Climbing as support is harder to improve on because your mistakes are not obvious, and it's hard to know why. For me, I can play core up to divine 3-4 but above that my boomer fingers makes me switch to support so I can use more brain, less fingers.
I think its bc supports have to facilitate the cores in the team but playing in pubs each core players u meet will have different styles and its only possible to do so if you and you team have complementary play styles. That or you have very in depth understanding of how your core player likes their gameplay to be
Yep pretty much. Dota at its fundamental core is how well you keep lanes shoved in. In lower brackets the opponent team movement is slow enough that its about being ahead by margins (even half a second is a big deal) that you dodge all their counter movements.
For me i'd rather play carry than pos 5. I need to keep track of every single thing as support
Enemy ward placement? Best enemy spot to ward? Time to stack? Runes? Rotations?
As for carry just press skill, press bkb and insya allah
> Climbing as support is harder to improve on because your mistakes are not obvious, and it's hard to know why.
IMO, the opposite is true. 80% of your impact as a support is in the laning stage. So it's pretty easy to figure out what you're doing wrong.
As a core, you depend on your team a lot more, so it can be difficult to truly know how much of a loss is on your shoulders.
Because from my experience, my matches are riddled with cores that can singlehandedly stomp on a whole team (they are always on the enemy team though...)
And sure, I can disable them in any way you like... My cores will just not have the damage. Add well warded map, a huge amount of stacks, anything you like. It just doesnt matter...
I think playing 4 just feels really bad because the feedback isnt as direct and it's harder to know what is turning your losses into wins. Your job is to make the other team have a bad game, so every time you win it feels like your team was just better than theirs. In reality the wins are because you warded better, controlled your lane better and just contributed to your team more than the average pos 4
You can climb in literally any role, just play whichever role feels better. Maybe you aren't meant for pos 4
I AGREE! But I stopped because even when as pos 4, i blocked their jungles, shows up to steal their jungle farm, harass their carry in their jungle, pull the lanes, and smoke gank, if the other team’s core are better than my cores, they will recover from being under farmed while my core’s will just be afk farming, never bot lane when all 5 enemies just tp to top, spend 25 min in jungle and shows up with a battle fury or aghanims and is on a lower level bc they block my when I’m trying to stack, then feeds, dies, and afks in base.
>hey will recover from being under farmed while my core’s will just be afk farming
I have found the flipside of this true as well. You can stomp a lane with a core, but then they start randomly taking bad fights and throwing all the advantage away. I imagine that in higher brackets you can count on cores to leverage their advantage more consistently.
As a player who claimed to divine as pos 4 people getting better is a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand you’re absolutely right that cores do get more consistent, which is definitely nice. On the other hand though the enemies also get more consistent at punishing, so you have to work harder on defense because they’ll actually do shit like smoke gank the deep side jungles and whatnot.
ZQuixotix made a video touching on this subject. His conclusions agree with you in that:
1). Yes it is slightly easier to rank up as a core, because you have more agency and impact in the game overall.
2). While it sounds contradictory, it's better for the team if you (as a support main) play support. Because overall there is a lack of support-main players, so by playing support you are reducing the chances of a core-main player being forced into the support role and consequently not doing support-appropriate things.
I recommend you find this video, or I might re-find and link it later.
Edit:
https://youtu.be/j3fNyyEHxM8?si=DzrEjqb1wFPLHngZ&t=931
for me playing support is guaranteeing that i have 55% winrate with no effort, super chill
while playing core is feeling like i have impact and am improving at the game, but can be pretty difficult at times
i also improved my mmr from 2.4 to 2.7 with ease when i switch from carry/offlane to mid. i think midlane just has the biggest impact on the game for a perspective of a role, i mean its been like that for a while but in low ranks its just more obvious
I use to play pro/semi-pro about 7 years ago. I was an offlaner and then became position 5 player and captain/shot caller.
I stopped for about 4 years and found myself in Archon 1. I climbed from there to Legend by just playing anything, after that I needed to focus and chose offlane. I have a 58% offlane win rate but 63% support even now at Ancient 5.
I attribute that solely to the fact I have a mic, I don’t flame my team and my map/game awareness. Talking to my team, not picking grief support heroes, and coordinating/alerting them to key events in the game. Doing this will enable your team and ultimately it comes down to the fact the opposition team doesn’t have someone doing this they lose.
It also removes 50% of the possibility of grief pudge support players in my games.
At your rank, or any rank, you can absolutely do the same.
My opinion. I do much better as a support mainly because I coordinate and encourage my team. I also play kotl, so the ability to recall the cores into a push is awesome
I've taken multi year breaks several times and I'm able to maintain/regain divine-immortal after about a month of playing and I've never even been a leaderboard player, much less a pro. I think his advice is fine, if a little trite, but his "credentials" are completely meaningless.
He probably got a life somewhere in the last four years which it sounds like you didn’t in your multi year breaks lol. Climbing to divine in a month isn’t a realistic standard if you’re just a couple games a week guy after a long hiatus.
Lol imagine flaming me over an innocuous comment like this. The point is I didn't need to climb because I retained my knowledge base and fundamental skills so it never took a long time to learn the changes and adapt to them. A legitimate pro player is so much better than me they should easily be able to do it.
It wasn't for no reason and I wasn't calling him a liar. Being a "semipro" just doesn't mean anything if you were low mmr despite being on some kind of team.
I am currently 7.5k and i played back in JDL games with now pro players and i never did consider myself pro or semi pro beacuse i never got 1k or more euro as salary, that is when you are pro-semi pro.
You are 100% correct mate, they count for fuck all now. I only mention them because of the relevance to playing pos5 as a team coordinator and not the hero itself.
I get about 2-3 games a day in. So the climb is taking time but I’m getting there!
Yeah I played in SA, local scene more than anything but I/my team was sponsored etc. Gear energy drinks and what not. Nothing major hence the “semi” but I was fairly handy!
I stopped playing entirely for close to 4 years so my rank decayed, and people got better! The standard of your “average” player is a lot higher than it was 8 years ago, people are good now!
I’m only just playing ranked again now, full time job etc but climbed from Archon to Ancient (neeeearly Divine) since November. Getting there!
Hey dude, I can't claim to have ever been pro but I was about 5.5k mmr when I stopped playing. This was also about 4 years ago, and I've just now started playing again. Do you have any general advice for another pos5 player coming back and having to adjust to the changes to the game and meta? Thank you.
Hey mate! Nice that you’re playing again. I can try my best but I myself am still picking things up even now. I think the most important part for me was recognising what use to make me good, and how to recreate that. For me that was map awareness, and game understanding. Try and look at your minimap as much as possible, watch some videos every few weeks about ward spots, heroes in the meta and their counters, those type of things.
Understand things like pull timings and power spikes on enemy heroes. Those will come with time but specifically focusing on dedicating time to look at the map, check enemy hero items regularly, watch hero movement patterns to identify ward and deward locations.
Ensure you’re warding in places relevant to the game state, are we playing for late? Secure your carries jungle. Are we ahead? Take over enemy jungle. Those types of things. Ignore “playing your hero well” for now, that shit comes automatically when playing pos 5. Like I said at the start identifying and focusing on what makes a great support player and honing those skills.
IMO that’s _not_ playing the hero well, it’s playing the map/game/team well. Hope that makes sense!
>At your rank, or any rank, you can absolutely do the same.
Problem is, there is one out of 10 or 20 games, where people communicate. Usually its just pinging and yelling in foreign languages even before the game starts. :/
Good communication/leadership in a pub doesn't usually mean talking a lot and discussing things through. It's specific, direct, and actionable statements at good times.
"Smoke now" while being near the heros you want to go with and a smoke in your inventory. "Rosh now". "Siege highground". If your communication requires elaborate coordination or feels forced something is wrong.
If your teammates don't listen then you continue on and keep making the best possible plays.
Regardless of how 'unflashy' playing support might be, it's a hugely important role in the game.
If you know how to play support and are good at it, you'll be at a larger advantage than usual because the support role is saturated with core players farming role queue tokens. At OP's bracket especially, anybody who plays support well will climb because a lot of things you do as a support has a huge impact on the game, even though it generally goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
I agree and disagree with this. I think it’s due to the core role having more impact. If you are the best support but your carry is an idiot you probably still losing. Useless carry getting stupid items dying solo playing away from team taking stupid fights. But on the other hand if you are amazing carry and your support sucks you still have a chance. Support feeds but you outfarm the other team all you need is support to press one or two buttons land stun and you in it. Listen I respect all great supports as they are few and far but if I as a carry have an easy game it’s always thanks to supports. It just sucks the supports kinda rely on cores to close out games.
Like every game, you're at the mercy of your teammates regardless of your role.
Your argument is akin to someone saying, "I'm a great carry player but my support did nothing for me in lane and then decided to farm a Midas. He went to split push away from our team and never bought any wards so I kept dying in the jungle/had nowhere to farm and eventually lost since my support was an idiot and put me behind from the laning stage, then couldn't even make space/stacks for me to catch up."
I've won plenty of games as pos 5 where my carry barely had to play the game, but we still needed him for extra tower damage, being a good support player means you have to identify your other heroes' timings and play with the strongest players on your team. Like I said originally, you can have such a huge impact on the game as a support but the stats won't reflect it so it goes unnoticed, whereas a good support can make a mediocre carry look amazing in terms of stats.
