General DiscussionHow am I supposed to win?

ive never played below 3k mmr on dota 2... but i'd assume from comparison to dota 1, dota 1 had a lot more bad players

in situations where everyone is bad... its just best to play solo and not rely on your team (things you shouldn't do as you progress higher up)

u want heroes that can pick off heroes easy and still push/finish the game

i use to win lots of games with clock but he eventually gets outcarried if you cant shut the game down fast enough

for now id say use TB/ember LOL go wreck

Thanks for the advice! It is hard to outfarm your opponents when they are getting double kills in the first 10 minutes of the game. I thought maybe if I played support and warded then we would have a better chance of winning, nope!

To win, you must improve, and to improve, you must lose.

The best players in DotA are the ones who lost the most games.

Don't miss a last hit, you'll outfarm them. I've watched 'low' level games where a safelane carry can be on like 20 cs in 10 mis. I'm normally on 60 if I'm safe carry and even my last hitting isn't flawless. That 40 cs difference can equate to about 1500+ gold. In 10 minutes that's an item. An item in 10 mins can be the difference between a won and a lost fight. A double kill (even with first blood) will probably take up about 2 mins of your time and will reward you with ~700 gold fb, ~500 without. Sounds nice but it's unreliable and you will risk dying yourself which definitely is not worth it.

u want to take advantage of the fact that most people dont ward

so ward for urself in the area that ur farming

preferably take heroes that can make good use of flash farming/stacking creeps

save wards if they manage to actually deward you constantly (which probably won't happen), until you deward theirs in retaliation, and make sure you ward in a different spot (you don't have to but it may be redundant) so they'll have a lower chance of dewarding you again.

some good mentions:

tb/ember/gyro/luna/am/jug

also look up, how to stack ancients 8 times on youtube - this doesn't really work higher up because there's not enough time to even stack that many camps consecutively and the enemy team would've likely found out by then and try to interfere.
however, again, use the fact that theyre retards to your advantage.

stacked ancients is a HUGE xpm gpm boost.

If you're not a 4k player putting yourself at a lost and going lower and lower MMR. it's harder and harder to win with retards. It's like your 3.5k tier but stuck in 2.8k tier and no support buys wards.

My advice is to play ez sure win heroes. Abuse the IMBA heroes like furion/lycan/bs. Or play overly dominate support who can transition into semicarry like lina, thd and wr. Also play ur best heroes the ones with the most KDA and team support.

Sorta like how lich is over 50% winrate and good hero for 5v5. Or how pubs still vunerable to that 17-25 mintue radiance/treads bloodseeker rush. Or refersher/aghs shadow shaman/warlock.

If you are high skilled u can also still do slark/troll AP to 4k MMR too.

@ [A]dmiralChickenDong lol I got my Lycan win rate to 72%, but I don't want it to lower. Also I don't like playing rat doto.
I do play a lot of Wind Runner, the problem is after doing all the support work and warding, carries at my level can't last hit for anything.
I can own with wind early/mid but at late game my carries are under-farmed and can't carry

@ ROOT.Sirius Lee thanks allot for the advice, will give Gyro and Luna a try.

@ Guiri My last hits are pretty good, I spent allot of time with doing last hitting drills with bots. It is hard to get last hits when your support is also trying to get last hits.

@ *ESP* Wink Thanks for that :) I understand but some games, don't need to be lost. I will admit some games I did not play well, but for the most part I am a pretty solid player.
It seems that while I put a lot of effort into reading guides, watching replays and streams, and practicing against bots. People in my bracket just don't care!

Maybe I should stop playing supports for a while.

Take heroes who have high map mobility and go solo mid, improve your technical skills.

Supporting requires collaboration and a good understanding of the flow of the game. Theres no point supporting if you cant depend on your other 4 teammates to do their job and you wont learn how to support by playing with 4 other braindeads.

Since my mmr isnt that my higher I can relate and give you example from yesteday where a win seemed very unlikely :

http://dotabuff.com/matches/579202500

I played support silencer and my team was horrible. Mirana was by far the best one but still had to go midas at 10 min because why not. The rubik didnt buy ANY support items literally not a single ward the whole game(or currier). Still managed to die an get 0/5 before the 10 min mark. Another idiot lastpicked Medusa and got his linkens at 34!!! min mark (first item). I had a tough game mostly because of all the dewarding I had to do (me vs AA warding matches) where I got hooked because I had no vision (later I just got jugger ulti on me all the time). Still through most of the early game I was the only one with positive K/D ratio (no i wasnt ksing) just because I was carrying a tp scroll. You should remember that it is the most powerful item in the game that can instanly create a 3v2 situation in lane and that you are very powerful untill 20 min mark so dont be one of those supports that dryhump your carries leg first 30 min. So even if you team is bad you can certainly help them alot just by good rotations and 1 rotation to mid lane to gank can easly win you the game by giving your mid oppertunity to snowball. OFC everyone has those games that are just impossible to win but these are the most common tips that I can think of at about your level.

honestly if u try playing support at undeniably subpar levels, you would eventually shoot yourself in the face because you're trying to create space for nothing lol

hey look i warded the map and called mia and pinged !
but... he still died. the gist of it, its pointless

:D

@ ROOT.Sirius Lee I have had enough of playing support for 4 carries, after wards, courier. I start off with all most no items and then have to keep up the wards and get the mek.

