Rock, Paper, Dota2

[Rauten]

A little bit of extra info on tiers and all that:

As far as I can recall, as Nullkigan said, there are 3 tiers:

-Normal. Approx. 81% of the game's population is in here.
-High. Approx. 16~17% of the game's population is in here.
-Very High. The rest, the remaining 2~3% the top of top.

You are not locked to a specific difficulty tier, as in, if you're in High, you may at times be placed inside a Very High or Normal game, depending on the matchmaking system.

Also, the game's MM system does NOT use ELO. It is unknown what does it use or what logic it follows, but it is NOT ELO.

There's a way to know what skill tier your games have been in, ingame:

• Go to the Watch Tab.
• Go to Recent Matches.
• Open the Filter options.
• Type in your full Steam name.
• There's a dropdown list within the filter options to specify games in Normal, High or Very High tiers. If you choose "Very High" and you haven't a single game there, then you're not in Very High, and so on.

It seems Valve mostly doesn't want to release any kind of public rating data because the shittalking is already unbearable enough, and setting that info loose on the people would make it even worse. The aforementioned DotaBuff site was preparing it's own rating system (wasn't intended to be über-accurate, just something you could use as a general pointer) and Valve quickly shut it down by screwing their data collection with anonymous data.

[Procrastination Giant]

Just a tiny list of match making related quotes from the devs:
"1. There are no brackets or skill-tiers. You are rated on a cotinuous scale, so you can think of it as a percentile rank from 1-100.
2. The tiers you know from the Replay-Filters are not used in MM.
3. Battle Points and Battle Level are not used in matchmaking.
4. Performance Bars are not used in matchmaking.
5. We don't enforce a 50-50 win rate. "

Two other things that i've read is that the match making algorithm is heavily based on the number of matches you've played, above all - so folks that claim that they got into 'high match making' after 40 solo queue matches are pretty much guaranteed to be talking nonsense. Also MM seems to be a lot more accurate (once it has a decent amount of data about you to go by) than people give it credit, despite still being in developement and not completely fleshed out - Apparently there have be some test cases where people got moved up percentile-wise after complaining about being in a 'bracket' that they considered to be below their skilllevel, just to end up right where they where to begin with after a hand full of matches.

I'm fairly sure that most of the complaints about match making, at least when it comes to folks in the '40-60%' area (which should have the highest player density by far - bellcurve, etc.) is good old dunning-kruger nonsense, at least based on what i've read so far.

Well, I actually like that the match making system is completely nebulous and not tied to some weird rank or bracket - personally don't mind knowing that it'll probably take another 50-100 or so matches (which might even be naive to assume - only spent about 140 hours or so in dota 2, so i'm still an utter newbie) untill i reach an area on the skill curve where matches start to become somewhat more balanced and less smurf-infected.

[deadly.by.design]

Well, I actually like that the match making system is completely nebulous and not tied to some weird rank or bracket - personally don't mind knowing that it'll probably take another 50-100 or so matches (which might even be naive to assume - only spent about 140 hours or so in dota 2, so i'm still an utter newbie) untill i reach an area on the skill curve where matches start to become somewhat more balanced and less smurf-infected.

I assume you guys mean 'smurf' in the sense of 'pro' players using new, unranked accounts?

Either way, I'm also glad that it's a nebulous system, since I never intend to be too serious about the game. For those of us who have no aspirations for inflating e-peens via rank or tier, it's kind of nice. I know some people prefer ranks even for good reasons like self-evaluation, but I view systems like that as more annoying than helpful. I don't care about where I rank, though... just about playing with friends and ideally not getting destroyed by unbalanced matches or leavers.

///

Ohh, speaking of playing vs players--I finally did it! (single draft) My usual dota2 buddy & I played two awful games before getting our first decent game and win. The first two games had players who left, which stunk, but I feel like the guy playing Luna who afk'd and then came back was a bigger detriment. So, while we had a whole team for the first 15 minutes or so, we would've been better off with Luna leaving than having him come back as level 1 after everyone else was already 6. Having the game leavable would've been preferable to having a gimped team continue to play.

