The Noob's Guide to Raising Your Solo Ranked MMR

What's New?

Hello everyone! This is a sort of pre-introduction where I'll mention the latest update to the guide (such as a new Good Read, or Tale of the Potato Bracket)

This is meant for people who have already read the main guide once, and want to immediately check the latest updates. You can find a detailed changelog at the end of the guide.

So, what's new this time?

-Removed most references to level 1 jungling.
-Removed references to pro players who are no longer relevant in the scene :( :(
-Added shameless plug for my irrelevant Youtube channel, please subscribe
-Added new Tale from the Potato Bracket.

Introduction

800000 views? Bet you can't get 900000.

Hello everyone, I'm TEL9021, also known as The Dork Seer. When I'm not browsing dank memes on Reddit, I like to write DOTA 2 hero guides! You can also find me on YouTube here: The Noob's Guide to DOTA 2

The idea for this particular guide came to me when I was browsing a thread on the DOTA 2 subreddit. I remember a topic where someone was asking how to raise his MMR, and people suggested playing certain "OP hero" picks like Slark or Viper, claiming that playing only those heroes raised their rank by 1000 or more.

Of course, any DOTA player who knows this game can see the glaring faults here. First of all, there is no OP hero, only heroes that are difficult for noobs to counterpick. Once you raise your MMR to the point where your opponents know how to defeat your hero, you're stuck. And since you know how to play only that "OP hero" and nothing else, your rank will drop again.

This guide focuses on simple and legit ways to get out of low-ELO hell and raise your MMR without using any "easy" methods that give you a rank you don't deserve. It may be more work than spamming
Lifestealer and lvl 1 jungling to hope for a win through AFK farm, but you'll actually grow in skill as a DOTA player, and feel all the better for it!

Let's jump right in, shall we?

Step 1: How Far Do You Wanna Go, Kid?

The first thing you want to do is determine how high you really want your MMR to be.

Of course, you'll be asking: "What do you mean? Don't we all want 5000+ MMR?"

Well, yeah, but do you believe you can actually get that high?
Are you willing to spend the time necessary for it?
Always remember that people like zai and Arteezy may be at the top of the Ranked Leaderboards, but they play DOTA professionally, and don't spend time working or being in school. So don't try to be someone you're not, know yourself.


The key here is baby steps:

1)Set a small goal first, like +200 MMR from the level you are already.

If every win gives you around +25 MMR, that's approximately 8 wins.


2)Determine if this level of play is hard enough.

Now that you reached your first goal, are you finding your opponents way tougher than you, or do you think you could easily beat them with a little more practice?


3)When ready, set the next goal.

Be it staying in the MMR zone you are in now or raising it further, keep in mind that you'll need more practice to raise your rank and patience to keep it high.


Another important thing:


Backing down is an option.

Don't force yourself to raise your MMR into levels you can't handle. Remember that you play DOTA for fun, not to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Step 2: Picking Your Core Heroes

From Valve's Free to Play movie.

Instead of picking a single hero to play Solo Ranked with, I suggest having a small pool of heroes that you feel comfortable with, and picking only from that pool when you're going ranked. A few tips regarding this:


Versatility wins wars.

While this isn't fool-proof, you should always prefer having a versatile hero pick in your Ranked Match hero pool. Why? Because you're not playing alone, and people can be huge idiots when it comes to calling lanes.

If I pick Puck, for instance, and call mid, there's always gonna be that one guy who picks Pudge or Invoker with no supports in our team, forcing Puck to dual-lane, screwing up the lanes and the game before it even begins.
In this instance, if I had picked Mirana, the game would still be very winnable, as Mirana can also offlane AND work in a dual lane.

You can avoid this somewhat by playing Ranked Roles, people are generally good at following directions if they are pre-assigned to a role. Only thing to be afraid of here, is extremely greedy Soft Support picks like Void Spirit or Silencer. They can be excellent in the right situation, but you will have to tone down the greed on the other picks. In this situation, maybe don't follow up with Hard Carry Spectre and Mid Morphling.


Prefer heroes that can also be played as supports.

You may think that it's better for your MMR when you play a hard carry hero and the outcome of a game depends more on you. While this is true, it leads to most Ranked Matchmaking teams being comprised of at least two hard carries and a Pudge. Is another melee carry or mid-only hero picked by you going to be a worthy addition to the team? I think not.

I know playing support is annoying, and it's true that you may very well lose a game eventually due to your carry being an idiot, but it's still better than picking yet another carry or solo mid hero and losing the game from the get go.

This is why you should prefer going support over going carry or mid, unless, of course, you are THAT damn good at playing solo mid, in which case, Hello Topson! Mitä kuuluu, perkele?


Never try a new hero (or crazy build) in a Ranked Match.

There's a time for experimenting, and it's called college unranked matches.

It may sound harsh to say this, but if you try playing a hero that you're even in the least bit unfamiliar with in Ranked, you're already at a disadvantage compared to a guy following the elite "I only pick Viper cause he is OP" strategy. This is because you are basing your victory on luck, not skill.

You should also be wary of playing lesser-known (but still very effective) hero builds, such as mid Alchemist or carry Leshrac. Your allies may not know about them, leading to misunderstandings.

If you DO want to try a new hero so you can add him to your Ranked Match hero pool, you should train a lot beforehand, and I'll explain how to do so in the next chapter.


Fear The Roamer

(Thanks to commenter Xyrus for reminding me of this!)

A excellent way to change the tides of a DOTA 2 match in your favor is outnumbering your opponent in a fight. That's why there's the whole concept of ganking: You're in a 2v2 lane, but then the opposing mid ganks you, and suddenly you're fighting 2v3.
If the gank succeeds, the lane ganked will most likely be won, but if it fails, the core mid hero lost tons of farm, and possibly lost his lane against the opposing mid hero who was free-farming.