@ Deadshot Talk about rotation I got reported and flamed cause I left the carry in the easy lane to pull the creep wave, after I told him I was going to do it. This often happens in my bracket, just the other day a guy flamed me for denying a tower! :)

@ Yan What hero do you suggest? I have had some success with an exort invoker. Except the last game where we had no courier for 10 min(I bought it) and bottom fed 5-7 times :)

I am just above 3K and often play with friends who are around 2.2k. It is actually quite difficult at times because the 2 random people you get can be a complete pain to work with. They'll build bad items (vanguard on every hero types). The players at this level are pretty poor, but they all know how to win when they have gold advantage and a few big items on a carry.

So generally I just pick someone who can impact the game from the start. Viper is great because you can dominate the mid lane easily and if some asshole the last picks a mid hero despite the teams needs you can go lane and have arguably even more impact. If I'm mid I usually get a TP once I have my level 6 and go clean up the lane.

Weaver is another good pick, you can solo the hard lane this way too, keep an eye on the courier and steal it when you need it. People at this level use it to buy shit they can get from the side shop. Grab a salve just before your 6 comes up. I often put 3 points in Geminate early if solo hard lane because I can pack 150+ dmg with very little risk every 4 seconds and for no mana cost.

Luna is not bad, but she lacks durability. Her nuke is fantastic and if you can get a CM on your side you are set. There are plenty of easy combos that work at this level though and if you can keep someone like Luna past her early mana problem and get a bracer for squishyness the game should be yours.

You have to make a big impact though because at this level no one pushes towers as a 4 let alone a 5, even if you wipe the other team.

Thanks for the help. Played another game, support Rubick and ROAMED like mofo. We won!
It is so awesome to support a carry that can last hit!

good for you dude, 0 0 14 its not bad :3

Two options guaranteed to get you wins if you are actually better than your bracket:

1. Go viper mid. You will dominate every mid aside from silencer. Last hitting is easy with nethertoxin. At 6 you can gank other lanes like crazy, assuming they don't ward or just run around the ward spots. If you have to ward mid against a pudge or magnus or something do it, 150g is a small price to pay for knowing where the hooks are coming from.

2. Go lycan and rat. I prefer to lane lycan. At lvl ~8 with vlads you can avoid every team fight and just kill towers. Other team is likely too bad to rotate.

I think my biggest problem was that I lost my confidence; as dumb as that may sound. I know on some of those matches after my team tower dove again and again I kinda lost interest, I mean why bother?

play drow hit towers win games

Least useful amount of advice so far :)

Im not kidding picking drow and doing it right can make you jump past 3k easy. Stopping her pushing power requires alot of team coordination which people that low dont have

^^
Agreed with Sampson. Just make sure you don't pick her immediately or else you will get counter shit on. Check my winrate on her even.
Damn you've made me want to play Trax again with my Genuine bow :3

Idk I think lycan is every harder to stop with his ult.

lycan is much more popular and people (even in the low MM people know its coming). I have had matches at 4k MM as drow where a team tried to push against me with mask of madness (it did not end well for them :P)

i'd tell you to pick versatile heroes that can have good impact in the game. mirana is the name that comes to mind, she can do well offlane, she can do ~well~ (in pubs) mid, and she can be the carry if no one else is going for this role.

support retards is pointless, as ppl have said before, you create space for nothing, cause they won't do well anyways

playing hard carry is also risky cause being matched with a bunch of retardeds will make your farming a lot harder because the supporters HAVE to steal your farm, and ofc they won't make space for you

so the safier option for me is to solo mid always, but sometimes there will be a "ME ARE MID OR FED PLZ", so Mirana is great cause she can do well in any other lane.

in pubs most of the game are decided in the first min, so if you don't want to play mid, pick heroes that can snowball early on, even if paired with a retarded. Centaur would be a good example for that.

but if you really really need to play support, i'd go for roaming CM, works pretty well even if your team is dumb, all you gotta do is get lvl 3 and start roaming/setting up ganks. bane works for this aswell, AA too, Veno too.

Pick necro and go mid

Seriously

I mean seriously