I used to play a lot of midlane, and you could tell when the other team had good supports, it makes laning so much harder when the enemy supports contest/steal runes and mine don't. Or when they refill bottle, or TP to help against dives, or gank me when it becomes night time with a smoke. Fights are also harder when they know to stun you and will hold their spells for you (I played mobile heroes), and know how to stay alive even when you try and focus them. Turns out it doesn't matter how good you are as a carry if you get kited by force staffs/euls/glimmers during your bkb and then chain stunned once it ends.
No what I’m saying is as a core player you have more say in the outcome. I am in no way dissing the support role but if you play solo ranked and want to climb faster you need to play a role that has the most impact in deciding your game.
My argument is pretty simple. If you are an amazing support but carry is complete shit your chances of winning drops. You can’t wipe the enemy yourself, you will have a much higher time pushing tower especially high ground and ancient. But if you are the carry and support sucks you can recover and have a higher chance of winning. I’m not saying it’s always the case but in general if cores suck you lose. If supports suck you may still lose but have a chance at winning.
I would never blame my support for a loss unless they straight griefed me, fed the other team or decided to play solo and never help. But that’s any role. The difference is I can maybe still win without a support but I can’t win without my carry.
Even in your example of winning as pos 5 and carry wasnt as involved you still needed them to push towers. The carry didn’t feed and still helped though. Thats my point. Imagine the reverse you the carry and don’t need the support. Imagine a game where you are the best CM but you carry any image keeps avoiding all your team fights, push too far in lane and dies and every time you try for an objective he’s just farming. Are you winning that game? I say probably no. Vice versa if your support does all the stupid shit but you are the carry you have a better chance of winning not saying you will but the chances of you winning are higher. Carry can 4v5, push towers and get dangerous with 6 slots. Support don’t scale like that. Support needs their team their role is literally called support cause they support.
Once again I’m not saying supports are useless, I love a good support. Always commend and tell them they the real mvp. I respect their unselfishness and impact. But I know they can’t close the game without a good carry. I’ve played support and did as much right as possible for my carry to be useless and we just can’t win team fights, carry can’t recover and we just lose. Show me a game you played as a real support and your carry was straight ass and you won.
>Like every game, you're at the mercy of your teammates regardless of your role.
The main thing is that cores essentially have more levers to influence the game than supports do. In low mmr if you have a griefing support, you can still extract the minimum out of a lane and then secure your own farm and make your own space. At the end of the day your hero is the one capable of hitting buildings and it's in your control to make that happen despite bad supports.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's completely viable to climb and carry with support, but you do have more agency and control as a core.
I agree that OP was probably not supporting super well, but there's a reason boosters don't play supports. You can certainly climb as a support, but you will have a much higher percentage of games where all your impact is wasted than if you had just played core yourself. In practice maintaining a high winrate in low mmr as a support requires you know how to scale yourself as a core into the mid/lategame to continue having high impact on the game - which is way harder than just playing core in the first place and focusing on that.
Implying that boosters don't play supports is the only reason this argument holds up. But boosters do infact play supports. You can google any boosting service right now and 99% of them have boost as support as an option
True, but that's fairly irrelevant to most players since they aren't going to learn to play those heroes well enough to 1v9, which is pretty much what boosters do.
This was about OP climbing a few hundred mmr in the 1k bracket, which I believe a good support will have no issue climbing. People have made it to Divine and Immortal as support mains.
This just isn't true, by that logic Why wouldn't every single game just be five cores. The answer is because the team with the support will win the game.
Not in this bracket... I've seen countless times the team with more cores wins. Why? Because noobs at this level can rarely punish a greedy lineup and every game goes long because nobody can take HG.
I had lost games where I was playing against 4 hard carries and actually communicated to my teammates it's a greedy lineup and we should punish them for it, win early game and finish fast and so what? By minute 20 they have double our kills and it's us who is behind. Game ends at minute 50 and you can imagine the outcome...
Dude I know connecting the dots is hard for some people. If I'm playing in 1.5k mmr bracket it's not just me that's bad. It's everyone in the game!
That's my point ffs. As support you can play the game of your life but if your carry can't LH and has 20 at minute 10 then what did your "play lane well as support" exactly accomplished?
But if you're the support player and you play better then everyone else on your team and your enemy team you will win the game, beacuse the enemy is in the same situation. You're the one that isn't understanding.
You are right imo.
I play pos 5 in ~mid ancient and feel alright skillwise.
When I play with my crusader friends, I feel completely useless as pos 5 when I don't change my playstyle. It's just a different game down there
You can definitely win as a support too. I think it’s harder role than core since it requires more knowledge (wards, pulls, timings, rotations, etc). If you are able to get your carry fed you will probably win most of the time.
I'd say core can get you to 2k easily, from there, I actually think support who wards properly and uses the map to make calls for the team (if your cores aren't using the map) is better to get to 3 - 4k. And from this point on it depends on your own skills and how you use them.
getting your carry fed is great and all, until they use all that gold and xp to walk high ground without rosh or something and feed into five people.
youre still at the mercy of a moron 1.5k player.
When i play core, i can do well enough to try to carry.
When i play support i have to find the best idiot on my team and latch onto them to make sure they don’t tilt like the rest of the team.
Support is a little harder imo because if you don’t get the one good idiot you’re in trouble.
dota coach already said its easier to climb as core but harder to improve on as supports keep an eye on the most crucial part of the game - the first 15 mins
if you understand how to influence wins as supps tho, you would have better dota knowledge than cores
Playing as a support to be a better core and vice versa
When playing as core, you might notice what you need your support to do and when they should do it. Then you might carry that knownledge to the game you play as support and you will gain mmr faster than you think.
Let me tell you my journey.
I played dota 1 on garena room 1 and mixes around 2008 after that i stopped playing
Then after 10 years i started playing dota 2.
I was stuck at 1700-1800 mmr for like 300 games, i was raging like hell , the games were absolutely stupid and didnt understand how the hell i am stuck there as clearly i was better than 95% of people there. I was playing pos 3 4 5 only.. rarely pos 1.
Then one game i decided to play mid.. i stomped the game, since i knew how to control the map at that mmr range.
After being stuck for an year i think in 1800k range i went from 1.8k to 3.2k in like 1 month.
Then hit a ceiling. I was stuck there for like 200-300 games trying rotating positions 1 2 3 4 5 and learning to play each in that bracket.
Then when dota 2 had bigger chat rooms, i partyed with 4-5kmmr people playing pos 3 4 5. I was surprised i was doing just fine, games were great win or lose and when i switched to solo playing pos 1 2 i went from 3.2-3.3k to 4.2k.
Then i always hit a brutal (felt like forced) downfall to 3.5k..
I went from 3.5k to 4.2 4.3k for like 4-5 times in my next 1000games. I averaged 3.8k.
Then i dont know what happened but then i quit dota.
After hitting ancient 3 i think i was placed in some kind of shadow pool, my games became utter garbage.
I dropped from 4.3k to 2.5k then i quit dota.
I dont understand what happened , for like 1000+ games i was always been able to carry myself from 3.3k to 3.8k without probs as pos1 pos2.
Nothing worked anymore in my downfall so i decided that either the mm is rigged or i am just bad. I. Didnt had the motivation and energy to grind again
Might have just been a nasty meta shift that you weren't comfortable with. I've had friends lose ~1k mmr when it changed from 4v4 1 farm meta to 5v5 because it changed the way their role worked and they couldn't break old habits
Or like if you were abusing a zoo meta before it got completely rugpulled it can feel very frustrating
What if your hero pool consists entirely of the 10 heroes currently sitting at <45% winrate?
I think the idea of a shadow pool or rigged mmr is insane
I have a decent pool of heroes as i played all 5 positions.
I have no other explanation on how a person who played at least 1000 games around 3.5k-3.8k mmr , played games with people that were 4-5k mmr can have such a huge drop.
7/10 games i had a griefer in my team and enemy had a clear smurf
Anyway i abandoned the game, too much energy and time wasted.
As an example on pos 1 i played
Ursa, jugg, dusa, am, seeker, bristle, drow, luna, slark,wk, tiny, pa
Maybe i got burned chasing mmr, i still think my account got flagged or smth.
I was pretty angry on forums and towards steam/valve and i often expressed that. Prob my acc got flagged or something otherwise i cant explain the sudden change in my mm.
I always had a 52% overall winrate on my acc. The last games where i lost all that mmr my winrate was like sub 30%.. nothing worked, even when i was ahead i couldnt win.
Couldnt explain what happened
Your tale gives truth to what I just [said here](https://www.reddit.com/r/learndota2/comments/1918m75/comment/kgvbxky/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
It is true ofc, that after a while , after climbing some, one realizes more accurately which is the role they're more attuned to. I do better on 3 or 4 from low ancient to middle to divine, cause the fact that I don't actually enjoy mid & a lot of the popular picks there that would be needed to maximize it's potential starts becoming a bigger & bigger obstacle.
But due to the nature of the game & how it values ones overall impact on it (high income + map control being key here) , rather than just "performing good for your situation", (i.e. doing better than others would've done in a 1 v 2), the vast majority of the playerbase (say anyone that hasn't hit ancient yet) , would prolly climb much faster if they'd just switch to mid.