Now, what if there was a way for you to ensure winning lanes without having to force core heroes to stop farming? Well, there is, and it's playing the role of a Roaming Support.

What does a roaming support do? Instead of staying in a single lane, the roaming support constantly switches lanes, and provides lane control with fast and well-timed ganks, or simply harassing opponents out of their lanes.
If it works, all your core heroes will score kills against the opposition and win their lanes. If it doesn't, you will be severely underfarmed, but at least you're not a core hero.

In order to make the Roaming Support role work for you, you need the following:

- A hero that is entirely self-sustainable (i.e. never needs to go to the fountain to heal)
- Another hero on your team able to solo a lane when you're helping other lanes.
- Good team communication: Don't expect your allies to see you ganking, draw on the minimap, ping, or type "on my way bot/top/mid" to alert them.

A few notable examples of heroes that make really good roaming supports are:

Lion, Mirana, Earthshaker, Crystal Maiden, Bounty Hunter.


My winrate as a roaming support Mirana is pretty good!

Step 3: Training Heroes For Ranked Matches

Cheer up, it might never happen! (From WronchiAnimation's DOTA 2 Reporter series - RIP)


Here's the method I use to train heroes to add to my Ranked hero pool.


Stage A: Lab Time


If a hero you want to add to your Ranked hero pool is one you've never played before, you'll begin at this stage. Lab Time is basically just offline practice with a hero, either with or without bots.

You may scoff at this, thinking it is unnecessary, but it really helps you to learn the basics about a hero and how he plays, and you can disconnect anytime you want, instead of being stuck in a losing online match for 40+ minutes being called a noob because you are learning a new hero.

Lab Time isn't really necessary for easier-to-play support heroes, such as, say, Tidehunter or Lich, but helps a ton if you're learning heroes with really hard micromanagement (like Chen) or tricky lvl 1 junglers (best example here is Lycan).

For training with Blink Dagger users and initiators such as Enigma, Batrider, Invoker, and Earth Spirit, a really useful tool is -wtf mode training. To do this, start a local lobby with cheats enabled, then type -wtf in all-chat when the game begins. Your abilities will now cost no mana and have 0 cooldown, so you can freely learn your combos.


Stage B: Unranked Games


Now you've learned the basics about your hero, you're ready to test him in a online match. BUT NOT IN A RANKED MATCH YET. Even Unfair difficulty bots are deceptively easy opponents compared to human enemies, and when you switch to playing Ranked immediately after Lab Time, this will cause you to lose games and MMR.

The solution? Play a few simple unranked pub games, so you can test your metal against humans, but not suffer an MMR loss for any mistakes or bad plays leading to a loss.

The number of unranked games you play before moving on to ranked matches is not set in stone and is entirely up to you. If you are managing to correctly use your items and abilities, and overall feel that you're actively helping your team win, then that hero is ready for Ranked.


Stage C: Ranked Games


Finally you made it to Ranked Matches! Now this hero is part of your Ranked hero pool and can be picked by you in any game. Nothing more to say here, go get 'em!

For extra CoolGuy PointsTM, take notes of the heroes you're learning! (Note that my list has an extra "DRAFT IT" stage, for heroes I play for my team when we go Captain's Mode.)

Step 4: In-Game Communication

Not pictured: Faceless Void saying "Guys I only need 2000 gold to farm Mjollnir, pls no fight"


Since you're playing Solo Ranked, you're alone with four other players. However, all five of you are going to be a team for the next forty-odd minutes, and you're going to have to cooperate if you want to win. That's why you need to be vocal and use the chat to communicate from the very beginning of the match (i.e. the pick phase).
Talking to your teammates is essential to winning the game, be it deciding a strategy, whether to fight Roshan, attacking, defending, or anything else. Teams that don't communicate well will lose the match even when they're completely outdrafting their enemies.


Possible Problem #1: "Entire team is Russian!"

You will often come across teams that will speak a foreign language and refuse to use English at all. This hinders communication somewhat, but not entirely. Pings, drawing on the minimap and chat wheel commands are still very capable of getting a message across.
( And if worse comes to worst, you can always spam "cyka" )


Possible Problem #2: "Entire team is noobs!"

You will also often come across players who will be playing badly. For whatever reason this happens, remember that a player you deem a "noob" has roughly the same MMR as you.
The answer to this problem is NOT CURSING THEM. If a player is repeatedly dying, it's much better to say:

"Crystal Maiden, you should stay back in teamfights"
rather than:
"maiden stop feed omg"

Try to be as polite and clear as possible when chatting to teammates. It really helps your team maintain a winner's mentality.

You can also attempt giving advice to your teammates, if there is no language barrier to stop you. Stick with simple one-liners, such as:

(When against a Bristleback)
"Buy Magic Stick, it's very good vs BB"

You only need to say things like this once. If you overdo it, your teammates will find you annoying and stop paying attention to you. Avoid micromanaging the entire team.


Possible Problem #3: Dealing With Passive Aggressive Chat and Arguments

How many times have you been in a match where, after a bad play, the chat looks something like this?

>Well Played!
>Well Played!
>Stun now!
>Well Played!

This is obviously meant in irony, and it's something I'd like to talk about.

Passive aggressiveness in DOTA 2 chat has always been an issue, but in Ranked Matchmaking it seems to be present in nearly EVERY SINGLE MATCH. It starts with a casual "nice stun" when someone misses an Impale and can escalate to full-on chat war in the middle of the game.

Everyone in Ranked seems to be much more tense and likely to start a fight during matches. It's obvious why this happens: MMR is at stake. It only takes a simple misplaced "nice ss" or "gg 10 mins sf no gank", and there you have it, now everyone is spamming in the chat what a noob everyone else is.

These situations need to be avoided at all costs, because at best you'll feel angry but persevere and still win, and at worst you will enter a "tilt" state and actively lose all of your in-game skill. This is a thing that happens to players of all sports, especially when played at a competitive level.

How does one stop this? Here are a few pointers.