The third game was, by comparison, glorious. My friend & I were Radiant and I was in the top lane with Phantom Assassin. It was a slightly rough start since my lane partner was also melee and being very timid. They had range on us and I wasn't getting a lot of last hits. Anyway, Lifestealer tried making a pass at us and we had middle counter-attack. His partner died but LS made it away with a sliver of health. "So bad" he says in all chat. I reply with "Too bad, you mean?" (naively, thinking he misspoke) As you can guess, he was talking crap and trying to say we sucked just because he lived. Charming fellow. He continued to talk crap, but he eventually raged out when we turned the tide and killed him 4x in a row. (probably at ~20mins) I felt a little bad that they had a leaver, but I was just glad to have a win. Okay, I won't lie...I'm glad the crap-talker raged out.

I later did a single draft without my friend and had a good game as Dazzle. Again, though, there was some idiot playing Spirit Breaker who raged at me in caps. He was a teammate this time, though. It's like he expected to never die just because I was Dazzle. I saved quite a few teammates with Shallow Grave, but apparently no one was supposed to die ever and I missed the memo. Thankfully, he was obvious that my teammates also told him to calm down. "Time for your adderrall?", one teammate said to him.

[Rauten]

If you're not being shit-talked, you're not playing proper Dota2.

But yeah, I also love to beat the living crap out of those damn shittalkers. Had a win yesterday against a Necro who wouldn't shut up about how we were incapable of killing him. Long story short, we had a comeback and beat the living crap outta them, Necro included. Feels so good.

[angstost]

So, is there a Steam group or anything around to organize games? I'd just love a five-man-stack-all pick-pubstomp right now.

[Dijeangenie]

Ive put my name down on the Google doc and joined the steam group - hope that's what I am supposed to do!

[deadly.by.design]

I didn't even notice the google doc until now. Added myself with extraneous details.

I'm EDT (-4) for now, but we switch our clocks back to EST -5 this weekend. While I've almost exclusively played co-op bot games since starting in late November, I'm pretty close to having played every hero now. So, yay for that. Something like 15 to go.

[LaunchJC]

Not sure where to put this, but I have a fair few Dota 2 invites I don't need, anyone looking for one?

[deadly.by.design]

Not only does my main account have several dota2 invites, but so does my alternate. So, the same goes for me as LaunchJC.

I played my first game as Puck last night. Sure, it was vs bots, but that's how I usually do first plays. In contrast to someone like Wisp, I really liked him. He's pretty squishy and kind of a get-in-and-out-before-you-die hero, but his skills seemed really fun. I can see his orb being pretty useful against players, whereas it's mostly a dmg or escape mechanism vs bots. His ult, Dream Coil, seems pretty amazing for teamfights. If they move, they take extra damage. If they stay within the coil, they're a sitting duck for an organized team. Me gusta.

So, that brings me down to around 14 heroes left unplayed. Zeus and Nature's Prophet are my last two Radiants to play, and then I move down to the likes of Axe, Doom, Lifestealer, etc, in the Dire Strength category. It's kind of exciting that I'm close to playing them all. (almost enough to wish there was an achievement)

[Dijeangenie]

So, that brings me down to around 14 heroes left unplayed. Zeus and Nature's Prophet are my last two Radiants to play, and then I move down to the likes of Axe, Doom, Lifestealer, etc, in the Dire Strength category. It's kind of exciting that I'm close to playing them all. (almost enough to wish there was an achievement)

Zeus is an amazingly fun hero in my opinion, only played him twice, as I play single draft (to stop having to play vs the same heroes all the time (drow etc) but very fun both times!!

[Rauten]

Zeus and Axe both can be ridiculously fun, plus they're the manliest heroes in Dota 2!

Also, Puck can be a monster and nigh-unkillable in the hands of a really good player.
Couple of examples in this Top 10.

[deadly.by.design]

Puck Norris -- I like it.

Can you explain what happened with Timbersaw at the end, though? He portals in, does some skill stuff, and then is suddenly across the map, hooking over again? Or was it two clips, and I just missed that?

[Rauten]

It's just one clip. What's shown is the result of either amazing skill or ridiculous luck on Timber's side.

• Timber tp's into the fight.
• Timber starts wrecking shit.
• The enemy Disruptor uses his Glimpse ability to get rid of him.
• Either by skill or luck (only Timbersaw knows the truth) he uses his Timber Chain skill just as the Glimpse enters into action.
• Timbersaw gets warped back to where he was right before tp'ing, but since his Timber Chain had already latched onto a tree, he gets transported at high speed through the battlefield back to that tree.

[deadly.by.design]

Ahh, I had forgotten about that Disruptor skill. That makes sense. Speaking of him, I liked that hero when I played him.