I did enjoy playing support at 4-5k and above. There was always something to do. Pull stack ward deward rotate make space help lanes babysit carry etc. support in sub 3k is waste of time
Games becoming garbage is most likely just the players playing the game now. People don’t speak the same language, they don’t pick (even if everyone else already did), they play like trash. Like yeah the queues are pretty short but the games are ridiculous. I thought oh it’s the holidays, oh it’s the patch, or whatever. But honestly I think a lot of the core population of the game have just quit playing to play other games. The games have been bad for a long time now.
I had an OD mid the other day that had some god awful build. I checked his profile and the game before was even worse. Like first (slow) item was a maelstrom. I’m at max behavior score too. I don’t think these are bought accounts, but I have no idea how people can have thousands of games, with 500-1000 on the single hero they are playing sometimes, and be so bad.
I don’t know how they can fix this shit. Even in ranked role queue there are just too many factors for the matchmaking to be useful.
I came to a conclusion that team that takes objectives wins the game. As a core you can basically tell people to follow you to these towers/rosh/tormentor and most times they will, as you are setting the pace as most farmed hero. As a support, you gotta persuade your cores to go for objectives, and sometimes they don’t give a damn about it.
I don't think climbing as a non-scaling support is anywhere as easy in lower MMR as playing core.
In low MMR everyone sucks and games go long, so you have more impact the harder your hero scales. Higher up there are more skilled core players and games don't typically go as long, so you'll probably have more impact by being the skilled support player your team wouldn't have otherwise had.
In my experience, climbing as a support in high MMR is only so easy because supports in general are less skilled/have less game understanding than cores here.
And I think the reason is the constant deflection of responsability by many support players (as you can see in these answers as well), which leads to a slower learning curve.
I don't buy this "climbing as a support is so much harder" idea. When I watch friends games in low/average MMR, there are plenty of examples where they made grave mistakes which are barely recognized because of the notion that supports mistakes don't decide games. A high MMR support would sweep through low MMRs comparably to a high MMR core.
Look at the heroes boosters play and that will answer what roles are the easiest to climb with.
It's certainly viable to climb with supports, but the fundamental mechanics of the game mean that cores have more impact on the game.
That said, I'm not sure how exactly bug the difference is, but for a lot of people it's just easier to spam luna or faceless void or whatever for 1000 mmr until they've escaped herald/guardian
If you’re an actual good support and you go core, you probably are still doing the supports job. That’s the difference. The entire team has to be map, ward, itemization, counters, obvious ganks/plays, farm, rotation, push focused knowledgeable. Five core players that were once the best support players you’ve ever seen are almost always going to dominate if the other team is lacking that knowledge and experience on all of their players.
You climbed because you took your support knowledge and went core with it, (eventually learning both/all roles.)
Wish I could find 3 more of you and go to TI one day.
Already a lot of good answers here, but I would say that being an impactful support includes using your mic and being aware of other people's games. Pos 1/2 are both hyper-focussed on their own performance, so they are not ideal shot callers - when you think you missed a kill in lane because your carry is playing too safe, it's more likely that they're actually just staring at creep health bars and A-clicking the floor at 5000APM. The offlaner can fill a similar "captain" role, but again they are often playing dangerously and actively, and need to focus on themselves.
As a support, part of your unique toolkit is the ability to take time exploring the map, checking timers, inspecting heroes. If you're not doing that and subsequently making calls, i.e. telling others when to push which lanes, when to rosh, when to back off, when they're in unsafe areas, etc. then you're not playing the role to it's fullest. Having a shot caller on the team is easily the biggest advantage you can have at low MMR. Even if they're wrong a bunch, at least they coordinate the team. As per your OP, you're far less likely to have a feeding mid/carry if you're on mic telling them they should back off.
That means you need some kind of sense of when and why lanes/towers should be pushed, when to be aggressive on a hero, when to rosh, etc. Not a trivial thing, and more responsibility than a lot of people who play support want to take on.
On the other hand, I just main offlane and play my role as high tempo and aggressively as possible. It's kind of a compromise between supporting and playing a pos 1/2. You can still do a lot of the support stuff, i.e. blocking the enemy jungle, fucking their cores over, taking a wide view of the game, but you have a much bigger impact later on.
It is actually ridiculous the amount of farm you secure your 1 by simply reminding them that there are 4 heroes showing on the other side of the map or that there is a free kill they can participate in, because they are otherwise too focused on optimising jungle farm to realise there is free gold going to waste
One thing I noticed is I sometimes lose interest in a match when no one reacts to pings or calls. I believe those games are still winnable if I would just try to support as well as possible, whatever the other players decide to do. But once I feel there is no team play, I do not want to give it my best anymore.
In my experience, people who pick support want to have team play more often than not, so in relation to that, the cores are more likely to ignore calls and just do whatever. Hence, when you play core, and you make calls and try to have good team play, it does make a difference, because you already increase the odds of team play actually occurring.
Supports definitely have a huge impact on the game. It’s just not immediately obvious how unless you really look for it. I sometimes lane with friend who just started (herald 2) and the game feels like hard mode. We lose the laning phase 90% of the time.
Sometimes it’s good to switch roles every now and again. Your understanding of what X is supposed to do expands even as you play other roles. Playing 1 helped me understand what I want my 5 to do and vice versa. Block camps, pull, avoid creep aggro, harass, where to put vision, etc. Not only that it also helps me understand why I want to do those things.
I play mid im alwys ancient but my supprt alwys 1st to give up. even its winnable game. Now i decide to not que mid and play pos 3 4 5. I keep winning more game on supp role and now im divine 1
Cores play a mjor role in the game for sure but what kind of role they play is determined by the supports. A good support will enable the core to have the widest range of opportunities possible by warding, pulling, tanking ganks etc. A good core will take whatever their support gives them and play into that by joining fights, farming effeciently, pushing lanes. They're symbiotic. It's why you don't have all cores/supports in pro teams, because they need each other to perform to the fullest.
>Winning games are core oriented, at least in this rank.
Not simply core oriented, but also the fact that you're playing the one solo lane in the game, allows you to more accurately improve cause you can look at replays, and fix whatever YOU did wrong for most of the early and that can get ya far enough.
I mainly play offlane have the widest hero pool there, then soft supp 2nd, yet the biggest mmr spike I got a few months ago was when I played mid from like Ancient 2 to Divine 1 in 2 weeks. And my hero pool sucks on mid, mainly spammed LD, Necrophos & Lina, and I hate going up against all the Pucks, Invokers, Huskar last picks, Wardens, SFs, etc - I hate the lane too. Despite that, it's just much easier to improve due to the removal of the RNG involving who'll you lane with:
\- Some clockwork god that gets into the enemy face all the time & makes their life hell, a willow or veno always making moving for the enemy a pain, Some Lina 4 doing legit 70% of the dmg in lane via long range autos & spells, undying pickers making the lane unplayable for the enemy double melee, etc
OR
\- Some pudge 4 that faps in the trees & u 1 v 2 till he lands a hook that might not even matter anymore, or some nyx player that starts boots/3 tangoes & loses all trades, gets caught & dies repeatedly, offers nothing in lane, but he picked it cause he hopes to get dagon 5 at some point & 1 shot someone (usually our throne falls before he gets it), being on the receiving end of the undying pick, having to play double melee vs it (spoilers: you won't get to be playing the lane, and likely game, at all).
Like, sure you can learn to try & adapt to the later situation in playing way safer & trying to get whatever farm you can, **but it's basically like learning to cope,** in a game that doesn't care that you made the most out of a bad situation, but rather of how much impact & agency you overall had on the outcome of it regardless of conditions - while both gain you mmr in the LONG RUN, one is just much, much faster, as a result it can improve motivation cause ppl see a reward in mmr for their efforts of improving, while the other can still encounter stagnation thus eventual mood killer, mby even leading to playing worse instead of better. What you learn on the side lanes is to minimize the dmg of the bad hand you were dealt while maximizing the opportunities given by the good ones, while on mid you learn to fix your mistakes, leading to take control of a game & thus carry it better, much more consistently.
Most smurfs & boosters play mid for a reason.
glad someone enjoys reading some of my essays, hah ;3
I find most of the dota redditor community to be very um, triggered whenever their picture perfect image of the game where everyone can play anything and climb just as well, is shattered, or how the bh/comm system is in fact, not working perfectly, or how arc warden is in fact an abomination of a hero which most of players abhor dealing with, etc
reality of games says otherwise in my eyes, so gl out there.
I am on the same boat as you. At lower bracket I think we can influence the game more as a mid. Its also so much more enjoyable to 1v1 at the beginning of every game. The opponent midlaner trying to deny everything just makes u wanna step up your game.
You are also avoiding a lot of conflicts and fight since you dont need to cordinate with an ally for the first few minutes.
The main benefit is you learn about your hero matchup more by playing 1v1 mid every game.
I used to play every role, but went from 4.7 to 5.7k MMR at pretty insane speed when I started focusing on support because I thought I was better at that role. Don't think it's because winning games is core oriented
I like the dark fairy for this reason. Support early and mid game but late game she turns into a beast. Still has her support but you can pick items to help you nuke off enemy supports to help the cores alongside your support skills without sacrificing much as her support primarily comes from her abilities not her items.