Improve Yourself:

- Silence is an option. You don't HAVE to reply to a negative comment. Don't feed the trolls.
- Learn to say sorry. If you make a bad play, apologizing later makes others more likely to forgive you and less likely to flame you.
- Don't blame others for your mistakes. If you die alone behind the enemy's Tier 3 tower, DON'T spam >We need wards.
- Don't perform, or accuse others of, kill stealing . Sometimes it's just an accidental autoattack, sometimes it's a Lion using Finger of Death to finish off a 10hp Crystal Maiden. Either way though, it's obvious to everyone if it's on purpose or not, and you don't need to comment on it. (This doesn't apply to carries, you guys can steal all the kills)
- Play your role. If you are a support, just buy Observer Wards on cooldown. If you are a core, be sure to farm and get items. Don't give people any reason to flame you.
- Avoid overextending around teammates you don't trust. They will leave you to die and you know it.

Improve Others:

- Be sure to give positive feedback. A simple >Well Played! when your team gets first blood instantly puts everyone in a good mood.
- Speak now. Is the enemy Pudge picking up an Invisibility rune and heading bot? Is Mirana's ultimate being used? Should someone check if Roshan is up? Don't keep it to yourself, speak up!
- If someone is doing a simple thing wrong again and again, like autoattacking creeps, don't hold it in, politely notify the person. It's better than exploding at him 10 minutes later when you're fed up.
- Muting is an option. If you catch yourself arguing with someone repeatedly, consider just muting them and ending it there. This is useful even if you aren't in a fight with someone: Chat spam is a huge distraction.
- If you do mute someone, don't say "muted". It's petty and pointless.

Sniper

Step 5: In-Game Strategy and Tips

Sing the Game of Throws theme song with me: Doo-doo-doodoodoo-dooooo-doodoodooooo!


In-game there really is only one rule: Play To Win. No fooling around, no picking any heroes just because, no giving up at the first lost teamfight or bad play. Here's a few tips regarding this:


When and What to Pick

First of all, during the pick phase, you need to be paying attention to what gets picked, both by your team and your enemies. This will allow you to spot a weakness in the enemy lineup that you can exploit ( i.e. Opposing team picks Storm Spirit and Windranger, a great counterpick is Bloodseeker ) or pick a hero that combos well with existing picks. ( i.e. Your team saw your Bloodseeker pick and picked Invoker and Ancient Apparition, thus creating a powerful Global Meltdown strategy. )

Concerning the time during the countdown to actually pick a hero, you should follow these guidelines:

- If you want to play carry, offlane, or mid, please call it beforehand.
- Don't insta-pick a hard carry: Enemies will hard-counter you.
- Supports should not be picked late, to ensure your team has a carry hero.

Especially for Ranked Roles mode, the pick order should be: Supports first, then Offlane, then Hard Carry, then Mid. This is to avoid a critical hero being counterpicked. Still, if you want last pick as a different role, you can do so, but call it beforehand and explain your strategy.

What if someone ignores your call and picks another solo/carry hero? Well, as I said before, people can be huge idiots. Judge the versatility of the conflicting heroes and see if you can't make a deal.

Example: You call carry and pick Ursa, then a teammate randoms Spectre. While Ursa doesn't need to always go safe lane and is a viable offlane in a dual lane, Spectre really struggles in any other lane except safe.

Solution: Spectre goes safe lane, Ursa goes to the hard lane. Ursa also must itemize as an offlane now to give Spectre space: No Battle Fury allowed.


You better ward, b*tch.

In Ranked, you will never win a game without someone buying support items. Observer Wards and 2 Sentry Wards at the very least need to be bought before your team leaves the fountain. Supports should also pool two Tango charges to the Mid hero. I know I'm stating the bloody obvious here, but it's maddening how many Ranked matches I've played where even this basic rule isn't followed.

Furthermore, if the enemy team has invisible heroes, fill the map with Sentry Wards! It's everyone's duty, not only the supports', to buy vision items to counter these heroes before they ever get any farm.

If your supports are not buying wards and giving you lame excuses for not doing so like "I'm farming a Mekansm" or "It's 5:06 and I've already died 4 times" then man up and buy those items yourself. You'll lose farm, yes, but not the game.


Winning the early game is crucial.

Fun fact: People give up easily. I'm sure you've played a lot of games where once you lost the first teamfight of the game due to a bad play, someone on your team typed "gg ff pls" in All-Chat, and stopped trying to play well from then on.

This is something you can capitalize on in Solo Ranked matches: Since you'll probably be queued against other solo players, they'll be way more likely to believe that "their entire team is noobs" if they have a bad start.

There are several things you can do to ensure winning the early game, including these:

- Pick heroes that have a high impact on the game at level 6 or below
- Ensure that your mid player has rune control and/or gank mid lane
- Call miss for all lanes, not only yours, and ping if you detect incoming ganks
- Use a Town Portal Scroll to save an ally who is getting ganked
- Use Smoke of Deceit to gank the enemy mid hero before they reach level 6


Stow It, Don't Throw It

This guide was first written in the times of the fourth International, when it was nigh impossible for a team with a huge early game advantage to lose, and 5-man unstoppable deathball push was the way to win a match.

Τhis does not apply any more. Teams that are ahead in gold and XP can lose their advantage very quickly. Comebacks are the norm, and matches usually last at least 40 minutes. What does this mean for you?

First and foremost, you and your team can turn even the toughest situations around much easier than before. The exact opposite can happen as well: It is remarkably easy to lose a game you're winning (i.e. throw it) if you're not careful.

