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This guide is designed to help you win mmr in pubs by adhering to some very basic principles.
Among players with a variety of different skills I often notice that a lot of players lack basic concepts that apply to this game. I have been playing DOTA now for almost 12 years, with players anywhere from 500 to 7k mmr. This discussion is not about mechanics, but about fundamental concepts that are important in all skill brackets.
Let us start with the picks. I believe that it is important to have at least 2 heroes in each position that you are familiar with. However, this does not mean that one should always spam one hero. Whereas certain heroes have hard counters, there is a deeper concept at play here. Similar to rock scissors paper, there exist 3 strategies in Dota: Splitpushing, teamfighting, and ganking. Depending on the current meta, one of these strategies may be stronger. For example, a few years ago a splitpushing lineup was very popular in pubs and competitive games alike, whereas a sole “rat”-lineup is rather uncommon nowadays.
A Splitpushing lineup with picks such as antimage, terrorblade or furion usually beats teamfight lineups (provided the splitpush comes online fast enough), whereas a ganking lineup with heroes such as legion commander, spirit breaker etc. beats a splitpushing lineup.
On the other hand, a teamfighting lineup may do poorly against splitpushing heroes, as one often only trades towers and the splitpushing lineup overall gains more experience and gold, whereas ganking lineups can’t do much against a 5 man teamfighting composition.
So when picking, you should ask yourself which general strategy will be the best and which heroes fit that role. Lets say the opposing team has gone for a splitpushing heavy lineup with antimage and furion, as you often see in pubs. Here, ganking heroes like spiritbreaker, legion commander, bloodseeker come to mind.
The next important step to victory relies on good teamplay. If you notice that you have a toxic player in your team I usually remind him to relax and if his toxicity persists I will mute such players. Also, communication is key to DOTA and you will surely earn 500 mmr by simply using a headset and communicating with your team on what you are about to do.
Additionally, as most of you will know, vision is key. I cannot stress this enough and any person with some DOTA experience will agree with this. When playing with supports that dont ward properly, instead of flaming my supports I will start buying wards and sentries and warding myself at key strategic locations. Often, even when I am playing mid I will buy a ward to circumvent dying due to early ganks. This should be obvious, but I see in all skill brackets that cores will most often flame and tilt instead of buying wards for 80 gold themselves. As for supports, I am of the opinion that in most cases a sentry should be placed before a ward is put down so that one is sure that the enemies do not have vision on where the ward is placed. Another option is to smoke and place the ward while being smoked. Try to buy all wards as soon as they become on stock.
An essential part of winning relies on map awareness. However, I have noticed that players below 4k mmr rarely have proper map awareness and I cannot stress map awareness enough. When playing a core, lets say antimage, one must at all stages of the game have in mind which heroes can kill you. Can they solo kill you or do they need support? Let’s assume you are playing antimage and it is 30 minutes into the game and you are playing against legion commander. He has blink and will be able to solo kill you. So, unless legion commander is showing on the map, you cannot farm in vision of the enemies. Now let’s say it is 35 minutes and you have finished your linkens sphere. Now, even if legion commander is not showing you can safely farm the map, unless another enemy hero that can disable your linkens sphere is missing. Those are things you need to be aware of and s watch on the minimap if you want to win games.
Whereas the part of constantly checking enemy heroes items and the minimap is a rather simple but tedious task, realizing when you can finish the game and bringing it home is not always so easy and requires experience. A big thing that will improve your gameplay a lot is finishing objectives (or the game) as soon as you have the chance to do so. Often, you will have a window of opportunity that is only open for a certain amount of time. Lower players frequently do not use advantageous windows to gain objectives, but afk farm, thinking: If I have the upper hand now, I will most likely also have the upper hand in 10 minutes. This kind of anticipation will make you a more intelligent player and ultimately will lead to winning more games, so always think ahead of what you want to accomplish in the next 5 minutes and what the requirements for doing so are. Therefore, the second I am (quite) sure we can finish, I will tell my team via headset to group up and finish. Now here comes the tricky part. Often, someone will not join. Then do not push! Even though, you know that you can finish the game right now, pushing 4v5 can result in a big throw. Instead I tend to follow the person that is not pushing with us so we are 5 after all.
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