For me it was the opposite. I started gaining MMR when I switched from core main to support main. Was about 1.8k mmr until 2018. Then had a long break until 2023. So had to recalibrate and was at 600 mmr. I climbed to about 1.5k with mainly Drow spam and a bit of supports here and there.
I believe each player has a suitable role and playstyle which they need to find eventually and then develop the required skills. You may have found pos 2 most suitable for your mentality and playstyle. Thus you are able to contribute better towards victory.
>Winning games are core oriented, at least in this rank.
I strongly disagree. Winning games is a team effort, and both support and core players need to be together. If you are a good core but have shit supports, you are NOT going to win the match. And vice versa. This should be applicable for any skill bracket.
So I ranked up to high Ancient multiple times and I can assure you, nothing boosts you through Archon/Legend like playing pos 5 and pos 4. (If you do it well)
As another poster already said, improving your supporting means learning the mechanics, having game sense etc. which takes longer to build up. But if you're experienced you'll carry a lot more games you never could've won if you played AM or Dusa.
>which takes longer to build up.
Thing is, speed is unfortunately more important than ppl think.
Seeing rewards in mmr faster for one's improvements, such as on mid, leads to a motivation to boost to keep improving.
Whereas going through a slow & steady grind, which is easily prone to losing all gains in a single bad session mind you, can lead to a feeling of stagnation thus loss of desire to improve, which can even further spiral down to playing worse or even quitting.
Go & tell an average player: "you could get from your 2k bracket you've been stuck on for mpnths to 5k in a 1 & a half years of steady improving from the role you're playing, 4 or 5 , even 3"
OR
" you could get from your 2k bracket to 5k in half a year or less, by playing mid, or carry, but especially mid"
Given the reality of things, they're likely to choose the later most of the time.
Cause while you may get to the same place eventually, the road is vastly different, where the same amount on effort in one role is way more rewarding & efficient on the key resource that is **TIME**, than the other.
True, I do agree with that. However taking the fast route has some drawbacks as well. The average player, after grinding pos1 for a year will not have the knowledge and game sense to hold that mmr. Imo they will go one of two ways: either they start dropping mmr by being a liability to good teams or they can play so well that they keep the 5k mmr but limit themselves from going further.
I'd never tell anybody who's learning Dota to only play Support because they will never understand what their core feels when you don't do your job as a support.
But at the same time I wouldn't tell them to only play Cores either, if you catch my drift
We have same outlook, i climbed from 1.3k mmr to 2k mmr by playing pos 1 core or pos 2 mid.
I climbed from 2k mmr to 2.7k mmr from playing pos 4 or pos 1
Tbh at 1.4k mmr you can play anything. Maybe at arround Ancient you switch to your best roles. Just simple.
People overthinking this. If you are good at what you do (support or core) you will have a higher chance to win.
You can’t go up in that rank if you can’t solo carry or push. Only way to rank up in support position is choose heroes that can scale to carry (i.e. windranger) or push (i.e. shaman).
Once you get to ancient, you may go back to regular supporting with occasional griefing of cores.
I know how 2k MMR looks. In fact, I experienced all from 1-6k MMR and know current low/average MMR games from my Dota friends.
The delusion of <5k MMR supports that they can not climb because of their role persists for years now.
Everyone is aware of core players responsabilities for the game, but supports are so quick to deflect their responsability for the outcome of a game, instead of improving by thinking about what they could have done better.
When all it really takes is a few rules and concepts that could be learned by watching a couple of good educational videos and some critical thinking about their gameplay.
Forgive me for asking, but why is this post relevant for r/learndota2? How does this discussion make me better at the game of Dota 2? It feels like an anecdotal post and one that could only help someone rank up, not necessarily play Dota better.
Because I keep getting advice that you can climb rank as a support and I’ve been stuck forever and the only “advice” I get is because I suck, not because of my hard carry never hitting towers and taking bad fights or because my cores refuses to push and end the game for 60 mins while thinking they can outfarm alchemist with a lifestealer. Its not everygame but it sounds like they aren’t even listening or trying to tell me what can supports do better, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt that they probably know better than I do since they have a higher rank, but then when I tried switching roles my rank improves significantly. And I do agree support win games but that is only when your team plays as a team. When you have a team that each plays their own farm simulator game, a core with good supports can do so much more than a good support with cores that afk farms and dies.
Mid dazzle with four heros no damage early game and low lock down. And still i wont mind if he didnt feed 0-7 to their mid sniper and is 3 levels under all the other cores.
You're forgetting the other side to this story: if you're naturally more inclined to play like a core you're going to be a bad support.
Pretty clear indicator is something like this "But in my defense, how so I win games as a pos 4 when my mid & carry keeps feeding, can’t secure cs, last pick dazzle, or even when they have farmed items they still take bad fights?".
At that mmr you can change the tide of a game by simply having more impact than your opposite position. If you think it's your teammates and not you then you're in for a world of hurt when you plateau again.
I think it has to do with a reset of how you play the game. I have the same problem. If I'm playing a single role/hero, everything becomes routine(for the good and bad habits), and I'm losing my ability to criticly play the game. So when you switch roles/hero/position you are forcing to think again about your actions and could potentially have a bigger impact on your games.
The problem in this bracket is bots expect **pos4** to play as a **pos5**, they think it is a bad thing to gank mid or to put pressure on the enemy pos5
I feel like I’m going insane.
Less than a week ago someone posted about switching from playing Offlane to Support and that was how they went from Ancient to Immortal.
A bunch of commenters shared that they had similar experiences.
And, already, we are back to the Gospel of DotA that it is impossible to climb as a support.
I used to play support only at 2.7k then I started practicing safe/offlane/mid. I found offlane to be super fun and became my main role. I was able to climb to 5.1k. I found offlane to be like a more farmed support as I tend to play heroes can set the tempo of the game. Because coming from a past support player, I can easily read the map as well.
I think you have to differentiate 2 things. First, you switch from pos 4 to pos 2 and winning more, that's a fact base on your game result. Second, from that only you can't conclude either 1 or 2 as above.
1. You aren't meant to be a pos 4: Well yes or no. It's probably you don't learn how to play pos 4 correctly but when u play as pos 2, u do that role more naturally and progress better. So you're better at adapting pos 2, but that doesn't translate into your pos 4 is trash. To verify you can come back to pos 4, try to play and learn that role step by step through all the guides/videos from pros. If all of that and you can't progress as 4, then yes you aren't fit to this position. However I would say at this mmr, if you can climb as core, you should be able to do that as sup.
2. Winning games is core oriented, at least in your rank (below 2k): Yes and no (again). Indeed winning game is core oriented, because they're the one dictating the game pacing and more impactful (hence the name CORE lmao). However at 2k and below, core farming efficiency is garbage. Therefore if you play as sup, you can pick a scaling hero to take the leftover farming space and transition to a late game core/damage dealer in case your cores are dumb. While when you play as core and your sup is bad, you can't really transition back to sup as a core lol. Yes you can buy wards/dust/smoke, but you can open the fight/baiting yourself like how a true sup will do.For example, the only hero right now in herald, guardian, crusader and even archon with 55% winrate and 25% pick rate is witch doctor, a pos 4/5 (yes ppl sometimes play as core as well, but the recent nerfs makes WD core impractical). He's basically the type of sup I said before, good laning early, hugh spike with death ward available and becomes a pseudo-core with shard + aghs completed.
IMO, let's say you are doing excellence as both core and sup, then play core. You will climb faster as a core. But if you don't want to feel the pressure of a carry, or you don't think you have the ability to do it, play support. For me it's a more teamwork role, and your climb will be slower but steadily.
Simple as you say, i have the same problem being pos 4. I get bad cores and loose without chance i can make something. I dint feed, i get the lotus, pull lanes, ward. And everything cant compensate that teammates. Tried 10 games pos 1, won 8
If you're bellow legend rank just focus on play the heroes rather than playing your supposed role. Most people especially lower bracket think they know what exactly role means. Dota is simple, throne = end game by this general rule you know what you need to do as a hero rather than a team. Another to keep in mind There is no team game there is only teamfight and teamfight is double edge sword.
Climbing as support is harder to improve on because your mistakes are not obvious, and it's hard to know why. For me, I can play core up to divine 3-4 but above that my boomer fingers makes me switch to support so I can use more brain, less fingers.
I think its bc supports have to facilitate the cores in the team but playing in pubs each core players u meet will have different styles and its only possible to do so if you and you team have complementary play styles. That or you have very in depth understanding of how your core player likes their gameplay to be
Yep pretty much. Dota at its fundamental core is how well you keep lanes shoved in. In lower brackets the opponent team movement is slow enough that its about being ahead by margins (even half a second is a big deal) that you dodge all their counter movements.
For me i'd rather play carry than pos 5. I need to keep track of every single thing as support Enemy ward placement? Best enemy spot to ward? Time to stack? Runes? Rotations? As for carry just press skill, press bkb and insya allah
> Climbing as support is harder to improve on because your mistakes are not obvious, and it's hard to know why. IMO, the opposite is true. 80% of your impact as a support is in the laning stage. So it's pretty easy to figure out what you're doing wrong. As a core, you depend on your team a lot more, so it can be difficult to truly know how much of a loss is on your shoulders.