How can you ensure a victory? Simply put, you can't. What you can do, though, is use strategy and a bit of in-game knowledge to help yourself out of a difficult situation (or stop you from throwing a game). Here's a few tips concerning this:


When Winning:

- Play the objective. Destroy towers and barracks as soon as possible, because you won't always be in the lead, but the enemy buildings will remain down.
- Check your team's late game potential. If you're stomping with a Slark carry, you should end the match ASAP before the enemy Spectre farms up.
- Continue to place Observer Wards, and do so aggresively. (i.e. ward the enemy jungle)
- If facing invisible heroes, buy multiple Gem of True Sights and leave them in base.
- If playing support, don't forget to finish your support items first.
- Don't stand outside the enemy base forever! Consider killing Roshan or farming the enemy jungle.


When Losing:

- First of all, detect this early! It's too late when you're losing 0 - 20 in kills!
- If you are winning your lane, gank lanes in trouble.
- If you are losing your lane, request a gank. Not being able to farm still counts as losing your lane!
- Place Observer Wards inside your jungle so you can farm slightly safer.
- If no lanes were won, consider going as four to create space for your carry to farm.
- If the problem is one specific hero (like Slark), counter him (in this case, with any Silence spell and/or burst damage). In teamfights, try to single him out and 5v1 him.
- If you have no late-game potential, go 5v5 doto and hope for a clutch teamfight win.
- 5-man Smoke of Deceit ganks inside the enemy jungle can be very useful for your team.

Step 6: Stuff You Can Do Outside of DOTA

Here's some other things you can do (that aren't actively playing DOTA) that help increase your MMR.


Is Your Body Ready For Ranked?

Being in an unfit condition when going Ranked will cause you to lose matches like it's going out of style. Notable examples include:

- Feeling tired or sleepy, or being drunk (this has a massively negative impact on reflexes)
- Being angry or stressed (especially if the anger is because you lost a previous game)

You should always check before going for a game that you feel ready to spend 40 or more minutes of your time in front of the PC. Don't just blindly select "Find Match" before consciously deciding that you are ready to play, and more importantly, ready to win.


Watch replays of your losses

The first step to facing your mistakes is actually figuring out what the hell went wrong. In most games I've played, there's usually a certain turning point (that can be found by using the gold and XP graphs as well) that decided the game.

Rewatching a teamfight that went wrong for your team multiple times will show you exactly what went wrong and how, and if you're to blame, congratulations! Now you'll never make that mistake again!
(Right?)

Watching your replays will also help you spot enemy hero builds and teamfight positioning, and you can steal their moves to use them against your enemies in the next game.

Watching replays of victories is also useful. If you spotted one of your allies doing really well with a certain hero, you may want to try that hero yourself! After all, you already have play-by-play footage to teach you how to build that hero.


Watch replays of top players

After you realize where you make mistakes and get around to fixing them, your MMR will improve, but very slightly. To truly rise in rank, you must play consistently better than your opponents. But since they are at the same skill level as you, how can you improve?

The answer to this is watching replays of high MMR players. If you're trying to learn a specific hero, watching someone else play him can give you unique insight into that hero's capabilities. Also, you can straight up learn all kinds of new tricks, and use them on your opponents in your next games. High MMR games are also a good indicator of where the metagame will be heading towards.

It's super easy to do this: Just head over to Dotabuff, look up your favorite hero in the search bar, then check the the Hero Rankings on the right side. Look up recent replays of top players, get the the Match IDs, and start watching! I recommend using the Player Perspective camera.


Watch Pro Games*

Watching a couple professional games on twitch.tv will massively help you become a better player. When I began watching games (a little before TI3 is when I really started to do so), I noticed the casters were mentioning things that I had never heard of before (namely, certain hero combos, and the intricate jungle camp warding metagame.) This is also where I learned appropriate times for purchasing core items.

(*)ATTENTION: Just because you saw a pro player successfully win with a weird build or high-skill hero, it doesn't mean you can do so instantly!
Remember the stages leading up to Ranked: Lab Time -> Unranked Games -> Ranked Games.


Watch DOTA Streamers?

Some pro players stream DOTA 2 at times, and you can definitely learn a thing or two from watching them, as it is a player-perspective camera of high-ELO games. Also, some of the more active or intelligent streamers actually discuss metagame picks. However, it is not so much a learning experience as it a chance for people to spread toxicity masked as based memes. If you are going to copy something from a streamer, please let it be their mechanical skills, not item destroying and all-chat typing 'im done' after 5 minutes.

jk y'all can catch me on Mason's stream https://www.twitch.tv/masondota2


Read tons of guides

"I know my enemy as I know myself!" - Dark Seer

Yes, reading Dotafire (and other) guides about any hero, not just your picks, improves your skill in DOTA. Simply having a general idea about every hero's abilities, possible core builds and gameplay will give you the ways to counter those heroes when you're against them.
(It's also a must if you ever want to learn Rubick.)

Also, if your English is up to speed, try writing a guide here yourself! Didn't think about this one, did you? Well, reader, grab your pen and paper keyboard and mouse and get started! It has been proven that the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to someone else.

You can also find plenty of useful stuff in general DOTA guides, which don't specify on building a single hero, but focus on the more general mechanics of the game. In fact, you are reading one of those guides right now! Well done!

Good Reads

BONUS: Tales From the Potato Bracket

This chapter includes "tales from the potato bracket", i.e. stories from some of my own Solo Ranked games.

Feel free to share your own story in the comments, or send me a direct message on Twitter
[follow (@The_Dork_Seer)] with your tale and maybe I'll submit it here too!

Spoiler: Click to view

It's usually redundant to stack item auras of the same kind on a hero who already has that kind of item aura as an innate ablility. Would you build lifesteal on a Lifestealer? Would you build Orb of Venom on a Venomancer? Probably not.

In this sense, Vladmir's Offering lifesteal aura is basically an inferior Vampiric Aura, as it doesn't work on ranged units (editor's note:at the the time it didn't, it does work now) and offers much less lifesteal. So you wouldn't build it on a Wraith King, right? Well...

In this match I played some time ago, I played a support WK build and bought a Vlad's as a first core item.

