly to farming mid and what should have been a 10-11 minute blink becomes an 18-20 minute blink. Consequently they don't have nearly as much impact as they should midgame, carry doesn't get the space they need, and they lose.

The main issue is that in lower level games players assume it is the mid's responsibility to gank early (it is not, excepting stuff like Skywrath Mage or Pudge, who have next to zero lategame potential). Supports are the ones that should be ganking in the early game (this rarely happens, which is the main reason why Shadow Fiend is so strong at lower levels of play)