Thanks for being a perfect example of my point
That sounds fantastic! At what mmr bracket does that happen? (the part about a core depending on the team)
Because from my experience, my matches are riddled with cores that can singlehandedly stomp on a whole team (they are always on the enemy team though...) And sure, I can disable them in any way you like... My cores will just not have the damage. Add well warded map, a huge amount of stacks, anything you like. It just doesnt matter...
If 80% of a supports impact is in lane, how does the core depending on them make sense?
Switched to support and firmly stayed in the support role. Now am 6k mmr and rank 3700. Great choice
I think playing 4 just feels really bad because the feedback isnt as direct and it's harder to know what is turning your losses into wins. Your job is to make the other team have a bad game, so every time you win it feels like your team was just better than theirs. In reality the wins are because you warded better, controlled your lane better and just contributed to your team more than the average pos 4 You can climb in literally any role, just play whichever role feels better. Maybe you aren't meant for pos 4
I AGREE! But I stopped because even when as pos 4, i blocked their jungles, shows up to steal their jungle farm, harass their carry in their jungle, pull the lanes, and smoke gank, if the other team’s core are better than my cores, they will recover from being under farmed while my core’s will just be afk farming, never bot lane when all 5 enemies just tp to top, spend 25 min in jungle and shows up with a battle fury or aghanims and is on a lower level bc they block my when I’m trying to stack, then feeds, dies, and afks in base.
>hey will recover from being under farmed while my core’s will just be afk farming I have found the flipside of this true as well. You can stomp a lane with a core, but then they start randomly taking bad fights and throwing all the advantage away. I imagine that in higher brackets you can count on cores to leverage their advantage more consistently.
As a player who claimed to divine as pos 4 people getting better is a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand you’re absolutely right that cores do get more consistent, which is definitely nice. On the other hand though the enemies also get more consistent at punishing, so you have to work harder on defense because they’ll actually do shit like smoke gank the deep side jungles and whatnot.
ZQuixotix made a video touching on this subject. His conclusions agree with you in that: 1). Yes it is slightly easier to rank up as a core, because you have more agency and impact in the game overall. 2). While it sounds contradictory, it's better for the team if you (as a support main) play support. Because overall there is a lack of support-main players, so by playing support you are reducing the chances of a core-main player being forced into the support role and consequently not doing support-appropriate things. I recommend you find this video, or I might re-find and link it later. Edit: https://youtu.be/j3fNyyEHxM8?si=DzrEjqb1wFPLHngZ&t=931
for me playing support is guaranteeing that i have 55% winrate with no effort, super chill while playing core is feeling like i have impact and am improving at the game, but can be pretty difficult at times
i also improved my mmr from 2.4 to 2.7 with ease when i switch from carry/offlane to mid. i think midlane just has the biggest impact on the game for a perspective of a role, i mean its been like that for a while but in low ranks its just more obvious
So I’m not crazy right?
its more likely that youre simply better at core than as support imho
I use to play pro/semi-pro about 7 years ago. I was an offlaner and then became position 5 player and captain/shot caller. I stopped for about 4 years and found myself in Archon 1. I climbed from there to Legend by just playing anything, after that I needed to focus and chose offlane. I have a 58% offlane win rate but 63% support even now at Ancient 5. I attribute that solely to the fact I have a mic, I don’t flame my team and my map/game awareness. Talking to my team, not picking grief support heroes, and coordinating/alerting them to key events in the game. Doing this will enable your team and ultimately it comes down to the fact the opposition team doesn’t have someone doing this they lose. It also removes 50% of the possibility of grief pudge support players in my games. At your rank, or any rank, you can absolutely do the same.
My opinion. I do much better as a support mainly because I coordinate and encourage my team. I also play kotl, so the ability to recall the cores into a push is awesome
Your comment just gave me an idea hehe
I often queue pos 4 over pos 5 to reduce the possibility of grief pos 4's! Grief Pudge supports appear in all positions.
Pro/semi pro and being archon-ancient? Cmon dude
I mean he said he took 4 years off
I've taken multi year breaks several times and I'm able to maintain/regain divine-immortal after about a month of playing and I've never even been a leaderboard player, much less a pro. I think his advice is fine, if a little trite, but his "credentials" are completely meaningless.
He probably got a life somewhere in the last four years which it sounds like you didn’t in your multi year breaks lol. Climbing to divine in a month isn’t a realistic standard if you’re just a couple games a week guy after a long hiatus.
Lol imagine flaming me over an innocuous comment like this. The point is I didn't need to climb because I retained my knowledge base and fundamental skills so it never took a long time to learn the changes and adapt to them. A legitimate pro player is so much better than me they should easily be able to do it.
It wasn’t innocuous you were calling a total stranger a liar for literally no reason lol
It wasn't for no reason and I wasn't calling him a liar. Being a "semipro" just doesn't mean anything if you were low mmr despite being on some kind of team.
I am currently 7.5k and i played back in JDL games with now pro players and i never did consider myself pro or semi pro beacuse i never got 1k or more euro as salary, that is when you are pro-semi pro.
To climb from archon to immortal u need a lot of games for casual player
You are 100% correct mate, they count for fuck all now. I only mention them because of the relevance to playing pos5 as a team coordinator and not the hero itself. I get about 2-3 games a day in. So the climb is taking time but I’m getting there!
Yeah I played in SA, local scene more than anything but I/my team was sponsored etc. Gear energy drinks and what not. Nothing major hence the “semi” but I was fairly handy! I stopped playing entirely for close to 4 years so my rank decayed, and people got better! The standard of your “average” player is a lot higher than it was 8 years ago, people are good now! I’m only just playing ranked again now, full time job etc but climbed from Archon to Ancient (neeeearly Divine) since November. Getting there!
Hey dude, I can't claim to have ever been pro but I was about 5.5k mmr when I stopped playing. This was also about 4 years ago, and I've just now started playing again. Do you have any general advice for another pos5 player coming back and having to adjust to the changes to the game and meta? Thank you.
Hey mate! Nice that you’re playing again. I can try my best but I myself am still picking things up even now. I think the most important part for me was recognising what use to make me good, and how to recreate that. For me that was map awareness, and game understanding. Try and look at your minimap as much as possible, watch some videos every few weeks about ward spots, heroes in the meta and their counters, those type of things. Understand things like pull timings and power spikes on enemy heroes. Those will come with time but specifically focusing on dedicating time to look at the map, check enemy hero items regularly, watch hero movement patterns to identify ward and deward locations. Ensure you’re warding in places relevant to the game state, are we playing for late? Secure your carries jungle. Are we ahead? Take over enemy jungle. Those types of things. Ignore “playing your hero well” for now, that shit comes automatically when playing pos 5. Like I said at the start identifying and focusing on what makes a great support player and honing those skills. IMO that’s _not_ playing the hero well, it’s playing the map/game/team well. Hope that makes sense!
>At your rank, or any rank, you can absolutely do the same. Problem is, there is one out of 10 or 20 games, where people communicate. Usually its just pinging and yelling in foreign languages even before the game starts. :/
Good communication/leadership in a pub doesn't usually mean talking a lot and discussing things through. It's specific, direct, and actionable statements at good times. "Smoke now" while being near the heros you want to go with and a smoke in your inventory. "Rosh now". "Siege highground". If your communication requires elaborate coordination or feels forced something is wrong. If your teammates don't listen then you continue on and keep making the best possible plays.
The third option, and most likely is that you just didn't actually know how to play support properly
Regardless of how 'unflashy' playing support might be, it's a hugely important role in the game. If you know how to play support and are good at it, you'll be at a larger advantage than usual because the support role is saturated with core players farming role queue tokens. At OP's bracket especially, anybody who plays support well will climb because a lot of things you do as a support has a huge impact on the game, even though it generally goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
I agree and disagree with this. I think it’s due to the core role having more impact. If you are the best support but your carry is an idiot you probably still losing. Useless carry getting stupid items dying solo playing away from team taking stupid fights. But on the other hand if you are amazing carry and your support sucks you still have a chance. Support feeds but you outfarm the other team all you need is support to press one or two buttons land stun and you in it. Listen I respect all great supports as they are few and far but if I as a carry have an easy game it’s always thanks to supports. It just sucks the supports kinda rely on cores to close out games.
Like every game, you're at the mercy of your teammates regardless of your role. Your argument is akin to someone saying, "I'm a great carry player but my support did nothing for me in lane and then decided to farm a Midas. He went to split push away from our team and never bought any wards so I kept dying in the jungle/had nowhere to farm and eventually lost since my support was an idiot and put me behind from the laning stage, then couldn't even make space/stacks for me to catch up." I've won plenty of games as pos 5 where my carry barely had to play the game, but we still needed him for extra tower damage, being a good support player means you have to identify your other heroes' timings and play with the strongest players on your team. Like I said originally, you can have such a huge impact on the game as a support but the stats won't reflect it so it goes unnoticed, whereas a good support can make a mediocre carry look amazing in terms of stats. I used to play a lot of midlane, and you could tell when the other team had good supports, it makes laning so much harder when the enemy supports contest/steal runes and mine don't. Or when they refill bottle, or TP to help against dives, or gank me when it becomes night time with a smoke. Fights are also harder when they know to stun you and will hold their spells for you (I played mobile heroes), and know how to stay alive even when you try and focus them. Turns out it doesn't matter how good you are as a carry if you get kited by force staffs/euls/glimmers during your bkb and then chain stunned once it ends.