You can imagine my team's reaction when they saw me buying the item. Our team's Pudge was skeptical when I announced I would be playing support Wraith King and babysitting our carry Phantom Assassin, but when I bought the Vlad's his brain exploded. Aside from the standard "WK noob OMG report" he even told the opposing team in All-chat that I bought it.

That's when the enemy Nature's Prophet said: "Vlad's is a support pushing item too."
And he was right. Let's look at some facts of the game:

- Vladmir's Offering aura stacks with Vampiric Aura.
- Our team has Phantom Assassin, who instantly refills her HP when she scores a crit if she has lifesteal.
- Our team is 4/5 melee heroes, so the lifesteal part of Vlad's counts for them too.
- Against an enemy Nature's Prophet, we need all the pushing power we can get.

Those are the reasons that made me get a Vlad's. And it worked: Phantom Assassin's HP never dropped below 50% in teamfights with all that sweet lifesteal she was getting for free. Pudge and Sand King also won their lane, so we ended up stomping the enemy team.

This brings me back to something everyone's talking about: Adapting an item build to the game in question. In most cases, going straight for an early Blink Dagger would have been the best choice, but in this match, I adapted my item build to match what my team's heroes truly needed.

Spoiler: Click to view

OK, this is not so much a Tale from a match I played, but a more general tip for players looking to increase their skills.

Most heroes have the same central gameplay: Four abilities, enough HP to make a mistake without dying, no need to micromanage units, and can simply follow the recommended item build and win without needing to understand the deeper mechanics of the game.

There are four heroes that differ greatly from these standards, and by learning how to play them, you will understand the mechanics of DOTA much better. These heroes are:


Invoker: Not one, not two, but TEN active abilities hidden under Invoke. Playing Invoker requires near-pianist levels of accurate and fast keyboard mashing to play even at a decent level.
And you can go even further by creatively combining the spells to decimate your opponents in a teamfight: Tornado into Chaos Meteor into Deafening Blast into Cold Snap into Sun Strike. That's five active spells of teamfight destruction, each requiring three buttons to set up, one R to Invoke, and one button to cast. I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a happy face.
After learning Invoker, standard heroes feel like you're playing in slow-motion.


Crystal Maiden: Maiden (or any other slow-moving hard support hero) dies SO easily. For normal heroes, crossing the river into enemy territory alone means death. For Crystal Maiden, though, being alone outside of the fountain means death.
Even though her basic abilities are not hard to cast, it is near impossible to not die in a teamfight, because everyone knows CM is squishy, and focuses her down first, even bypassing the carry to kill her.
Playing Crystal Maiden alone is a frustrating test of patience, as you are playing a supporting role to an ungrateful team.
But, in your constant attempts to not die, you will gain amazing map awareness and teamfight positioning skills, which are good to have with any hero.


Meepo: Whereas you can play some micro heroes without really microing at all (I've seen people play Beastmaster without a single point in Call of the Wild), it is impossible to play Meepo without proper micromanagement skills.
Learning Meepo will get you into the habit of setting up unit control groups and properly using active abilities on all your units, a skill which will help you when buying a Necronomicon and open up more micro-intensive heroes like Visage.


Morphling: Morphling is an utterly unique hero, in that his Strength and Agility are not steady, but "liquid" and you are able to change the balance at will with his Morph abilities.
Learning how to effectively use this balance will help you understand how primary atrributes work in-game better than any strategy guide.

Spoiler: Click to view

Ah, Roshan. The mighty beast who's hunt has been a central point of so many games of DOTA, and completely ignored in others. The tons of XP and gold given to the team when killed, not to mention the Aegis of the Immortal and Cheese that win teamfights and games out of nothing when taken, have spawned numerous level 1 attempts, Aegis snatches, teamfight jukes, and most of all, COUNTLESS THROWS.

Don't believe me? Check this. And this.
Even professional teams try to take an easy Roshan and hope to not be spotted by their enemies before it's too late.

The main problem with Roshan is this: Battling him is a right-click damage-per-second race with an unclear timer. Sometimes teams that are completely stomping their enemies STILL don't have enough damage or health to fight Roshan and live.
Random team lineup example: Lion, Lina, Lich, Puck, Silencer.
You own in teamfights, but what are you gonna do to Rosh? Steal his mana?

Also, sometimes enemies have global abilities that can scout a Roshan attempt instantly
( Haunt, Ice Blast, Rocket Flare, Sacred Arrow to name a few) OR massive AOE teamfight spells that decimate your team when you are all clumped together inside the Pit: ( Echo Slam, Chain Frost and Death Ward are my personal favorites).

This means telling your team that you need to battle Roshan is NOT always a good idea. If you don't manage to kill him quickly enough, your enemies will spot you, kill you, AND take your hard-earned Roshan gold/XP AND the Aegis. This simple bad decision can throw a game you were easily winning before.

So, what can you do? Here are some easy to follow tips:

1) Are there any enemy heroes alive that would possibly scout Roshan and/or steal the Aegis?
2) Does your team have enough combined damage to take Roshan down in under a minute?
3) Has your team created space for a Rosh attempt by killing the enemy Tier 1 towers?
4) Does your team have vision to counter a possible Smoke of Deceit gank or an invisible hero?

Have all of these in mind when telling your team "Guys let's do Rosh".

If that enemy Spectre is dead but has buyback up, it's a good time to tell your teammates that you can't do Roshan. Hopefully, your teammates will listen.

They didn't listen to me when that happened.

Never change, Potato Bracket.

Spoiler: Click to view

It's important when playing a DOTA game, ranked or not, that you don't let anger get the better of you. Getting angry will cause you and your teammates to lose their winner's mentality, and they'll be spending more time b*tching in the chat rather than, you know, actually playing the game.

This match I played recently, was not a Solo Ranked match for me, but it was one for the Vengeful Spirit on our team.

