So I was egged on by a lot of peers and other gamers to do a writeup, most people looking forward it seeing how I got from 3.3k to 5k within the space of months. I'm sitting at my computer at 10pm because I got the night off of work, and I'm bored shitless, so I thought i'd start on it. I'm sitting with my dotabuff open and a notepad with word wrap on, just typing as I go, then I will copy and paste it into the teamliquid dota as a blog so I could share it around. It's going to be extremely rustic. I like to think I am good at explaining things, but I get very sidetracked so I like to go back and forth explaining different elements. I'll start with the general progress from start to finish, then go back and reflect on the biggest figures, then other pointers, and what to look out for.
THERE IS A TL;DR AT THE BOTTOM I DIDNT EXPECT THIS TO BE SO LONG AND I STILL DIDNT EVEN SAY EVERYTHING I WANTED TO SO YEAH IF YOU CBF READING GO TO THE BOTTOM
To start with and clarify, my initial goal was actually 4k. For a long time. I had an old account that I calibrated 3.2k and I don't think I ever left it. I wanted 4k for ages. I saw people at 4k that aren't even good and thought I should be at least up there, like every other 2/3k player that wanted to go higher. Back at this point I actually dropped out of school due to being a lazy little depressed shit, and had about a year or so where I did absolutely nothing. I stayed up til 4am each night when I was about 16 years old just so I could play dota with friends that lived in america/europe as they played at the time it was really late here. I played with these guys on servers closest to them. I played hundreds and hundreds of games on 300+ ping. The funny thing was, a lot of these games I performed equally, if not better than all of the people I played with. A lot of those players were ungrateful to play on 60 ping more than what they usually did, whereas I've never actually played an online game with less than 80 ping. I was used to high ping because it's all I played with and the netcode of Dota 2 allows it with no lag, just a bit of delay similar to a ball and chain effect on each hero.
I played supports cause of this, like crystal maiden, for over a year. My old dotabuff which I lost track of had about 1000 games overall, and my most played heroes were Crystal Maiden, Windrunner, and a few other int supports like Lion I think. When I played ranked and calibrated here, I worked really hard, or at least I thought I did. I thought winning was everything. I would often stun opponents and leave the last hits for the carries, good for them but I dealt no hero damage, tower damage, had no economy, so as far as my luck went assisting my team stomping all of these games, I had nothing to show for it. After a year of never climbing or going down, just staying at the bottom of 3k and being upset about it, I decided to take it more seriously. Like a lot of people did, I made an alt and decided To calibrate on that. I thought I'd improved so much as a player. I played more and more and I calibrated at 3.3k. Virtually insignificant. Due to reasons including an untradable sf arcana i decided to stick with this account which is why I have around 600 games played only and I am 5k, but realistically, the hours of experience before this account really didnt account for much, because I played the same heroes I knew, patch in patch out, doing the same build, never really learning anything.
I thought I was great cause I could number crunch. I knew what spells pierced bkb off by heart, and all stuff like this that should be general game knowledge, but I got so caught up in the details of that and the backscene of gamesense that I forgot to just loosen up and play the game as normal. I was stuck on what to do, but after a lot of time playing I really had no urge to just give up on the game. I had something to prove. Every other 3k player that called me shit when i supported them on 300 ping were to be proven wrong. Every time someone called me out on a build that I'd proven to myself to be good, I was told I was wrong, and they'd show me their AMAZING BUILD they tried out once and went 12-5 and thought they were superior. I have a knack for assisting people, so that was a big reason of why I wanted to get up so I could earn respect of other players so they would listen to me when I had something to say, similar to a coach, a teacher, a trainer. Nobody is going to listen to a 3k crystal maiden player.
I always liked the opportunistic style of gameplay, which ofcourse you would translate to just good positioning and decision making. The first hero I ever won with was Drow Ranger, and she's still one of my favourite heroes to play now. I am always able to position myself well as Drow, and if I have no targets between me and the tower, I just love destroying towers. Large ranged hero with extremely high damage and a bitch of a slow seemed great for years. Then I found terrorblade. I tried him out after losing game after game against him, so rather than countering him, I decided to pick him. This is where it all began. Where I started playing the game not to have fun, but to win. Because winning is fun. Losing and blameing teammates is not fun. Killing their throne and seeing +25 was fun. Playing a hero I liked with his douchebag evil laugh at the end of a game after I destroyed everyone both physically and mentally was just too good not to pass up.