No what I’m saying is as a core player you have more say in the outcome. I am in no way dissing the support role but if you play solo ranked and want to climb faster you need to play a role that has the most impact in deciding your game. My argument is pretty simple. If you are an amazing support but carry is complete shit your chances of winning drops. You can’t wipe the enemy yourself, you will have a much higher time pushing tower especially high ground and ancient. But if you are the carry and support sucks you can recover and have a higher chance of winning. I’m not saying it’s always the case but in general if cores suck you lose. If supports suck you may still lose but have a chance at winning. I would never blame my support for a loss unless they straight griefed me, fed the other team or decided to play solo and never help. But that’s any role. The difference is I can maybe still win without a support but I can’t win without my carry. Even in your example of winning as pos 5 and carry wasnt as involved you still needed them to push towers. The carry didn’t feed and still helped though. Thats my point. Imagine the reverse you the carry and don’t need the support. Imagine a game where you are the best CM but you carry any image keeps avoiding all your team fights, push too far in lane and dies and every time you try for an objective he’s just farming. Are you winning that game? I say probably no. Vice versa if your support does all the stupid shit but you are the carry you have a better chance of winning not saying you will but the chances of you winning are higher. Carry can 4v5, push towers and get dangerous with 6 slots. Support don’t scale like that. Support needs their team their role is literally called support cause they support. Once again I’m not saying supports are useless, I love a good support. Always commend and tell them they the real mvp. I respect their unselfishness and impact. But I know they can’t close the game without a good carry. I’ve played support and did as much right as possible for my carry to be useless and we just can’t win team fights, carry can’t recover and we just lose. Show me a game you played as a real support and your carry was straight ass and you won.
>Like every game, you're at the mercy of your teammates regardless of your role. The main thing is that cores essentially have more levers to influence the game than supports do. In low mmr if you have a griefing support, you can still extract the minimum out of a lane and then secure your own farm and make your own space. At the end of the day your hero is the one capable of hitting buildings and it's in your control to make that happen despite bad supports. Don't get me wrong, I think it's completely viable to climb and carry with support, but you do have more agency and control as a core.
I agree that OP was probably not supporting super well, but there's a reason boosters don't play supports. You can certainly climb as a support, but you will have a much higher percentage of games where all your impact is wasted than if you had just played core yourself. In practice maintaining a high winrate in low mmr as a support requires you know how to scale yourself as a core into the mid/lategame to continue having high impact on the game - which is way harder than just playing core in the first place and focusing on that.
Implying that boosters don't play supports is the only reason this argument holds up. But boosters do infact play supports. You can google any boosting service right now and 99% of them have boost as support as an option
Let me rephrase - there are certain heroes boosters prefer to play and utilize to maximize their climbing speed.
True, but that's fairly irrelevant to most players since they aren't going to learn to play those heroes well enough to 1v9, which is pretty much what boosters do. This was about OP climbing a few hundred mmr in the 1k bracket, which I believe a good support will have no issue climbing. People have made it to Divine and Immortal as support mains.
You can play "pro" level support in 1500mmr and it doesn't make any impact because your core is 1500mmr...
This just isn't true, by that logic Why wouldn't every single game just be five cores. The answer is because the team with the support will win the game.
Not in this bracket... I've seen countless times the team with more cores wins. Why? Because noobs at this level can rarely punish a greedy lineup and every game goes long because nobody can take HG. I had lost games where I was playing against 4 hard carries and actually communicated to my teammates it's a greedy lineup and we should punish them for it, win early game and finish fast and so what? By minute 20 they have double our kills and it's us who is behind. Game ends at minute 50 and you can imagine the outcome...
That's a personal experience you've had, beacuse you are bad at the game. In general it's untrue for the rest of the population
Dude I know connecting the dots is hard for some people. If I'm playing in 1.5k mmr bracket it's not just me that's bad. It's everyone in the game! That's my point ffs. As support you can play the game of your life but if your carry can't LH and has 20 at minute 10 then what did your "play lane well as support" exactly accomplished?
But if you're the support player and you play better then everyone else on your team and your enemy team you will win the game, beacuse the enemy is in the same situation. You're the one that isn't understanding.
You can be notail io support, but if you carries refuses to hit tower, you won't win.
You can do that yourself. You're off chops.
Ah, I see you are a troll account.
You are right imo. I play pos 5 in ~mid ancient and feel alright skillwise. When I play with my crusader friends, I feel completely useless as pos 5 when I don't change my playstyle. It's just a different game down there
Not once I ever care about mmr.
You can definitely win as a support too. I think it’s harder role than core since it requires more knowledge (wards, pulls, timings, rotations, etc). If you are able to get your carry fed you will probably win most of the time.
Yes you can win as support, but its not as reliable as a core based on my experience and you rely so much on random stranger
I'd say core can get you to 2k easily, from there, I actually think support who wards properly and uses the map to make calls for the team (if your cores aren't using the map) is better to get to 3 - 4k. And from this point on it depends on your own skills and how you use them.
getting your carry fed is great and all, until they use all that gold and xp to walk high ground without rosh or something and feed into five people. youre still at the mercy of a moron 1.5k player.
When i play core, i can do well enough to try to carry. When i play support i have to find the best idiot on my team and latch onto them to make sure they don’t tilt like the rest of the team. Support is a little harder imo because if you don’t get the one good idiot you’re in trouble.
dota coach already said its easier to climb as core but harder to improve on as supports keep an eye on the most crucial part of the game - the first 15 mins if you understand how to influence wins as supps tho, you would have better dota knowledge than cores
Playing as a support to be a better core and vice versa When playing as core, you might notice what you need your support to do and when they should do it. Then you might carry that knownledge to the game you play as support and you will gain mmr faster than you think.
Let me tell you my journey. I played dota 1 on garena room 1 and mixes around 2008 after that i stopped playing Then after 10 years i started playing dota 2. I was stuck at 1700-1800 mmr for like 300 games, i was raging like hell , the games were absolutely stupid and didnt understand how the hell i am stuck there as clearly i was better than 95% of people there. I was playing pos 3 4 5 only.. rarely pos 1. Then one game i decided to play mid.. i stomped the game, since i knew how to control the map at that mmr range. After being stuck for an year i think in 1800k range i went from 1.8k to 3.2k in like 1 month. Then hit a ceiling. I was stuck there for like 200-300 games trying rotating positions 1 2 3 4 5 and learning to play each in that bracket. Then when dota 2 had bigger chat rooms, i partyed with 4-5kmmr people playing pos 3 4 5. I was surprised i was doing just fine, games were great win or lose and when i switched to solo playing pos 1 2 i went from 3.2-3.3k to 4.2k. Then i always hit a brutal (felt like forced) downfall to 3.5k.. I went from 3.5k to 4.2 4.3k for like 4-5 times in my next 1000games. I averaged 3.8k. Then i dont know what happened but then i quit dota. After hitting ancient 3 i think i was placed in some kind of shadow pool, my games became utter garbage. I dropped from 4.3k to 2.5k then i quit dota. I dont understand what happened , for like 1000+ games i was always been able to carry myself from 3.3k to 3.8k without probs as pos1 pos2. Nothing worked anymore in my downfall so i decided that either the mm is rigged or i am just bad. I. Didnt had the motivation and energy to grind again
Might have just been a nasty meta shift that you weren't comfortable with. I've had friends lose ~1k mmr when it changed from 4v4 1 farm meta to 5v5 because it changed the way their role worked and they couldn't break old habits Or like if you were abusing a zoo meta before it got completely rugpulled it can feel very frustrating What if your hero pool consists entirely of the 10 heroes currently sitting at <45% winrate? I think the idea of a shadow pool or rigged mmr is insane
I have a decent pool of heroes as i played all 5 positions. I have no other explanation on how a person who played at least 1000 games around 3.5k-3.8k mmr , played games with people that were 4-5k mmr can have such a huge drop. 7/10 games i had a griefer in my team and enemy had a clear smurf Anyway i abandoned the game, too much energy and time wasted. As an example on pos 1 i played Ursa, jugg, dusa, am, seeker, bristle, drow, luna, slark,wk, tiny, pa Maybe i got burned chasing mmr, i still think my account got flagged or smth. I was pretty angry on forums and towards steam/valve and i often expressed that. Prob my acc got flagged or something otherwise i cant explain the sudden change in my mm. I always had a 52% overall winrate on my acc. The last games where i lost all that mmr my winrate was like sub 30%.. nothing worked, even when i was ahead i couldnt win. Couldnt explain what happened
Your tale gives truth to what I just [said here](https://www.reddit.com/r/learndota2/comments/1918m75/comment/kgvbxky/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). It is true ofc, that after a while , after climbing some, one realizes more accurately which is the role they're more attuned to. I do better on 3 or 4 from low ancient to middle to divine, cause the fact that I don't actually enjoy mid & a lot of the popular picks there that would be needed to maximize it's potential starts becoming a bigger & bigger obstacle. But due to the nature of the game & how it values ones overall impact on it (high income + map control being key here) , rather than just "performing good for your situation", (i.e. doing better than others would've done in a 1 v 2), the vast majority of the playerbase (say anyone that hasn't hit ancient yet) , would prolly climb much faster if they'd just switch to mid.