It all started with Venge saying in-chat, before the match began, that she would Smoke of Deceit gank the enemy Puck at level 1. Ganking the enemy mid early is a great idea, and I even recommend it in this guide. I chose Ancient Apparition and said I'll gank with her. Now, since Puck can insta-escape a gank with Illusory Orb, our chances of getting first blood were next to nothing.

We went anyway though, let our mid Storm Spirit pick up the first Illusion rune, then smoked up and ganked Puck from the top. While we were getting close to Puck, our Storm started right clicking Puck with himself and his Illusions, and Puck went back to hug the tower. Of course, this messed up the gank, since we couldn't level 1 tower dive a freaking Puck. I simply cast my Cold Feet and left.

Vengeful Spirit, on the other hand, tower dived Puck alone, and died. So the guy who was playing Venge started shouting at Storm over the mic for messing up the gank, then went back to mid lane and kept trying to kill Puck. Meanwhile, I was forced to solo the hard lane, having bought Observer Wards and the Animal Courier. GG no re ff pls? Not quite yet.

Venge kept b*tching about Storm, saying the game is lost, even though we were doing quite well. Our Anti-Mage had scored two early game kills, and Storm was adequately farming, though his reflexes were very slow and he got killed once or twice. Cue yet more b*tching from Venge.

Where we really lost the ball was after the mid game. Three times I sent an Ice Blast towards an enemy close to Vengeful Spirit, and every time it hit them, Venge would have gotten a kill with a single stun from her Magic Missile. But she didn't do it, and just sat there looking at the Ice Blast hit, then the enemy walking away.

This really pissed me off, because I thought it was unfair that she was angry at Storm Spirit for not cooperating, when she wasn't doing so either. So I started b*tching too.

Vengeful Spirit responded to this by buying a Force Staff, and using it on me to send me right into the enemy team. She then used Nether Swap on our Anti-Mage and sent him directly into Riki's silencing smoke. To top it off, she then sent the courier directly into our enemies. GG no re, ff pls.

This game made me feel sad, because Venge had a really good idea at the start of the match, but she let anger get the better of her when that simple first plan didn't work out. I also was angry at myself, because instead of trying to help make things better, I actively made them worse with my unkind words.

S A D B O Y S

Spoiler: Click to view

A short one today, here's the match link.

I'm the Lich on our team, but this tale is dedicated to our team's carry, Invoker Faceless Void.

After a so-so laning phase VS a Batrider and a Chaos Knight, our Void went to jungle, so he could get his farming tool. The current meta suggests a Maelstrom, which later turns into a Mjollnir.

Luckily enough for Void, he wasn't ganked in the jungle, thanks to Invoker's amazing plays, which kept our enemies back until the late game. This Invoker was really in-character: Button-mashing combos like crazy, gloating in all-chat when getting cool frags, and b*tching in team chat when he died due to overextending, mostly to me. Oh well, I just gave him the cold shoulder.

But around the 23-min mark, a team message appeared: Faceless Void has bought a Battle Fury.

The entire team (and especially Invoker) turned their attention from me to Void: "void why battle fury", "battle fury is sh*t on void", "noobs gg we lost". He did not reply, but kept farming the jungle.

Late game started rolling in, and the true scary hero in the enemy lineup wasn't the fully farmed Juggernaut, but the semi-farmed Chaos Knight, only because he had a Black King Bar, and therefore wrecked Invoker three times.

That's when Faceless Void joined the fray: His Battle Fury destroyed Chaos Knight's illusions through BKB, and won us the game. So for all the flak Void got for buying an outdated item, it STILL was a BETTER option, because you should adapt your playstyle not to the metagame, but to what you're up against.

Invoker asked for a commend when the match ended. Of course he would.

Spoiler: Click to view

Again, this isn't a tale from a match, but something you might find interesting to read. This chapter is looking more and more like a personal blog. Oh well.

A reader asked me a couple days ago if he should recalibrate his MMR, as in making a new account, leveling it up and playing the 10 required ranked matches to get a new matchmaking rating. I told him not to, and here's why.

First of all, why do people recalibrate their MMR? This is something I have seen people talk about on reddit (and thus take it with a grain of salt).

I saw a post that read something like this:

"When I started playing ranked matches, my first MMR was 1870. I couldn't cooperate with players in that rating and couldn't increase it. After playing many unranked matches, I recalibrated it and got 3000. Now I am playing with players that I can cooperate with, and I am having a fun time playing."

8/10. Granted, this poster may have been somewhat unlucky with his first MMR score, and I know it's hard to cooperate with players in low MMR ratings (because I've been there). But, since he did get better by playing all those unranked matches, like I tell you to do in this guide, wouldn't he have increased his MMR through his main account anyway?

Another post:

"Since there is no way to recalibrate my MMR on my main account, I can't play Ranked because it is hopeless to try to improve it. Valve should step up and allow people to change their MMR if they think it's not accurate."

4/10. So what do you propose? That Valve let anyone, at any time, decide that they want to insta-lose their matchmaking history because they think they deserve better? That would be giving people free rein to not try their best when playing Ranked, since if they don't get a high enough score, they can just press the "Reset" button and try again, clogging up the servers with a bunch of TBD players and mismatched games. Saying it is hopeless to try to improve is just a bad excuse, I'm sorry.

A final post:

"The matchmaking system is broken. If you want to get a high MMR, make a new account, play offline with bots to level 13, and insta-pick Zeus for your 10 ranked matches. 8/10 wins in the least, and free 5k MMR account."

1/10. I won't even touch the fact that this is most likely a bald-faced lie. Let's assume that the system is broken and that this is possible. Do you think, even for an instant, that you will be able to keep this MMR if you don't deserve it? I have news for you, buddy! And even if you don't play anymore matches on that account and keep your 5000 MMR, what was the point? So you can tell people that you have a smurf account with 5000 MMR? Big deal!