Today's lunch break co-op bot game was Zeus. He seems like a pretty standard mage archetype, which is okay. His global ult makes it pretty easy to feel like a kill stealer, but whatever. People get too worked up over that stuff. So, only Nature's Prophet before I finish off ~13 more on the Dire side.

[Dijeangenie]

Ahh, I had forgotten about that Disruptor skill. That makes sense. Speaking of him, I liked that hero when I played him.

Today's lunch break co-op bot game was Zeus. He seems like a pretty standard mage archetype, which is okay. His global ult makes it pretty easy to feel like a kill stealer, but whatever. People get too worked up over that stuff. So, only Nature's Prophet before I finish off ~13 more on the Dire side.

Yeah he can get called a killstealer, but if you use the ultimate properly you should not killsteal - the way you should use the ultimate is either right at the start of a team fight (if you have a refresher orb) or to kill fleeing heroes - in which case you should make sure that the running hero is not going to be caught (this requires you to know if the fleeing hero or any chase heroes have any stun/chase/escape abilities off cooldown). If you know that this isnt the case then use the ultimate

I personally find the most satisfying thing with zeus is when you die early in a gank/ teamfight etc and then buyback and immediately ulti to take revenge on your killers!

[deadly.by.design]

@Dijeangenie
Nice -- I'll keep that in mind for the next time I play him.

My lunch co-op bot game had me playing Shadow Demon, since I rolled him with the random selection. (yay, extra gold) While I can see how his Disruption is a great disable/gank/escape skill and his ultimate is a great for single targets, I'm not a huge fan. Soul Catcher is okay if there are only (or mostly) heroes to place in the cast radius for +20-50%dmg, but Shadow Poison requires being cast 3-4 times before you do any real damage with the poison release.

I felt reeeally vulnerable with him, too, and ended up dying most of the times I got caught without teammates around. He felt more effective around level 6-9, and then less effective after mid-game. Some of that is surely user error and lane pairings, but I just don't think he fits my playing style.

If I were to play him again, I might build a Dagon after his Force Staff, just to have a punch of direct damage.

[safewood]

Just saying that if you get the kill with Zeus ultimate in a different lane (or some other place that is out of assist gold range) your team will get additional gold. Zeus is also a hero that really benefits from exp, so it will quite often be worth it to get extra kills to level up faster.

[deadly.by.design]

Down to 10 unplayed heroes! It's not like there's an achievement for it, but I'm kind of eager to reach my goal.

Yesterday's new heroes were my final two unplayed Radiant: Nature's Prophet and Huskar. NP has a great global presence and is easy to get back into action post-death. His trees are always welcome for pushing and mobbing heroes, while Sprout is excellent for trapping and Nature's Wrath adds some nice chaotic damage. Sprout can do undesirable things, like pushing enemies out of Clockwerk's cog prison or keeping melee allies from attacking them, so I had to learn to be disciplined about how I placed it. Huskar seemed like a relatively straight forward DPS hero, which is always fun to play. I guess the exceptions are that he has a light healing ability, only one point is required in his Burning Spear, and his ult requires you to watch your health. On that note, I guess he's not so straight forward. Still fun to play, though.

Today's lunch bot coop hero was Axe. Even without significant armor upgrades, he's pretty tanky. I had a hard time using the recommended Blink Dagger well, as it seemed more useful for chasing fleeing foes than for actually initiating. Still, his ult is pretty amazing for finishing off troubling over-leveled heroes. (like Luna in our match) Battle Hunger is great for fleeing low-health enemies, and Berserker's Call and Counter-Helix are a perfect pairing.

For some reason, Dire STR was my category with the most unplayed heroes. I still have five left to go in there, but I like what I've played so far. (Lifestealer, Nightstalker, Doom, Spirit Breaker and Lycanthrope to go in STR)

[UrQuan]

I am not a fan of "only 1 level in Burning Spears". Anyone care to explain me the theory-work behind making it such a *good* idea?

[pakoito]

Any mid-to-high level players? I'm tired of the pubs already. Can't pure support because carries fail, can't carry because (I suck at carrying) enemy team has more carries, can't strat team composition because "I play for fun" and "for mother russia", can't initiate because nobody commits, can't push because game is suddenly about killing people and not winning.

/rant

Me 4+ years experience in Dota/HoN/Dota2, #3-4-5, can initiate, can wardbitch. Best heros right now Dazzle, Maiden, Silencer. Fav hero Omniknight. IMBA hero Magnus, SK. Decent Clock, VS, Beastmaster, Zeus.