General Discussion

General DiscussionHow many heroes should you "master"?

How many heroes should you "master"? in General Discussion
Zodyax

    Hi guys,

    This is my frist post on Dotabuff, although Im always reading the forums and the blog.

    Im so in love with Dota, I think its a fantastic game. I've always been more of a old-school RPG gamer. As I grow older though, I find it more difficult to play 5 hours straight on a Sunday. I live with my Girlfriend and have a really demanding job. The last two years I have been playing almost exclusively DOTA. The reason is that if my Girlfriend is arriving late I can play 1-2 quick games. Playing old-school RPG for 1 hour just leaves me with the itch.

    At first I loved supports. I always played mages in the RPG games.

    If im playing unranked I have fun with heroes like earth spirit, I suck with him, but I love his mechanichs. I dont get mad if I loose unranked.

    However ranked is a different story. If I play ranked I play to WIN. If I have to go mid I usually go Sniper, Weaver for Offlane and Anti-Mage for safe lane. Natures Prophet for Jungle.

    As you can see these are all heroes with wich I can do decent hero damage and split push at the same time. I dont play support anymore in ranked because Im not that good to make a high impact on the game with them. I LOVE playing support with my friends, who I know will back me up if I smoke ward with CM and suddenly find a huge guy with two wolves on their jungle horny for raping me. But I fail to have a high impact with them on solo ranked.

    Thing is, at first I calibrated at 2.5k mmr. However, tilt after tilt I went down and down. I think I once even got to 400 mmr. This made me stop playing ranked and I kept playing the game I loved unranked.

    However, 3-4 months ago I decided I wanted a higher mmr, so I started to grind that bitch.

    Today im sitting at 1k mmr. I KNOW IT SUCKS.

    I watch a lot of pro games, but i figured out that my ranked games are a different game of DOTA. If i like basketball and play it with my friends, Im not going to try (and fail) the plays I saw the pro's do at NBA.

    Do you think that with this 4 heroes (Sniper, Weaver, Anti-Mage and Nature's Prophet) I can keep climbing mmr? Keep in mind that you have to play WAY better than anybody else to climb at this bracket. Just playing "a bit" better will give you cool KDA, but it will not make you win the game.

    Im sory if my english sucks.

    PD: I love this forums, thank you so much for the good reads :)

    I FUCKING LOVE DOTA, it's kind of like a lifestyle, right?

    🍩🍪Cookie🍪🍩

      pick 2-3 heroes you enjoy the most and master them

      Mekarazium
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        Nile

          Try some farming split pushing heroes, You'll win literally 99% of ur game in 1k, am, jugg, naga, arc warden, tb, when your opponent trys to push your base, just fucking cut the wave, 1k players have no idea how to play against it. Of course, assuming that you are a decent farmer.

          This comment was edited
          Zodyax

            Thanks for replying guys

            efextoide

              all from ur role

              Zodyax

                efextoide
                all from ur role

                I've been trying to cover more than one role. Mid, safelane, offlane and jungle. This way I have more options. If i only play mid and somebody in my team first picks pudge im fucked xD. Same as If I only play offlane and someone in my team first picks Timbersaw.

                However, are you advising I should only learn one role? If I do, what happens when someone from my team picks it first?

                AAA

                  in normal skill you are perfectly fine playing a wide pool of heroes in aim of finding the ones you truly like. you can have 100% winrate while doing all hero challenge, because it's superior mechanical skill/game sense that nets you wins and not just your hero mastery. f you want to climb out of 2-3k fast though, you are better off playing the ones you like most, play best, etc, since all players tend to have at least some degree of mechanical skill or game sense in them.
                  what matters is that you don't make mistakes , maybe try to save teammates to keep them from tilting over deaths, and shit like that.
                  tldr while you are 1k you can play a lot of heros to improve game sense and learn how to play against all the heroes, assuming you havent played them all yet.

                  This comment was edited
                  Goldy

                    So the idea of wanting to climb as fast as possible from 1k is to not play with heroes that you're <50% winrate. I would suggest doing what Cookie said and pick a few heroes that you enjoy most and master them, but from the list of heroes that you're winning the most with. With Nature's Prophet and Anti-Mage, you're winning 43.75% and 44.44%, respectively, so I would avoid playing with those two. You have good winrates and stats with Sniper, Weaver, Viper, Invoker, and Spectre, so I would focus more on those heroes if you wanted to climb faster.

                    Filthy

                      In lower mmr just make sure your hero has some kind of way to do tower damage even if they are not the best split pusher .