Overall, here are my final opinions on recalibration:

- It takes a long time. You'll spend many hours to get to level 13 and play your 10 ranked matches, all for a chance at getting a slightly higher score.
- It's not your main account. Will you start switching accounts to play Ranked? It's quite a hassle.
- You can improve. Trust me, even I have done so.
- Your first score may have been incorrect. This means that either you were trolling during your 10 ranked matches, or you just were unlucky. This only means that you will improve even faster than normal, once you really start trying to.

Spoiler: Click to view

ChiChi wrote:

My personal tale from the Potato Bracket: that time when I went Sniper and fed cause I suck, but bought wards and smoke for my team and won a lost game with positive reinforcement for everybody, ended up with commends and praise for winning them the game because of my "positive way of dealing with the team" ;)
(http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1538039526)

I couldn't snag a replay of this one, but the gold graph below pretty much says it all.

Let's look at the drafts first:

Dire has an extremely gank-heavy lineup with the likes of Riki, Pudge, Bloodseeker, and Doom Bringer. Any one of these heroes can solo kill an out-of-position hero.

On the other hand, the Radiant has:
Ogre Magi: A good defensive support, somewhat greedy.
Viper:Strong lane presence, can solo manfight anyone.
Abaddon: Good teamfight presence, played as a carry in this match.
Legion Commander: A strong carry IF she is snowballing.
Sniper: A glass cannon hard carry. Positioning is key to success.

It's obvious that the Radiant side has an extremely fragile setup, as in they need a lot of farm before they can be helpful in fights. I'm guessing that the Legion Commander and Doom respectively were junglers, so that slowed the game down somewhat.

The Radiant gains a gold lead at minute 12, and it's obvious why: Riki, Doom, and Bloodcyka have hit level 6, and now have begun farming heroes. And what better lane to gank then a dual lane with a Sniper? What with Ogre Magi not having a single point into Ignite, they could do nothing to stop the enemy from tower diving and killing them.

This situation continues until minute 30. Sniper has gotten sick of Ogre Magi running around with Arcane Boots, a Headdress and no wards, and decides to buy them himself. This vision is used to avoid incoming ganks, and set up a counterattack.

This here is important. Sniper could have spent his time spamming ">We need wards." and cursing at his teammates for being terrible idiots who should uninstall the game. Likewise, Sniper had probably fed a lot of kills as well, and his teammates could have made him tilt with nasty remarks. But this didn't happen. He knew his kill-crazy enemies would eventually overextend, and waited for a prime opportunity.

At minute 32, Dire gets a teamwipe for a 7,000 gold swing in their favor. I'm guessing either Riki overextended under a Sentry Ward, or Bloodseeker dived past a Tier 3 to kill a Ruptured target and died. Someone on Radiant buys a Gem of True Sight, and the advantage is cemented.

The Sniper in this game didn't lose his temper because of an early game feed, but remained calm and positively reinforced his team until they had a chance to strike back. And strike back they did. An inspirational tale for us all.

Spoiler: Click to view

Hello everyone! Long time no see. It's been quite a while since I've updated the guide. This is mostly because I haven't had much time to play DOTA recently. University work has kept me from being able to contribute as much as I would have wanted to. Just as Patch 7.00 hit, I also had a full two months of assignments and exams. I'm all done with that now, and I'll be finishing my university studies very soon.

However, those two months of absence combined with Patch 7.00 changing the game mechanics made me completely lose my game sense. I played a couple Ranked matches here and there, but I was just feeding relentlessly as a support, so I quit Ranked and tried a couple normal matches.

The normal matches I played were few and far between, and I can't say I was really learning anything from them. But I knew that if I switched back to Ranked, my lack of practice was sure to cost me losses.

So I started this downward spiral of avoiding to play Ranked, because I was afraid I'd lose, knowing full well that every day I didn't play my skill level would keep going down passively.

Instead, I attempted to get a feel of the current meta by playing loads of unranked games and first-pick randoming heroes. The result was several on-off medium quality games followed by a massive loss streak.


Yeesh.


I always say that DOTA is a constant learning experience, and you can learn something new even from a terrible defeat. But I didn't feel I was really learning anything from these matches. Maybe it was the fact that the quality in Unranked games is lower because the stakes aren't as high. Maybe it was the fact that I didn't believe in myself. Maybe it was a little bit of both. You could say that I had lost my way.

I'm staging a comeback though!


feelsgoodman.jpg

I've decided to suck it up and start playing Ranked again. I may tank MMR at the beginning, but I have a feeling I'll be learning way faster than if I just kept moping around and finding excuses to avoid the ladder. I won't lose MMR if I don't play, but I won't gain any either.

Here are some personal goals I've set for myself:

-Learn how to play hard carries. Amazingly, I've managed to get this far without ever really having to play a hard carry role. Usually someone else always instacalls carry, so I always thought it was easy peasy, just a matter of getting perfect CS early on, buying items and just winning fights from then on. But I was looking at things from a skewed perspective as a support/offlane main. When I tried to pull it off myself, I had a 40% winrate, not exactly optimal.

My main problem is figuring out when exactly to stop farming and join my team in fights. Either I join from the start of the game and end up severely underfarmed later, or fall in an Anti-Mage downward spiral of split pushing till Battle Fury, then split pushing till I farm my items, then split pushing till my Ancient explodes, never joining my team.

I'll figure it out eventually. Right now I can play a decent PA. Deso rush is OP.


-Learn how to play Broodmother. Most heroes in DOTA have versatile builds, and the best players know how to adapt their skill and item builds to counter specific opponents in any match.

Broodmother is not that type of hero, quite the contrary, in fact. Very specific skill build with zero variations, specific item builds at least until the ultra late game, and worst of all, static laning. To make the most out of Brood's webs, you cannot leave the lane you're on, which is most commonly the hard lane. As such, if you get hard countered by enemies, you probably won't be able to come back. In addition, you can't really assist in teamfights until well into the late game, and when you do it's usually a backup plan.

