A friend has been talking about how bad low-MMR Dota 2 matches are, and I was so curious to see what it was like for myself. He graciously allowed me to see for myself. I was determined to support my way out of sub-1000 MMR. I also thought it would be good practice for my experiment games - trying to be "cheerful" and supportive even when I feel like my team isn't co-operating.
I played 10 matches and sadly, ended up on nearly the same MMR as I started. :( I thought I'd write some low-effort posts for the next few days going over the experience.
Firstly, 900 MMR is not 900 MMR. You would think that at this level, it's full of people who are playing as though they are on a 10 inch monitor that only does 300 x 300 pixels, that they're squinting in front of. That is probably only true of about half the players. The other half are probably people like me, who are actually much higher rated, and curious what life is like in the lower ranks. There's warding, de-warding, people do buy couriers and upgrade them. There's tri-laning, roaming heroes, smoke ganks. Stacking, pulling, creep equilibrium management, aggro management. These are things I have not seen in my friend's matches at 2000 MMR.
My first match was as CM on the Dire team.
I started supporting enchantress in the top lane, but had to move to bot as they were quite aggressively pushing the lane. We lost all of our tier one towers pretty early, but four of us banded together to defend the tier twos while Medusa farmed a bit more.
Medusa apologised for not calling missing in middle lane, Beastmaster thanked me for saving him (even though he still ended up dying to Spirit Breaker), Windranger teleported to countergank, Enchantress ... I don't really remember anything in particular about her. The team was incredibly pleasant. Even though we lost so many towers at the start, and were ganked quite heavily, we manage to make a comeback.
A few things I noticed this game: I was definitely a position 5.
Glimmer cape and urn are a lot stronger than they should be - glimmer because people rarely carry extra sentries / dust, and urn because there are so many deaths, you will always have charges, and people don't seem to expect a sustained push, and so they don't generally have buyback. Speaking of, I've noticed a lot more emotional buybacks (when you buyback out of anger). Windranger killed herself twice on blademail. Medusa did say she was going to farm the jungle, but rather than a "Screw you guys, I'm jungling!" comment, she said, "Hmmm, I guess I'd better farm the jungle a bit", with a tone that was more suggestive of her saying she was underfarmed, rather than saying the team sucked and she was going to have to farm the jungle to save everyone.
There was lots of good communication between the team. Three out of the five people were using voice comms. Nobody raged, even when things were looking bad. No BM - from either team. People were focused on objectives, not quests or farming billions of items. It was a close game, but everyone was so nice to play with, 900 MMR is like paradise.
Other than WR killing herself twice on Blademail, I didn't really notice much that outright screamed, "I'm a below average player". We took a couple of questionable teamfights. Enchantress could have jungled, with Beastmaster or Windranger solo offlane. The enemy team also played quite well. Warlock got some great ults. Spirit Breaker was quite actively roaming the map, and didn't get caught charging through any obvious wards. Ursa did his thing smashing faces. I think the only reason we did better was that we had better team fights and we were able to pick them off a few times - though they did let me stand there channel Freezing Field a few times, even before I had glimmer cape. Enchantress didn't seem all that interested in enchanting anything - at least not that I noticed. And she didn't seem that interested in pushing either, being conspicuously missing from the few times we did try and push uphill.
Sorry, the screenshot is from a recording of the game, so it's a bit blurry, but here's a transcription:
Beastmaster: aha 2/16
Medusa: commend mrs medusa and get a free lollie!
Beastmaster: first time beaset, clearly
Enchantress: i'll take a cherry ripe
Beastmaster: thanks for saving the early game enchantress
Beastmaster: and pulling us through the late dusa
Beastmaster: commends all around
I thought Windranger and I contributed, too!
No comments:
Post a Comment