My criteria of which role to specialise in is which role:
1. Makes the highest game impact to win games consistently
2. My existing hero pool
For me it's offlane and tanky frontliner / initiator types. Whatever the role you are comfortable playing, it's important to have multiple options to pick favourable match-ups. So if your hero pool is small, consider expanding it.
Typically use the strategy time to pick a lane and hero before your other teammates do. That's about it. If your team tries to fight your pick without even asking nicely, well then the game tends to be a lost cause anyway.
my brain is really bad at parsing dying productively/taking reasonable risk to gain xp/farm
somehow this translates to being really good at offlane (lul) and trash at 1 and 4
you can look up your winrate per role using "scenarios"
heres me this month:
I played dota 1 and in dota 1 everyone played carries. Played lots of carry/mid in dota 1 and always enjoyed it, moving to dota 2 mid seemed more mechanical while safelane is more strategic which I enjoy more. At this point I am good at pos 1 pretty sucky at everything else so I am a bit stuck.
When I first started I play a lot of support cus I was playing with friends and you let the vets or good players on your team take carry right? Well that was the thought. This was way back in 2012 so ranked didn't exist, dota was a lot different, it didn't really matter much who had what role. But I tried to get better at the game and I was playing a lot of matches with one guy who is around 4500 mmr, while I'm around 3300 and rest of our group is between like 2500 and 3500, so this guy was significantly better than all of us, and had played a ton of hon.
He would always carry in our games and I'd pick support, usually witch dr or lich. I kind of just watched what he did, sometimes watching replays, to see why I sucked as a carry so much. It was super basic but I saw how he farmed jungle and pushed out lanes and rotated, basic farm rotations. Cus u see for a brand new player I was just hitting in lane and then standing around not knowing what to do until a fight came to me. So I started picking a ton of lifestealer in my solo matches and farming like crazy. I would usually jungle lifestealer and just start farming lanes around 10 minutes, go back to jungle, etc til I had armlet, basher, dominator when it was lifesteal and then would go kill everyone. It was fun, it worked, and it got me hooked on carry cus I enjoyed farming.
Really I like playing carry cus I like items. It's so superficial I know but getting gold and buying stuff is fun, even if supports get more involved and see more action throughout the game typically.
I do the same thing every patch
I random every game till I play one hero I stomp with easily
I try the same hero again if I lose I just go back to random
One hero will click
You will win with that hero over and over again easily even without practising that much like you were born to play him
Then I spam the hero till he gets nerfed
It's pretty much impossible to figure out your favourite role by just sitting down and theory crafting saying I think I will be good with this
You have to try them then see what you were successful with
Or at least that's what works for me
I've been told that Invoker is one of the toughest heroes of the game (and the most fun imo)-aside from meepo of course.
So, I played him until I could both,
A) Consistently win mid lane
B) Pull tough wins out.
Being able to do those things, along with knowing the spells, getting great at guestimating cool-downs, and being able to efficiently combo (especially a hexed carry)... these things make Invoker so satisfying to play.
And because Invoker is mid, I decided to just main mid (until I fell in love with AM).
stats tell everything and also I like hitting creeps x) playing anything else than mid/safe just feels beyond boring to me, so I don't even try/play when I have to play anything else. I mean it's fun when you play with friends sometimes, but I couldn't play support every game I would just kms after 4-5 games in a row prob. I also hate offlane, even tho when I played it some time ago I used to get away with some super greedy/retarded picks and used to do very well if it's 1v1 there.
Some interesting thoughts. I typically pick what we need which is nice when everyone is on the same page, but when you get a kid that wants to medusa jungle or something it feels like the game is lost from minute 1. This led me to thinking, "ok, I'm not a fantastic carry, I'll miss some CS, but I'm not gonna throw a game like a lot of people I see".
But for me, I like killing heroes, turining fights and ganks and whatnot, which is why I think I enjoy playing 4-5 and 3. However, I feel like the impact you have later in the game is diminished significantly, and I don't feeling like I can't do anything significant past 40 minutes.
I'm in a cycle of, ok ill pick 5 and harass, pull, not sap exp from my lane, help mid, ward, turn ganks, etc. Then we throw a lead and lose. So i think ok, I'll play 1 or 2 and just carry the game. So I pick a 1 pos and my support sits behind me in lane doing nothing the whole time for 5 minutes, then leaves the lane, and the offlaner just kills me because he has 2 levels on me. So then I say" ok i'll pick support and play the right way", and I just keep losing mmr like that.
Maybe I've been getting unlucky or just not playing well, but I'm trying to sort this out and just pick the same role every time until I'm really confident on it.
same like cutn,played dota 1 and everyone played cores,and i usually go mid at that time
keeping the tradition,i just continue playin mid since it seems 1vs1 (kind of like the scenario 1v1 duel swordman thing like in manga/anime)
although,pretty much it's 1vs2 1vs3 or 1vs4 instead and i pretty much become 1vs many specialist at the mid lane
in the end it's actually fun getting so much attention and everyone trying to kill you lol
i play mostly mid and safelane, but safelane is my highest winrate, even though i like playing mid more
idk
Just play where you have most fun, but that you have some "talent" for that. You aren`t good support nm, if you like to be support you will get that, new hero you will get that, but if you don`t enjoy playing, where is point? If you get bored with all time farm, or helping others just don`t go ther. You aren`t pro, nether in team who needs specific role.
My profile says it all
I wish I could play mid though, but since I'm playing in the most toxic bracket of dota , kids instantly throw 4 icons on mid as the drafting starts and I just dont want to argue/get double mid, so I switched to 3. 3 is also good since I can get it literally always and thus it's easy to practice consistently.
I genuinely wonder when I see profiles with 70%+ games played at mid, how do these ppl persuade 4k ragekids to give em the lane?
I tried to mid in 4k, but it ended up like this:
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3346660742
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3368031720
kids just go double mid and give 0 fucks => game is lost
I think dota is a game where u can't just master one role and forget everything else. But starting to master one role is very essential step to begin learning instead of just play everything and don't know where one is going.
I can almost say different people have talents for different roles, if you are a calm, decision making, planning kind of person, you might have advantage as position 1. if you are a hot headed,play maker that takes high risk high rewards, kill driven, 3rd and 4th. If you are very knowledge based player and willing to play strategy game, 5th. Postion 2nd requires much more, but mostly a position 1 with some playmaking potential.
Here is my advise: Pick your favorite hero, see what position this hero fits in, master this hero for that role, and if you like that role, expand your hero pool for that role. Find similar hero to that hero, and slowly you will have a hero pool.
GL
I just play whatever that gives me winrate which boils down to safelane carry and roaming
I'm getting more shit done annoying enemies than playing passive farmer or support apparently.
i can play any role basically, but offlane is favorite. You need to play against 2 or 3 players it is the most difficult, and if you succeed, there is high chance your team will win.
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I've come to the realization that I can play a lot of different roles and heroes but not necessarily play any of them consistently well.
I've lost a bunch of mmr recently and am tired of carries throwing games or not buying bkbs against invoker so I kind of want to just exclusively play core. However, I probably have the most fun playing a 4 or making plays on a 5.
Basically, I want to know how you guys decided what role to exclusively play, or how I should go about doing it. My line of thinking is that I need to get really good at a role or a select number of heroes to have a consistent impact on the game. Thoughts?
EDIT: a couple of you don't understand what I am asking, so let me try to clarify. How did you decide what role to spam? How should one ideally go about picking a role to spam?