Read and comprehend everything written in this guide to common misconceptions in dota 2
I very often end up in situations where I read random comments on reddit, on IRC, over on teamliquid or inside the game client, and I'm simply amazed by the assumptions people make. So I decided to help. This guide will tackle in a very simple way a few issues commonly raised.
1. Matchmaking Basics
A lot of people seem very confused about matchmaking rating. The knowledge I have is based on information available from dev.dota2.com, various community figures (purge has a vlog on matchmaking), and a few other nuggets of infortmation.
Matchmaking rating has nothing to do with how well you perform in the game. It also has nothing to do with your performance bars for each hero. You win, you gain rating, you lose, you lose rating. It's as simple as that.
However not every result affects you in the same way, so even if you have higher win ratio, that doesn't directly translate into higher mmr. The key here is winning all the games you should win, and then some. Losing a game where you had the mmr advantage hurts more than losing a game where you shouldn't. The system does NOT force a 50% win ratio, that's simply the result of it trying to make fair games.
But Palmar, I'm stuck in MMR hell
No, you're not. In fact, a Valve developer admitted to Purge having tried that out on people who claimed to be in the wrong MMR bracket to manually push them higher. Well... yeah, that didn't go well.
In fact, over enough games you will reach the mmr you should be at. There are obviously way to skew this a bit, for example if you're just really fucking good with one hero and play only that, the system won't care and will adjust your rating as if you played all heroes at that level.
Additionally if you always queue with a buddy, you have an advantage, so when you go solo for giggles, you might run into problems. However, the system does take into account the advantage of queueing as a party.
But yes, the system will always adjust, and rate you where you should be based on your average game.
But how can I be in the same bracket as these noobs??
You are, that's the sad story here. Even more sadly, the variance is relatively small for everyone who is not at the extremes (high or low) in skill level. For anyone below the very high bracket, you're mostly going to be queue-ing with people who are very close to you in mmr. This is a result of most people being close in mmr due to how the system will create a bell curve around the center of the rating.
So next time you want to flame some noob support who is "taking your farm" or a carry that "can't last hit", remember that you're queue-ing with these people for a reason.
The caveat here is that parties with a large skill range fuck the system over and valve has not got any brilliant solution to that at the moment. But rest assured, if there actually is a complete newbie in your game, there's also a high level buddy with him. If there isn't, the guy probably isn't a complete newbie and you're just wrong.
Statistical bias, why you need to stop whining about pubs
Just some quick napkin math. Let's assume that we win 50% of our games. That's close to correct for most of us non-pro mortals. Usually when you're winning, you're not raging that hard about your team.
Let's also remember, that the statistical chance of you being the worst player on your team is only 20%. So this means, in combination with the 50% winrate, that you LOSE 40% of your games and someone is worse than you!
I hope you see where I'm going with this. Because of the nature of the game, you can legitimately make an argument that you lose 40% of your games because you're matched with noobs. And only 10% of the games you lose because you sucked a bit yourself... so yeah, everyone has a bad game occasionally, if you play 9/10 games well it's fine? right?
This is obviously very dumb. And it creates this huge bias that makes even fairly sane people start ranting about the "noobs" on their team.
Well, these are the noobs you deserve. I sometimes wonder, if all the dota 2 players cry about "terrible pubs", who are these terrible pubs? The truth is, they are us.
Why you should play to win
Here's the kicker. You can only control one variable, that is your own performance. You cannot win them all, and assuming over multiple games everything will normalise, you will probably be somewhere close to 50%. If you want to improve you need to make sure you take every win you can take, and then you need to snatch out a few games you were going to lose.
If you play as well as you possibly can, you give your team the highest chance of winning. Almost half the time it's not going to be enough, but if you can be the difference between winning 50% of the time and winning 53% of the time, do your best!
Focus on yourself, ignore the losses. There is equal chance the other team has bad players and you have bad players. If you just focus on playing the best you can, you will end up improving, and your mmr will go up.
How valve deals with strange parties
Just know this, if you're queue-ing in a party with big skill difference, the system has no clue what to do with you. You'd expect it to use average mmr, but valve has explained that instead they skew it higher towards the highest rated player, because they discovered that was more balanced. However this obviously puts a lot of pressure on the highest skilled player to play a hero that can take advantage of his skill level for the party to succeed.
I don't think there is a good solution to this at the moment.
Other things, why people suck at supporting
I'll leave this up to you, pick your poison. I very often see people complaining about how people don't know how to support. So I'll simply list the possible explanations, and you guys can pick the one you like.
Knowing what we do about the mmr system, we know that on average the player playing the "bad support" is equal to you in skill level. So here's why he's doing random stupid shit. (not warding, ruining farm, not ganking, feeding, stealing kills whatever your fancy is)
- Support is much harder to play than other roles, thus more prone to failing.
- Support is equally hard to play, but everyone has more skill at other roles.
- Despite you thinking otherwise, the support is simply playing to his best ability, which matches your ability in your current role.
I'm inclined to go with option number 3.
How this makes your life better
The first step is admittance. You are playing with people who are equally good as you. They may be having a good or a bad game, and because your sample size with the pubs you end up with is very, very small (usually 1 game), you cannot judge them. Admit you're not better than your team.
If someone is having a bad game, help them. Gank their lane, buy them wards, tp to save them, grant them freefarm. Remember that this guy is potentially a player of similar skill to yourself. It's never worth abandoning your team because "they suck". Chances are it's just that guy having a terrible game, so you can help pull him back by preventing him from digging an even deeper hole.
Accept that you can't win them all. Don't be mad about it, remember that you're dealing with equals, peers. Someone has a bad game and feeds? You cannot fault them, you can only fault yourself for being in a bracket where people do that in the fashion this guy just did. Take the wins you can, lose the others with grace. Always go down fighting.
At every point in the game, analyze the situation and try to figure out how you can go from your current position, to a victory. Then try to execute based on that. Sometimes there is no route to victory, in fact, most of the time when solo queue-ing you cannot do much.
Even when you're improving, thus raising your mmr, you're not going to win ever game, even if your team is "stacked" because you're improving and thus you have a higher than normal chance to win. Accept this, and move on. You did your best.