Yet Broodmother is the absolute best at what she does. Amazing laning power early on, capable of crippling the enemy hard carry, then when the mid game begins, you can push and take down barracks alone by minute 20. You'll be constantly forcing enemy rotations, and if anyone teleports to your lane alone, you can eat them.

However, those who have ever lost to a skilled Broodmother, including myself, know how to counter her. It's quite easy, really; always carry Sentry Wards and draft metric tons of AOE.

"But what if I haven't drafted any AOE?", you might ask.

Well, heh, that's why I want to learn Brood. It's a game winning 5th pick and a valuable tool at your disposal if you can play her, just like Meepo.

---

That's all for now, I'll keep you posted on my progress here!

Spoiler: Click to view

How I feel right now.

Hey what's up reader. Long time, no see. How have you been?

To be honest, for the past couple years I had kinda given up on DOTA 2. I was still generally following the scene, browsing dank memes and drama on r/dota2, but I didn't have the time to actively play enough to grind MMR. You see, since then I've finished uni, moved to a new country, and found a stable job doing what I like. My life was pretty much figured out, and DOTA didn't play as big a part in it.

Then the plague hit.

That's fine! More time to play DOTA. So I returned to the game.

And BOY oh BOY did I suck. I lost about 600 MMR in a month.

That's fine. I have time to improve. Nothing's going on in my life right now anyway.
So I started playing more and getting better very slowly.

And then I found out that people in the DOTA 2 esports community were actually huge creeps and everyone started canceling each other on Twitter. And this stuff was going on years ago, all the while I was a kid enjoying these people's content, being their fan, looking up to them, seeing a part of myself in them.

That's fine. You know what they say, never meet your heroes. Heh.

Anyway, all this has brought me into a weird realization: At the end of the day, it's up to us to improve the DOTA community and make it a better place. I certainly don't know how to fix everything, but I will do what I can.

And what I can do, is post mediocre guides on the Internet.

So, on the menu today: how to climb MMR on a tight time budget!

As I'm now working an 8 hour job, I don't have as much time to devote to DOTA. So how can I improve as fast as possible? Here's what I've been doing.

1)Limit my role pool.
I stick to two roles: Hard Support and Offlane. Because I am at a lower MMR rank than my skill level right now, playing a core is more likely to result in a win. I don't have as much experience in Hard Carry or Mid, and I simply don't have the time to sit down and learn how to play them at my level. This allows me to tighten my skills and raise my MMR number. It's not ideal, but that's what I can do right now.

2)Limit my hero pool.
I have about 1-2 instant picks for Support/Offlane. Especially in Ranked Roles where you are usually first picking, there's not much reason to devote brain power into counterpicking the supports. I generally pick disgusting lane ruiners like Nyx Assassin and Axe which will have a favorable matchup in most cases, then hope that my enemies won't counter. Most times they do.

3)Expand hero pool to include one popular pick.
As a way to learn new things while also gaining MMR and keeping my playstyle tight, I try to incoporate one new popular meta build into my hero pool. Right now that pick is Bounty Hunter offlane, it's working well for me so far as illusion carries aren't as meta right now.

That's all for now! Hopefully my next post won't take another two years.

Conclusion

That's it! I consider this guide to be complete, but I intend to keep adding more stuff such as tips, photos, hidden links, and more good reads.

Wanna quickly contact me? Then follow me on Twitter (@The_Dork_Seer) and send me a direct message.

You can also find me on YouTube here: The Noob's Guide to DOTA 2
Play Video
I've just started this channel to post some video content. It's finally at a stage where I feel comfortable sharing it with other people. Videos are aimed at complete noobs right now as a kickoff point, and I will now slowly start progressing to more advanced guides.

I'm also looking forward to your rants constructive criticism on this guide! Please tell me where you think I might have missed something so I can fix it! Probably!

To the reader who managed to survive reading this wall of text, may you get out of whatever MMR-zone is your personal ELO-hell and top the Ranked Leaderbords!

-TEL9021

Changelog

9/5/2014: Guide published!
30/5/2014: Finally got around to adding a Roaming Support section. Added a sick intro pic.
4/6/2014: Added another pic, fixed some typos.
8/6/2014: More fixed typos, GoT picture, added chapter for the Compendium Hero Challenge.
11/6/2014: More pic, more white text. My eyes hurt from this white glare!
29/6/2014: Pic of my own core hero list, a new Good Read, and two hidden links!
7/7/2014: New pic, new hidden link!
22/7/2014: The Anti-Update! Removed bonus chapter, will add something cool to replace it soon! Also, pic and hidden links.
29/7/2014: The Potato Update: Added new bonus chapter and 2 Tales From the Potato Bracket.
13/8/2014: New tale from the bracket of Potatoes!
28/8/2014: report venge ff pls cyka blyat
8/10/2014: Something something Potato Bracket.
4/12/2014: New blog post Tale From the Potato Bracket and a new Good Read!
7/1/2015: An update to the main guide, focusing on changes in the metagame since the last few patches.
11/4/2015: The Communication Update! Updates to the main guide, changed heroes and items to match current trends, more hidden links.
25/6/2015: A new Tale, updated "meta" heroes.
29/11/2015: New Good Read, typo fixed.
22/3/2016: Altered Ursa-Ench example to Ursa-Chen, since Ench is a great solo offlane pick now.
20/6/2016: New hidden link, fixed broken image link, updated meta heroes. RIP Bloodcyka.
25/6/2016: TEL9021 Sells Out update! Please don't hate me too much for this.
22/10/2016: Fixed some typos. How can this thing still have typos?
26/6/2017: I'm back, *****es. Various updates and new summary section at the start.
1/7/2017: Typo fixes and other improvements.
24/7/2018: Fixed bug where TEL9021 was a sellout.
20/7/2020: I'm back, for one last dance. Brought this guide to the [CURRENT YEAR], added a link to an irrelevant YouTuber, and a new Tale from the Potato Bracket.