                      Zodyax

                        [m8s]Goldy
                        So the idea of wanting to climb as fast as possible from 1k is to not play with heroes that you're <50% winrate. I would suggest doing what Cookie said and pick a few heroes that you enjoy most and master them, but from the list of heroes that you're winning the most with. With Nature's Prophet and Anti-Mage, you're winning 43.75% and 44.44%, respectively, so I would avoid playing with those two. You have good winrates and stats with Sniper, Weaver, Viper, Invoker, and Spectre, so I would focus more on those heroes if you wanted to climb faster.

                        Dude thanks so much, you even checked my dota buff!

                        I love invoker, but I like to play QW more than QE. At my bracket I found QW offlane pretty strong, thing is people kept reporting me for not going QE mid, so I'm kind of fed up with it.

                        I relly like Spectre, but it's kind of like a gamble. Either I go Godlike or fail miserably.

                        Viper is awesome, I truly love him, but I've played so many games with him, and his slow playstyle made me get bored of him.

                        Nature's Prophet I think im good, but the first games with him I tried playing him support and fed the other team, making me loose the game, giving me that low winrate. Today I usually build him for right-click damage and pushing.

                        Anti-Mage something similar than Nature's Prophet. I did some fucked up builds. Now im doing the cookie-cutter build (treads, BF, manta, HoT)

                        I'll play Nature and Anti-Mage unranked till I get them to +50% winrate, If i'm able to do this ill know that im better at them than I was before.

                        So in the mean time i'll play Sniper mid and Weaver offlane exclusively for ranked.

                        Do you think this is a good idea?

                        Alliance.LuLd[A]

                          Learn to play Tiny.. stun toss combo with dagger are the best one for 1-2k mmr..

                          Zus

                            You can main 2-3 heros and still be decent at most other heros. Mastering heros is different from playing them decent. Mastering an hero takes an avarage amount of 50-100 games imo.

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                            Dikson

                              it depends on a hero. Sven can be mastered with 50 games while ember might not even with 200.

                              Dem1se.終焉

                                Pick heroes who snowball really hard like zeus early till the enemy team can't recover, from my experience in 2k the core pickers will tilt easily when they see their team getting pummeled by you and they often throw themselves into the fights and die themselves resulting in +25 lol or if you want you can play necro with his disgusting scepter effect(and refresher to be more of a bitch) you'll get the satisfaction knowing they'll stay dead for 120 seconds while you and your team demolish their entire base lmao. Just remember this in low mmr, picking carries or not doesnt really matter what matters is you fuck the other team up so bad they tilt and fail to recover thats my advice from my experience in 2k just played pugna mid against a puck yesterday got 2 kills out of him he started choking so bad he threw himself into fights and ended up getting one shotted by decryptify and dagon. http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2719923790 heres the match if you're interested

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                                Celine

                                  Mastering hero is not the same as able to play them decently
                                  I suggest...
                                  Master about 2 heroes on each role and be able to play about 3-4 decently for each role
                                  For example, I have (kinda) mastered void, jugg, AM, but I'm only decent with heroes like spectre, luna, etc

                                  Zodyax

                                    Guys thank you so much for your support.

                                    I agree about people tilting. Im a Psychologist and I always like to play the psych game. Not flaming is being a mile ahead of everybody.

                                    Espresso yoself.

                                      @Sorcery the more important thing is to capitalize on the other team's mistakes, get an easy kill on someone? Make sure the OTHER team knows it, low mmr games 99% of the time the other team implodes.

                                      Celine

                                        From what I have experienced
                                        Try to master supports that punishes stupid mistake, bounty hunter is an example
                                        Master carries that can push or snowball easily and are not exactly one dimensional like SF because he only deals damage
                                        Offlane? NS people don't even know how offlane works and what is his role
                                        One of the reason why I lose so many slardar games

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                                        LeFlash

                                          You seem to have a good attitude towards the game so you should improve just by enjoying playing, but I have a question you said you dropped from 2,5k to 400 mmr and then climbed to 1k, but I see you have 52% winrate on ranked so its pretty much imposible that you have droped, suspicious man.. If you calibrated at 1k dont be ashamed of that, I calibrated at 1,3k and im 5,4k atm. Just enjoy the game, you obviously dont have as much free time as I do so you shouldnt expect to be 5k anytime soon either, but you can easily get to 3k in few months.

                                          LeFlash

                                            As a tip I can tell you that picking zeus helped me a lot climbing to 3k back in the days, if you liked mages in RPGs zeus is your hero, you cant heal nor stun, but you can dish more damage than any other hero in the game on a consistent basis. You only need to make sure your teammates pick some pushing heroes as you cant do it with zeus, you are there to kill everyone. In that bracket people wont gank you midlane, you can control runes just by pushing the lane before the rune spawns, and people rarely get mek or pipes in 1k.
                                            SF seemed very good to me from 3k to 4k bracket, in 4k people get more serious about ganking mid.