I played terrorblade as much as I could knowing he was going to get nerfed. I watched streams of pro players playing him and winning the game going any lane they could, cause they were playing terrorblade. I ground 3.3k-3.7k just by picking him in ranked and all I can say was I didn't want to stop. Unfortunately, he did get nerfed and I was stuck on what to do. He just wasn't worth playing anymore. The one good game I'd have as him, they'd have an equally as good ember spirit or axe or whatever countering me, and those guys are just great at taking advantage of idiots alike, whereas I'm forced not to do anything as my team cant respect the fact that 4 people tp'ing in to stop one of my splitpushes meant that the rest of my team should take action. This was always my gripe with pub players, but as you go up it's not an issue. I stopped playing nature's prophet because of this. 3 people tp'ed in to stop me, other 2 tier 3's are exposed, yet my team is sitting around our carry at our own ancients "backing them up" for farm. I hated this. I decided at this point I needed to play heroes that did everything themselves. They killed heroes, farmed when they could, and pushed towers when they could. This was how I played, and its the best way to win. This entirely ruled out playing any support heroes, and some offlaners.
When I stopped, I watched a replay of someone owning me with Huskar, and I was immediately interested. Soon after he became my favourite hero. I watched a replay of a top tier game with a 17-1 huskar and looked at his player stats, and every game he did the same build. And I delved deeper and decided that this was the best way to play the hero. I had so much success with this hero, building the same shit every game. People would counterpick me and it would just make me even better as I'd play way more safer for the reason. I had won 90% of games with him that werent against any hero with a bash and/or ancient apparition. Before too long I got ridiculously good at this hero. I had so many enemy support heroes complaining how bullshit it was that I could dodge their stuns with my ultimate, getting triple kills under towers and at this point I felt power beyond measure. I got to 4k with this hero and I did not feel like I had achieved anything apart from adrenaline and an urge to continue beyond greatness. 4k was where I deserved to be, in my opinion, and now I'm there, I have to improve upon myself as a player and keep climbing. If I could play every hero in the game as well as I could have played huskar, I'd be 5k for sure. Ofcourse I cant just pick huskar every game, I started really struggling with him, he is still very easy to counter.
I start playing solo mids. Barely any experience apart from knowing the heroes spells and playing against them, knowing off the back of my hand how to win mid as them. I played qop, ember spirit, slark mid, sometimes drow mid even, storm spirit, and shit was just so easy compared to what I thought it was. Every game is filled with people screaming for solo mid thinking they'll win the game, but these are all players that go mid and just accept the result of the game based off their laning phase, whether they win, or lose and call gg. What i'd like to discuss is why solo mid is so successful:
Every team needs a hero that plays for impact. Achieving the highest kill/death/ratio possible. I thought these players did it for epenis, because I was just up myself thinking I was better than that, but no. All pub meta relies on having one or two of these types of heroes being successful. Why?
-I can farm at all points of the game. If our safelane carry is successful, we now have 2 heroes that the enemy team must pay attention to. In pubs, they will gank one while the other farms. Then that one gets ganked and your other core farms his death back up, and past that. Ofcourse more than 3 cores will leave none of them with room to jungle, but having 2 or 3 hard carry cores is just all too easy. You can even all build straight dps til you start to lose then whip a BKB out of your ass and start killing everyone and win the game, if you all have amiable farm. Its just how pubs work.
-I can farm heroes at all points of the game. No jungle space? My team needs assistance in fights? I get gold and exp for it? Fantastic. I'm going to gank their carry! Not only do they lose gold, but they start to lose the lane, while our lane starts snowballing ahead. Below 3k people like to accept losses, whereas winning teams like to throw games. The thing is here if you get ahead early and you know how to keep a lead, you will win 80% of the games that start out well
-I can win mid? Woo! I shut down the enemy mid, now theyre forced to leave the lane and try and make action. With good enough wards and map awareness, the most they will do is have one of your lanes sit at a tower for 15 seconds before they give up and come back mid. The time they've left, you've already made a successful gank with an action rune, or you got a dd as drow and killed mid tower, and are now ready to tp to another lane and push that one too. 20 minutes in your safelane carry has farm cause theyre too scared of you, you have farm too as a result, and both their mid and lane you ganked have absolutely fuck all. If you win mid, you've guaranteed to win at LEAST 2 lanes, if you are good enough at the role.