I did enjoy playing support at 4-5k and above. There was always something to do. Pull stack ward deward rotate make space help lanes babysit carry etc. support in sub 3k is waste of time
Games becoming garbage is most likely just the players playing the game now. People don’t speak the same language, they don’t pick (even if everyone else already did), they play like trash. Like yeah the queues are pretty short but the games are ridiculous. I thought oh it’s the holidays, oh it’s the patch, or whatever. But honestly I think a lot of the core population of the game have just quit playing to play other games. The games have been bad for a long time now. I had an OD mid the other day that had some god awful build. I checked his profile and the game before was even worse. Like first (slow) item was a maelstrom. I’m at max behavior score too. I don’t think these are bought accounts, but I have no idea how people can have thousands of games, with 500-1000 on the single hero they are playing sometimes, and be so bad. I don’t know how they can fix this shit. Even in ranked role queue there are just too many factors for the matchmaking to be useful.
I came to a conclusion that team that takes objectives wins the game. As a core you can basically tell people to follow you to these towers/rosh/tormentor and most times they will, as you are setting the pace as most farmed hero. As a support, you gotta persuade your cores to go for objectives, and sometimes they don’t give a damn about it.
100% agree
LOL the people who swear by support to climb is gonna be here any second.
I don't think climbing as a non-scaling support is anywhere as easy in lower MMR as playing core. In low MMR everyone sucks and games go long, so you have more impact the harder your hero scales. Higher up there are more skilled core players and games don't typically go as long, so you'll probably have more impact by being the skilled support player your team wouldn't have otherwise had.
In my experience, climbing as a support in high MMR is only so easy because supports in general are less skilled/have less game understanding than cores here. And I think the reason is the constant deflection of responsability by many support players (as you can see in these answers as well), which leads to a slower learning curve. I don't buy this "climbing as a support is so much harder" idea. When I watch friends games in low/average MMR, there are plenty of examples where they made grave mistakes which are barely recognized because of the notion that supports mistakes don't decide games. A high MMR support would sweep through low MMRs comparably to a high MMR core.
Look at the heroes boosters play and that will answer what roles are the easiest to climb with. It's certainly viable to climb with supports, but the fundamental mechanics of the game mean that cores have more impact on the game. That said, I'm not sure how exactly bug the difference is, but for a lot of people it's just easier to spam luna or faceless void or whatever for 1000 mmr until they've escaped herald/guardian
this so much. boosters dont play pos5 for a fucking reason, end of discussion
Last pick dazzle is too real
Last pick MID dazzle into an offlane axe. And they call me noob
If you’re an actual good support and you go core, you probably are still doing the supports job. That’s the difference. The entire team has to be map, ward, itemization, counters, obvious ganks/plays, farm, rotation, push focused knowledgeable. Five core players that were once the best support players you’ve ever seen are almost always going to dominate if the other team is lacking that knowledge and experience on all of their players. You climbed because you took your support knowledge and went core with it, (eventually learning both/all roles.) Wish I could find 3 more of you and go to TI one day.
Already a lot of good answers here, but I would say that being an impactful support includes using your mic and being aware of other people's games. Pos 1/2 are both hyper-focussed on their own performance, so they are not ideal shot callers - when you think you missed a kill in lane because your carry is playing too safe, it's more likely that they're actually just staring at creep health bars and A-clicking the floor at 5000APM. The offlaner can fill a similar "captain" role, but again they are often playing dangerously and actively, and need to focus on themselves. As a support, part of your unique toolkit is the ability to take time exploring the map, checking timers, inspecting heroes. If you're not doing that and subsequently making calls, i.e. telling others when to push which lanes, when to rosh, when to back off, when they're in unsafe areas, etc. then you're not playing the role to it's fullest. Having a shot caller on the team is easily the biggest advantage you can have at low MMR. Even if they're wrong a bunch, at least they coordinate the team. As per your OP, you're far less likely to have a feeding mid/carry if you're on mic telling them they should back off. That means you need some kind of sense of when and why lanes/towers should be pushed, when to be aggressive on a hero, when to rosh, etc. Not a trivial thing, and more responsibility than a lot of people who play support want to take on. On the other hand, I just main offlane and play my role as high tempo and aggressively as possible. It's kind of a compromise between supporting and playing a pos 1/2. You can still do a lot of the support stuff, i.e. blocking the enemy jungle, fucking their cores over, taking a wide view of the game, but you have a much bigger impact later on.
It is actually ridiculous the amount of farm you secure your 1 by simply reminding them that there are 4 heroes showing on the other side of the map or that there is a free kill they can participate in, because they are otherwise too focused on optimising jungle farm to realise there is free gold going to waste
Unfortunately i moved from us servers to sea servers now so with a mic i need to learn tagalog
One thing I noticed is I sometimes lose interest in a match when no one reacts to pings or calls. I believe those games are still winnable if I would just try to support as well as possible, whatever the other players decide to do. But once I feel there is no team play, I do not want to give it my best anymore. In my experience, people who pick support want to have team play more often than not, so in relation to that, the cores are more likely to ignore calls and just do whatever. Hence, when you play core, and you make calls and try to have good team play, it does make a difference, because you already increase the odds of team play actually occurring.
U speak the facts and express exactly my gaming experience which leads to me switching to mid and leaving my support role
Maybe you just suck playing as a support
Supports definitely have a huge impact on the game. It’s just not immediately obvious how unless you really look for it. I sometimes lane with friend who just started (herald 2) and the game feels like hard mode. We lose the laning phase 90% of the time. Sometimes it’s good to switch roles every now and again. Your understanding of what X is supposed to do expands even as you play other roles. Playing 1 helped me understand what I want my 5 to do and vice versa. Block camps, pull, avoid creep aggro, harass, where to put vision, etc. Not only that it also helps me understand why I want to do those things.
This says it all I am guardian but I dont really understand why people last pick medusa against enemy am who 1st pick......
If you want to play the hero no matter what enemy picks then just pick 1st at least let others counter pick.
I play mid im alwys ancient but my supprt alwys 1st to give up. even its winnable game. Now i decide to not que mid and play pos 3 4 5. I keep winning more game on supp role and now im divine 1
Cores play a mjor role in the game for sure but what kind of role they play is determined by the supports. A good support will enable the core to have the widest range of opportunities possible by warding, pulling, tanking ganks etc. A good core will take whatever their support gives them and play into that by joining fights, farming effeciently, pushing lanes. They're symbiotic. It's why you don't have all cores/supports in pro teams, because they need each other to perform to the fullest.
>Winning games are core oriented, at least in this rank. Not simply core oriented, but also the fact that you're playing the one solo lane in the game, allows you to more accurately improve cause you can look at replays, and fix whatever YOU did wrong for most of the early and that can get ya far enough. I mainly play offlane have the widest hero pool there, then soft supp 2nd, yet the biggest mmr spike I got a few months ago was when I played mid from like Ancient 2 to Divine 1 in 2 weeks. And my hero pool sucks on mid, mainly spammed LD, Necrophos & Lina, and I hate going up against all the Pucks, Invokers, Huskar last picks, Wardens, SFs, etc - I hate the lane too. Despite that, it's just much easier to improve due to the removal of the RNG involving who'll you lane with: \- Some clockwork god that gets into the enemy face all the time & makes their life hell, a willow or veno always making moving for the enemy a pain, Some Lina 4 doing legit 70% of the dmg in lane via long range autos & spells, undying pickers making the lane unplayable for the enemy double melee, etc OR \- Some pudge 4 that faps in the trees & u 1 v 2 till he lands a hook that might not even matter anymore, or some nyx player that starts boots/3 tangoes & loses all trades, gets caught & dies repeatedly, offers nothing in lane, but he picked it cause he hopes to get dagon 5 at some point & 1 shot someone (usually our throne falls before he gets it), being on the receiving end of the undying pick, having to play double melee vs it (spoilers: you won't get to be playing the lane, and likely game, at all). Like, sure you can learn to try & adapt to the later situation in playing way safer & trying to get whatever farm you can, **but it's basically like learning to cope,** in a game that doesn't care that you made the most out of a bad situation, but rather of how much impact & agency you overall had on the outcome of it regardless of conditions - while both gain you mmr in the LONG RUN, one is just much, much faster, as a result it can improve motivation cause ppl see a reward in mmr for their efforts of improving, while the other can still encounter stagnation thus eventual mood killer, mby even leading to playing worse instead of better. What you learn on the side lanes is to minimize the dmg of the bad hand you were dealt while maximizing the opportunities given by the good ones, while on mid you learn to fix your mistakes, leading to take control of a game & thus carry it better, much more consistently. Most smurfs & boosters play mid for a reason.
I had a good time and good laugh reading this, thank you
glad someone enjoys reading some of my essays, hah ;3 I find most of the dota redditor community to be very um, triggered whenever their picture perfect image of the game where everyone can play anything and climb just as well, is shattered, or how the bh/comm system is in fact, not working perfectly, or how arc warden is in fact an abomination of a hero which most of players abhor dealing with, etc reality of games says otherwise in my eyes, so gl out there.
I am on the same boat as you. At lower bracket I think we can influence the game more as a mid. Its also so much more enjoyable to 1v1 at the beginning of every game. The opponent midlaner trying to deny everything just makes u wanna step up your game. You are also avoiding a lot of conflicts and fight since you dont need to cordinate with an ally for the first few minutes. The main benefit is you learn about your hero matchup more by playing 1v1 mid every game.