                                            Celine

                                              Flash you're making me scared
                                              I don't want to be stuck in NS for that long

                                              LeFlash

                                                What scares you man? I have climbed 4k mmr in 2 years with 2200 ranked games with 57,5% wr, (idk how many of them are solo and how many are party), It shouldnt take you that much to go from yuor actual 2k to 3,2k (high skill), maybe half a year, even less if you're very good or if you just focus on solo ranked.

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                                                LeFlash

                                                  basically to grind 1k mmr you need +40 wins (40x25=1k), if you win 1 more game than you lose every day you play, you only need 40 days to climb 1k! So easy man..

                                                  Kappa

                                                  doc joferlyn simp

                                                    Actually what a good way to rationalize it, idk why you put that Kappa call me dense or naive but I think the math checks out

                                                    🍩🍪Cookie🍪🍩

                                                      Mastering hero is not the same as able to play them decently

                                                      what, that's exactly what mastering means

                                                      aka you learn them and become a ''master'' of that hero

                                                      if you're a psycologist @Sorcery then you should be the fastest person at getting to high mmr

                                                      analyizing high mmr using psycology and focusing on what's going on in the mind of a high mmr player would give you the fastest possible learning curve

                                                      with actual degree level knowledge in psycology you could pretty much hit 6k in a couple months if you try hard enough

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                                                      LeFlash

                                                        Because I also believed in this, and I was doing it when I reached 5k, I think i reached 5k at about 15th september. I was doing it pretty good, I even had advantatge over my own expectation, I think I had won 300 mmr in just 5 days and I was so excited, but then the losses came, I tried to keep up the 1 win per day but when you lose 3 or 4 in a row it means you have to win 4 or 5 games in a row to compensate, I got frustrated and I stopped.. Maybe a more chill person could use this method.

                                                        doc joferlyn simp

                                                          I am planning play overnight tomorrow, will try my best to stay chill and win twice as much as I lose wish me luck lmao

                                                          After that I'm gonna try the 1 win a day challenge, I might actually climb with that

                                                          Thanks LeFlash , 1k seems ez now I'm gonna try and grind that haha

                                                          LeFlash

                                                            Gl mate I'm glad I motivated you

                                                            Zodyax

                                                              Hey guys, again thanks for support!

                                                              Im kind of mad cause I just lost a ranked match. We had mega, I was about to take ancient and a KOTL teleported me to MY base "so we could push". My team was really bad so they raped us in TF and we lost. It sucked! I was really close to their ancient, like 350 range and all their team was bot.

                                                              I could make a post about "how to escape the trench" after that match, but it's ok you know? I've read countless posts that say the same thing: If you are good, eventually it will even out and you will climb. I can imagine how many games I won because someone on the other team made a crucial mistake like this KOTL.

                                                              Anyway, i'll keep grinding that bitch xD

                                                              thanks for support!

                                                              Zodyax

                                                                Flash, I love playing Zeus! But in this bracket men people JUST DONT PUSH! I lost a lot of games after owning mid, it's really frustrating xD

                                                                That's why im playing weaver and AM the most now, they can kill AND push (weaver with deso to push).

                                                                I play Zeus when im playing with friends. A friend of mine is a really good BroodMother, we have had some really fun games.

                                                                Im sticking to my promise: If AM winrate goes below 50% I play pubs till it goes over 50%, only then I play him ranked. It's good practice!

                                                                Celine

                                                                  Since you love playing AM I'll give some tips to play him
                                                                  DONT FUCKING RUSH BF AFTER BROWN BOOTS
                                                                  Threads first makes you farm faster in the jungle with thread switching, while giving a free lane for your supports to farm
                                                                  It's better than sitting in the lane being a lane creep killing machine for 12 minutes straight
                                                                  Build is usually 1-1-1-1 and max blink by level 10
                                                                  Early stats = more universal use than maxing blink or mana break first
                                                                  You can up your spell shield by 2 for some defensive reasons, up your mana break for manfighting against melee low mana heroes, be dynamic with it, it all depends on the situation

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                                                                  rick_zai

                                                                    not sure wat is the meaning of master a hero , but i love to play clockwerk ... much fun and impact on early -mid-late game ... a great offlaner and game maker ... i always get the highest hero dmg in team

                                                                    Zodyax

                                                                      Hi bws,

                                                                      I know how to "safe" jungle on the Radiant side with AM. I saw a vid where you blink on top of cliffs and attack jungle creeps from there so you dont take as much damage.

                                                                      Is there any way to do this on the Dire?

                                                                      I've been rushing BF after brown boots if my team is doing good, i'll get treads frist If my team is getting owned and I can't afford the luxury to farm 15 minutes straight because I have to tp to counter gank or defend towers.