Don't be afraid to go mid. Learn just one mid hero, and play them. Play them til your fingers bleed, then play another. You will learn stuff from all roles by doing this. You will learn good farming habits that will come in handy with playing core roles, as will you learn good support by communicating with yours to kill heroes with low level spells. If you want to grind mmr, you will want to go solo mid or safelane carry and kill as many heroes as possible and/or farm as many items early as possible. Most likely, you will get shit supports, so you need to play heroes that are:
a) Self sufficient
b) Great with items
c) Still useful when behind
d) Can participate with spells for teamfights and skirmishes/ganks when you still dont have farm
e) Are good at farming
There's quite a few heroes with these traits, some are missing one or two but can be made up for with certain items. One very important thing to know is, if you've played against a hero, or with a hero, for enough games to have an opinion on them, 90% of the time you're able to play them. Slark, Troll, etc I picked and by a few games I had them down pat. I knew players that knew how to play them, looked at their item orders, and assessed why they did it. Every game as troll I start with a tango, stout and ring of protection, then i have some gold leftover to get a quelling blade at lane. Why do this when I can buy branches, right? Because with RoP and melee form, i have 7 armor at level one, and i'm better at last hitting than 95% of other non qb heroes in the game. I can still last hit with 55 or so damage with ranged attack and quelling ranged bonus, while keeping distance. i get bonus hp from melee, and i have high damage, and my spells are cheap so i dont need stats. If I have to be in ranged, I'm playing a lane where branches are irrelevant because i am probably going in ranged to harrass an enemy not even hitting me, or I'm doing it to stop myself from getting hit.
The point of this is if a player tells you what to do, and theyre better than you, don't disagree with what they say. AGREE WITH IT, then FIGURE OUT WHY THEY ARE MORE SUCCESSFUL than you. When I am telling people to play huskar how I play him, with brown boots > halberd > tranquils > halberd, thats because it works. If you play him how I play him, this build is the most efficient way to play him in my opinion. Maybe not to the 6k europe players that play him more than me, but to a 3k player, this is more efficient than your way. Stuff like that. More importantly, this applies to other advice. When I tell you go try mid out, you try it. You shouldn't immediately disregard advice, ever. I got to 5k looking at replays of players better than me and following what they did. I told myself I had the game knowledge to do it, so I just need to figure out the keys to winning. You can apply gamesense to any hero you play, so why not play the heroes that are best to win as? You're just further cementing your success. Refusing to play jugg, slark, axe, whatever, will result in a quick deterioration of mmr no matter your skill.
MMR is based on winning, so fucking win. Play good, play well. What else? Your teammates are shit? Oh really? You're the only person ever matched with bad teammates, cool. Well in reality, your teammates are the only people in a game that will further implement your individual success, and expand it into victory after victory. If you really were that good, you should be helping your teammates out being as good as you. Don't blame people having foreign languages. Simple terms like pinging a hero and yelling "gank" applies to pretty much anybody that plays this game that has sound activated. I always see people blame their teammates for not doing things they expect them to do. Well did you tell them to do that? Did you tell your 14 minute brown boots support to buy wards? No. He didnt buy them cause he thinks a force staff is probably better than map vision. Sure you can say they were stubborn if they didnt buy wards, but at least you asked. 80% of the time if you ask someone to buy wards, they will ask. In higher tier games, you are given farm priority as a carry right? One neutral camp gives you enough gold to buy a set. if you're busy farming them, get the courier to put the wards on the support to plant them. Was that really hard? Surely buying a set of wards as a carry is not worth having everyone angry and lose a game over.
What i'd like to point out is that you need to show the initiative to lead your team. If you're so great, why don't you tell your team what to do. Why don't people communicate is what I want to know. You should always be talking. It's a team game right. Do you think pro players play the game with their mouths duct taped shut? No, use your damn voicebox and tell your team how it is. I've worked in customer service for years. Basically, I get paid to talk to people I've no experience talking to before. Customers are like dota players. They're not all bad. I work at a casino and man do i get real assholes, but because I'm dealing the games to the patrons, I'm in control. I need to explain to people who don't know what to do, what to do, I need to tell angry people that stuff is okay if they need to relax, and I need to build up some cohesion with the patrons so make the game smoother so we can both have a good time.
A game i deal at the casino of Blackjack or Roulette is similar to playing with a teammates of dota, actually, so maybe this can give you guys some insight of why you should use your mic in 100% of your games. People come to my table like we were "matchmade" in dota on the same team. Now, all these people are going to be here for upto an hour on my table before its over. So you better fucking get used to it. You're going to greet people as nicely as possible, right? Everyones happy to have someone say hello to them. Just like dota, blackjack and roulette have random chances. Players sometimes get dealt shitty cards in a blackjack, or get spun numbers they dont bet on on roulette. Sometimes in dota, you get matched against players that are legitimately better than you, to the point they make your teammates look like theyre so damn bad you wonder how you were matchmade with them.