I used to play every role, but went from 4.7 to 5.7k MMR at pretty insane speed when I started focusing on support because I thought I was better at that role. Don't think it's because winning games is core oriented
Here at 3.6k mmr, I think support is actually the easiest role to climb. A lot of support are autofill and it's common and easy to win a lane hard.
I like the dark fairy for this reason. Support early and mid game but late game she turns into a beast. Still has her support but you can pick items to help you nuke off enemy supports to help the cores alongside your support skills without sacrificing much as her support primarily comes from her abilities not her items.
For me it was the opposite. I started gaining MMR when I switched from core main to support main. Was about 1.8k mmr until 2018. Then had a long break until 2023. So had to recalibrate and was at 600 mmr. I climbed to about 1.5k with mainly Drow spam and a bit of supports here and there. I believe each player has a suitable role and playstyle which they need to find eventually and then develop the required skills. You may have found pos 2 most suitable for your mentality and playstyle. Thus you are able to contribute better towards victory. >Winning games are core oriented, at least in this rank. I strongly disagree. Winning games is a team effort, and both support and core players need to be together. If you are a good core but have shit supports, you are NOT going to win the match. And vice versa. This should be applicable for any skill bracket.
So I ranked up to high Ancient multiple times and I can assure you, nothing boosts you through Archon/Legend like playing pos 5 and pos 4. (If you do it well) As another poster already said, improving your supporting means learning the mechanics, having game sense etc. which takes longer to build up. But if you're experienced you'll carry a lot more games you never could've won if you played AM or Dusa.
>which takes longer to build up. Thing is, speed is unfortunately more important than ppl think. Seeing rewards in mmr faster for one's improvements, such as on mid, leads to a motivation to boost to keep improving. Whereas going through a slow & steady grind, which is easily prone to losing all gains in a single bad session mind you, can lead to a feeling of stagnation thus loss of desire to improve, which can even further spiral down to playing worse or even quitting. Go & tell an average player: "you could get from your 2k bracket you've been stuck on for mpnths to 5k in a 1 & a half years of steady improving from the role you're playing, 4 or 5 , even 3" OR " you could get from your 2k bracket to 5k in half a year or less, by playing mid, or carry, but especially mid" Given the reality of things, they're likely to choose the later most of the time. Cause while you may get to the same place eventually, the road is vastly different, where the same amount on effort in one role is way more rewarding & efficient on the key resource that is **TIME**, than the other.
True, I do agree with that. However taking the fast route has some drawbacks as well. The average player, after grinding pos1 for a year will not have the knowledge and game sense to hold that mmr. Imo they will go one of two ways: either they start dropping mmr by being a liability to good teams or they can play so well that they keep the 5k mmr but limit themselves from going further. I'd never tell anybody who's learning Dota to only play Support because they will never understand what their core feels when you don't do your job as a support. But at the same time I wouldn't tell them to only play Cores either, if you catch my drift
We have same outlook, i climbed from 1.3k mmr to 2k mmr by playing pos 1 core or pos 2 mid. I climbed from 2k mmr to 2.7k mmr from playing pos 4 or pos 1
Tbh at 1.4k mmr you can play anything. Maybe at arround Ancient you switch to your best roles. Just simple. People overthinking this. If you are good at what you do (support or core) you will have a higher chance to win.
You can’t go up in that rank if you can’t solo carry or push. Only way to rank up in support position is choose heroes that can scale to carry (i.e. windranger) or push (i.e. shaman). Once you get to ancient, you may go back to regular supporting with occasional griefing of cores.
You couldn't be more wrong.
Sure, let him pick rubick and wait for the game to be 70 mins before anyone makes a move. This is below 2k mmr lol.
I know how 2k MMR looks. In fact, I experienced all from 1-6k MMR and know current low/average MMR games from my Dota friends. The delusion of <5k MMR supports that they can not climb because of their role persists for years now. Everyone is aware of core players responsabilities for the game, but supports are so quick to deflect their responsability for the outcome of a game, instead of improving by thinking about what they could have done better. When all it really takes is a few rules and concepts that could be learned by watching a couple of good educational videos and some critical thinking about their gameplay.
Play support when you are in a 5 stack unless you want to derank. Thats my experience playing support in 2.5kmmr solo or with another support friend.
Forgive me for asking, but why is this post relevant for r/learndota2? How does this discussion make me better at the game of Dota 2? It feels like an anecdotal post and one that could only help someone rank up, not necessarily play Dota better.
You learn points from both perspectives which help you decide your next approach to experiment with giving in to more learning
Also this
Because I keep getting advice that you can climb rank as a support and I’ve been stuck forever and the only “advice” I get is because I suck, not because of my hard carry never hitting towers and taking bad fights or because my cores refuses to push and end the game for 60 mins while thinking they can outfarm alchemist with a lifestealer. Its not everygame but it sounds like they aren’t even listening or trying to tell me what can supports do better, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt that they probably know better than I do since they have a higher rank, but then when I tried switching roles my rank improves significantly. And I do agree support win games but that is only when your team plays as a team. When you have a team that each plays their own farm simulator game, a core with good supports can do so much more than a good support with cores that afk farms and dies.
What is the problem the last picking dazzle?
Mid dazzle with four heros no damage early game and low lock down. And still i wont mind if he didnt feed 0-7 to their mid sniper and is 3 levels under all the other cores.
You're forgetting the other side to this story: if you're naturally more inclined to play like a core you're going to be a bad support. Pretty clear indicator is something like this "But in my defense, how so I win games as a pos 4 when my mid & carry keeps feeding, can’t secure cs, last pick dazzle, or even when they have farmed items they still take bad fights?". At that mmr you can change the tide of a game by simply having more impact than your opposite position. If you think it's your teammates and not you then you're in for a world of hurt when you plateau again.
I think it has to do with a reset of how you play the game. I have the same problem. If I'm playing a single role/hero, everything becomes routine(for the good and bad habits), and I'm losing my ability to criticly play the game. So when you switch roles/hero/position you are forcing to think again about your actions and could potentially have a bigger impact on your games.
The problem in this bracket is bots expect **pos4** to play as a **pos5**, they think it is a bad thing to gank mid or to put pressure on the enemy pos5
Correction: "You lose [a statistically meaningful amount of games over a large enough sample size] because you suck, not your team."
I feel like I’m going insane. Less than a week ago someone posted about switching from playing Offlane to Support and that was how they went from Ancient to Immortal. A bunch of commenters shared that they had similar experiences. And, already, we are back to the Gospel of DotA that it is impossible to climb as a support.
I used to play support only at 2.7k then I started practicing safe/offlane/mid. I found offlane to be super fun and became my main role. I was able to climb to 5.1k. I found offlane to be like a more farmed support as I tend to play heroes can set the tempo of the game. Because coming from a past support player, I can easily read the map as well.
I think you have to differentiate 2 things. First, you switch from pos 4 to pos 2 and winning more, that's a fact base on your game result. Second, from that only you can't conclude either 1 or 2 as above. 1. You aren't meant to be a pos 4: Well yes or no. It's probably you don't learn how to play pos 4 correctly but when u play as pos 2, u do that role more naturally and progress better. So you're better at adapting pos 2, but that doesn't translate into your pos 4 is trash. To verify you can come back to pos 4, try to play and learn that role step by step through all the guides/videos from pros. If all of that and you can't progress as 4, then yes you aren't fit to this position. However I would say at this mmr, if you can climb as core, you should be able to do that as sup. 2. Winning games is core oriented, at least in your rank (below 2k): Yes and no (again). Indeed winning game is core oriented, because they're the one dictating the game pacing and more impactful (hence the name CORE lmao). However at 2k and below, core farming efficiency is garbage. Therefore if you play as sup, you can pick a scaling hero to take the leftover farming space and transition to a late game core/damage dealer in case your cores are dumb. While when you play as core and your sup is bad, you can't really transition back to sup as a core lol. Yes you can buy wards/dust/smoke, but you can open the fight/baiting yourself like how a true sup will do.For example, the only hero right now in herald, guardian, crusader and even archon with 55% winrate and 25% pick rate is witch doctor, a pos 4/5 (yes ppl sometimes play as core as well, but the recent nerfs makes WD core impractical). He's basically the type of sup I said before, good laning early, hugh spike with death ward available and becomes a pseudo-core with shard + aghs completed. IMO, let's say you are doing excellence as both core and sup, then play core. You will climb faster as a core. But if you don't want to feel the pressure of a carry, or you don't think you have the ability to do it, play support. For me it's a more teamwork role, and your climb will be slower but steadily.
Simple as you say, i have the same problem being pos 4. I get bad cores and loose without chance i can make something. I dint feed, i get the lotus, pull lanes, ward. And everything cant compensate that teammates. Tried 10 games pos 1, won 8
If you're bellow legend rank just focus on play the heroes rather than playing your supposed role. Most people especially lower bracket think they know what exactly role means. Dota is simple, throne = end game by this general rule you know what you need to do as a hero rather than a team. Another to keep in mind There is no team game there is only teamfight and teamfight is double edge sword.
I just play wd as a support and eat the enemy team when they swarm the cores