                                                                      This is the reason im liking AM. With Spectre it really hurts your late game if you had to constantly TP to counter gank, AM picks his farm faster and mana break can do some sick early game damage.

                                                                      Only thing I dont like is that he is a "common" hero xD. I love the mechanics of Earth Spirit and Puck, and I love that people are really surprised when you pull them off beause they are considered difficult heroes. But I only play them unranked because I cant turn the game around with them (I'm the one who can't, Im sure Miracle or Dendi could turn the game around with them or even techies).

                                                                      I'll definetly take your advice into account. To jungle efficiently with treads I should select Int for blinking, Agi for regeneration and Str when im low of hp, right?

                                                                      miekuah-P

                                                                        M8. U must know every ability mechanics for every heroes. Some of them are hard caster even requiring fasthand (invoker, tinker), some of them requiring decent skillshot peformance(pudge, mirana) , some of them are throwers to absorb more damage and survive (huskar, axe, ogre magi), some of them are slippery as fuck that u need stunners and sentries(riki, weaver, bounty), some of them works like a medic (necrophos, omniknight, vvitch doctor) and some of them are braindead rightclicker (sniper, pa) or autocaster (silencer, drow)

                                                                        But u may learn and master at least 3 heroes. Dis is important to suit well with ally drafts and better against enemy drafts. Some couple or heroes give wombo combo and each heroes has a weakness against specific hero.

                                                                        Wanna learn new hero? U better play single draft cuz most player in there are have low hero pool just like u. Experienced dota players tend to master about 10 heroes as their favourite although he could play with every heroes.

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                                                                        Celine

                                                                          To be honest I don't see any advantage in rushing BF over PT then BF, or leaving your brown boots alone for some time at all (except for dark seer or morphling, in some cases)
                                                                          If your team is doing good, you'll secure more farm for yourself and your team by jungling and let your teamm8s farm the lane you left
                                                                          If your team is doing bad, well, you know, it can help you catch up
                                                                          I know I'm a shit player, but I know what I'm talking about with this particular hero
                                                                          http://www.dotabuff.com/players/69632504/matches?date=all&hero=anti-mage&lobby_type=ranked_matchmaking&enjoyment=any&timezone=Asia%2FJakarta

                                                                          Strongmind

                                                                            YOU CALIBRATED 2.5K YOU GOT 52% WIN RATE RANKED AND YOU SAY YOU ARE 1K NOW? SEEMS LEGIT, THEN YOU ARE 3k PARTY MMR OR WHAT??

                                                                            Zodyax

                                                                              Hi guys,

                                                                              I don't know why it seems suspicious. If I dropped from 2.5k to 400mmr my winrate should have been really bad at that time. Now that I have climbed from 400mmr to 1k, doesn't it make sense that my winrate is just 52%? I mean, if I would have calibrated at 400mmr and would have owned all the way to 1k, shouldn't my winrate be something like 65%? 70%?

                                                                              I don't want you guys to think im lying. If I was embarassed about my mmr I wouldn't have said im 1k and was once even 400mmr xD

                                                                              My party mmr is still somewhere around 2.5k

                                                                              Im so grateful for all the answers, I really am!

                                                                              H^

                                                                                Go master Pudge mid.

                                                                                🍩🍪Cookie🍪🍩

                                                                                  btw, you know the way i got really really good with analysis really fast is like this:

                                                                                  identify a mistake you and/or your bracket makes, especially a common mistake, and make a counterplay:

                                                                                  example: you know how in your bracket no one EVER pushes.

                                                                                  well, pick a splitpush hero, be constantly NON-STOP pushing.

                                                                                  if they go to 1 lane to stop your push, get a teleport and go to the opposite, keep them chasing you

                                                                                  they'll NEVER catch you

                                                                                  you can do this for pretty much any stupidity in your bracket ex: no one wards? farm their whole jungle, they won't know you were there anyways.

                                                                                  ex: no one can farm? great you can just take ALL that farm they're leaving, muhahah easy 900+ avg gpm every game

                                                                                  you get the idea

                                                                                  Zodyax

                                                                                    Yeah, that's exactly what im doing.

                                                                                    I push and push, if they come to gank me while im on lane i'll:

                                                                                    shukuchi as weaver
                                                                                    blink as anti-mage and tp out
                                                                                    buy blink as Nature's Prophet and tp out
                                                                                    buy blink as Sniper and tp out

                                                                                    And the good thing is that they can man up on teamfights. If I played something like broodmother it would push great but if game extended I would fall off.

                                                                                    Celine

                                                                                      Seems like all of the tips that people gave is enough for now
                                                                                      Now go, make dotabuff proud
                                                                                      Kappa