If I'm nice to patrons, then if the patron wins, they're more than happy. If the patron doesn't win, but they had a great time talking to me and the other people on the table, they're happy regardless. They've lost $50, but compared to a night of drinking or going out to a festival, they've only spent a bit of money and they've had a great time. However, if they lose and you were an asshole, nobody communicated, then you've both wasted that time, you're all going to leave the table unhappy. Even I do. I don't like when people don't get along because I'm paid by the hour to help patrons out, but just some people don't like that. If they start losing earlier, they get desperate and put more money down. They start doing stupid shit that doesn't help. I can be there to talk them through and make them take it easy, it's my job to deal the game, not to earn the money, because the table will earn its own amount of money, I'm on their side. We can discuss stuff for the next 10 minutes, they can get their mind straight and maybe try it again without dumping everything they've got on the table.
Now in dota, if I'm nice to players, if we win, they're more than happy. If the player doesn't win, but they had a great time playing as a team and learning from mistakes, they're happy regardless. They've lost 25 mmr, but compared to any other game they would have played, they've had a learning experience and can just win back the 25 mmr next game with their new found knowledge. If your teammates start off as assholes, why not help them? Supports arent buying wards for your carries? You can! You've got the gold for it. Don't automatically assume players will blame you for having no farm cause you bought wards, cause you can earn the gold back for that within seconds, and those wards may save many easily avoidable deaths from happening.
I can't really teach customer service/being nice to people, its something you must do yourself, but the least you can do is communicate. If you dont have a mic, you're lieing. Buy one thats five dollars for all I care. You know if you have people in a lane and the enemy mid is missing, they've got their heads shoved up their ass most likely. If you use your microphone and say 'Hey, the enemy mid is missing, just be careful they might try to gank you', then most likely your team will be more careful. They dont have to hug the tower, theyre going to stay in lane to try and leech exp hoping they wont die, but it still helps. They'll be back a bit. It's the same concept if you were to drive out in thunderstorms. You still need to get from a to b so you will drive on the road, but knowing its dangerous, dropping 5 miles an hour on your travels might save your life if a crash were to happen.
My biggest gripe with grinding is communication related. Please establish that you will often get teammates that wont help at all, but you can help them help you. The enemy team has players whining to themselves about shitty teammates too, and while you can take advantage of that, my point is that you need to make friends out of teammates in order to build up team cohesion. pub dota now turns into 5v1, because each of the enemy team members is wrapped up in their own game to try and win and being too busy to know you have a team switched on. Always make calls for your team on what to do, if nobody else does.
My conundrum here is that one way is the correct way. Because if your team is going in the same direction, then its better than them not moving at all. If it really was a better idea to do rosh than push, so be it. But if you called to push instead, then you have the entire team with you because you called for it, you're all on the same page and fighting is easier. Whereas if you didnt say anything and decide to push while your team struggles to do rosh, you might get picked off and the enemy team will go straight to rosh and kill the rest of your team and take aegis and racks and probably win the game. If your carry doesnt join the other 4 teammembers, dont blame him, just back up and give him time. If he wants to farm more, just let him. if he's giving up a push opportunity to farm, chances are even if he says nothing he knows what hes doing. if youre farming at 50 minutes when youre a good pusher you should probably push, so you could say you have a right to blame them, but that player may just feel more comfortable if he had another item before advancing, even if he didnt speak. He's going to get that item within 2 minutes or so and now he's ready to join you with his bkb and just mash down megacreeps. Don't always assume people disagreeing with you is bad, just accept it and move on. If the game ends with a loss cause of something like that, THEN you have the right to say it was his problem, but again you get this a lot. Just dont forget that any strategy you can do in dota is correct so long as you all agree to it. If you wanna just repeatedly gank the carry and push slowly, it may not be the best idea, but because you all agreed to it and are comfortable with it, it will be executed as well as it could have been, therefore you will still be successful.
Telling a teammate you want to farm an item before you push a tier 1 is a lot better than just saying nothing and letting them try to do it themselves and then blaming them for feeding. You need to pick your allies up off of the ground.
The 2 main keys to winning a solo ranked game is to be as successful as possible as an invididual, and to also help your team get along as much as possible. Your team doesnt have to be a 6k mmr european stack to win, its 3k. If your team get along enough to not feed brainlessly, then being successful yourself is usually enough to win the game.
I stressed this all enough, when I am asked what people can improve as a player, don't ask me that if you are playing a support. Supports may be good in pro games, and high tier games where all carries are pretty much equally skilled, but being a successful crystal maiden will never do you any good trying to win a game if it goes past the time the enemy carries activate unless your carry is also good. If you want to grind, play cores and not supports. Its as simple as that. Maybe in party ranked you can support a teammate, but as far as solo ranked goes, Play mids and carries. Trust me. It worked for me, I can't be wrong. All the stories you read up of people grinding are chock full of slark/ta/jugg/ember/storm games or whatever. You never see people achieveing 20 winstreaks as random supports, because even if they are the best support ever, if their carry sucks, they're probably going to bite the dust as they know their own strength of being able to not touch the daedulas bkb desolator ta that blinks in on them and one shots them. Thats not how you win the game, instead you get an abyssal blade, ac, whatever dps item as your carry and start bashing the shit out of that BKB ta. That's how you win games. Because in the first 20 minutes youre doing kust as well as your support is, but taking more farm. Supports can always stun people, but not really bkb targets.
My last main pointer: Carries can always deal tonnes of dps, and it goes without saying that tonnes of dps is the borderline game winning value that allows you to farm, kill heroes, roshan, push towers, and every carry can dish out tonnes of dps. Getting a tonne of dps on a carry items is fucking easy. If you know how to farm as a hero, you can get the items for this, and its as easy as using any setup related spells/waiting for an initiator, then right clicking while positioning yourself well enough and/or popping bkb. Any player in the game can buy mjollnir/ac/mkb/daed/deso/whatever the fuck they want then buy a bKB when they start to lose, but if you have phase boots, helm of the dominator, basilius and sange and yasha by 20 minutes, or any similar 20 minute key item build, you've pretty much got the goods to take any action you want. Kill heroes, take towers, or just farm infinitely. You can do all three without having to go back to base. If someone tries to kill you you can fight back instead of being ganked to shit every game.
MY BIGGEST TIP FOR GRINDING AS CORES IS TO ACHIEVE THE BEST POSSIBLE PRE-2O MINUTE FARM YOU CAN. This is the time frame where shitty 3k carries on the enemy teams have no items cause nobody knows how the fuck to farm, and sure as hell supports wont have force/euls/whatever at this point either. Maybe blink if theyre doing good but my point is, if you have optimal farm at this point, you can do virtually anything as the core you are playing. if you get 20 minute Treads aquila mek bkb on shadow fiend, you can now go with your team and do pretty much anything you want on the map. If you have those previously mentioned items (phase basi helm sny) on troll at 20 minutes, youre tanky as fuck and deal shittons of damage, and can kill pretty much anyone in the game with your skillset, whereas you'll take so many stuns to kill that the rest of your teammates should have something to say about it. If you get Treads shadow blade sny on slark by 20 minutes, you have the damage to shadow blade in on a support, right click, instapounce and purge and just kill them before they can cast a spell after your purge ends, and even if they do you can just ult away. Figuring out the formula to success for each individual hero is one thing, but the best way to achieve it is to make sure you have the best farm possible early. without it, your team may crumble and you'll never be able to get that farm back until a point where it may be too late. If your carry has his core items at 20 minutes, ANYTHING is possible. And if thats you, you have control beyond belief in your game.
tl;dr
-If I can get to 3.3k to 5k, you can get from 2k to 3k or 3k to 4k no problem.
-Use your microphone and communicate, be nice to your teammates. If you don't have a mic, buy one.
-Buy wards if nobody else does rather than dealing with having none
-Play heroes that fucking WIN games, and if you cant win as them, get good at them (yes you want to practise mid heroes/carries)
-Get as good at winning lanes and getting farm in both good and bad lanes as possible
-Use your gold as best you can as early as possible making the right decision down to even deciding whether to get basi/aquila or not, basically stuff on the spot
-Play for the patch you're playing
-If a player better than you tells you something, accept their advice and THEN if it doesnt work, you can disregard it. Don't write off what a more experienced/better player tells you before giving it a try.
-All games are winnable
-The enemy team also has people that believe their teammates are shit too, so don't think you're out of luck every game you get someone that doesn't speak english. Just communication itself is OP.
-Don't be afraid to counterpick if you're good at a hero that can counter theirs and it works well (ie picking Drow against Axe, if you're a good Drow you will beat an Axe unless he's a stupidly good axe and you're really not good at Drow)
-If you believe you have good technical knowledge of the game, then work more on your skill, and visa versa. Gamesense is half learned over time, half natural, so if you have a knack for it then just play more and skill will come easily.
I plan on spending my time in the future not playing this game as much as I just did, but writing guides. I'd like to do an item 101 and individual hero 101 guides on Steam so when I decide to start that then look out for them.