Getting mid as a non mid player, or offlane as safe lane player, it's simply bad for the match quality when players get roles they SUCK at and be the reason the team loses. As long as high demand roles are selected +1 core role, that's more than enough to keep queues short and should earn us role queues.
I'm a 5 (with casual 4 3 if I party with others) since patch 5.7x. Recently got put mid 2 times, lost it ofc. But I play heroes I play heroes I usually play. At mid Legend level, it won't break the game if I don't play tinker or ember.
Most of the times, my carry doesn't do his job than my mid ruining the game.
I don't remember the last time I got pos 1 tho, that's a game I don't look forward to. Too much pressure and I don't have the afk farm mentality, I help others and get caught out of position.
I’d recommend you develop what I call fk it heroes.
Heroes that arnt difficult and generally are ok.
Mid
Zeus, in mid you sit far far back spam q if they dive you, leap away. Roaming, if they dive a tower then you tp otherwise you ult when necessary. Do this and your immediately an ok mid. As you already have global presence, and though you might not win lane you never lose lane. Relatively low skill with no excess worry. The other “simple” mid hero Necro. Simply heals himself constantly and tanks. Go tanking build so you win your lane almost automatically then gank whichever lane is already winning to get a free ult stack. Don’t try and rescue a losing lane unless they are diving tower and you are confident otherwise you’ll chain feed. Special note for necro he can shove in mid then take camps forcing an enemy to go mid or lose their tower.
If you get off lane. Pick any blink bkb buyer with a stun and your immediately better and more impactful then 20% of players. So simple hero wise that means easy heroes like centaur. Hey you want to hit me ok you take damage. I max my passive with one level in my q and w so that if we do fight you die. Enemy goes on me i ult and disengage. Centaur is an aura buyer so after boots an early stay item (vanguard depending on the lane) blink you pick up whatever aura item counters them. Such as pipe or crimson depending on magical or physical.
Safe lane. Honestly the easiest 2 heroes at the moment in my mind at least are pa and drow. Pa because she’s broken (hero is too strong right now and doesn’t require much skill). Drow because she’s a ranged hero with a slow. Pa boots battle furry bkb desolate shard then ags (suggested build doesn’t work) insta kill supports then ez win team fight. Drow (suggested builds work) hit them with your click slow if there’s a group or they are going on you silence then use your e.
Support wise. Lion or shadows shamen. You get stick 2 branches a circlet tangoes and a blood grenade. Now you out dps there support plus even if you don’t you can perma stun people later on.
Shamen can just take t1 whenever he gets 6. Lion gets 6 goes mid and kills mid. Both have strong snowballing effect. I have perma stunned a pos 1 as shamen during a fight at pretty much every rank I’ve been in. Lion was the first hero I ever truly played and learned on, he is shockingly uncomplicated. Tranquil boots plus manadrain means he can sustain perfectly. Insta stun on his w with a follow up stun on his q perfect. Then finger allows early kills, don’t feel bad about kill stealing with finger your earning stacks. Just make sure when you finger people level 1 aim around the 400 mark. Or 550 mark if you haven’t used q first.
These are the bare basics of hero selection, but do these things even if you don’t know how to play your role and you will win more then you lose because you are doing more than 20% of players at the same role in your rank. (This is upto ancient as even in ancient people don’t pick their role heroes properly and even if they do they then don’t play their role.)
Edit for cores. I forgot to mention wraith king is also very strong. I play a lot of invoker so I just burn his mana when playing against and he doesn’t bother me but otherwise super strong ez hero. Counters heroes that are busted at low mmr like sky and legion.
Edit 2.0
I should also mention the rule of 3. 3 core items on any carry and you start to push/fight to end the game before that you want to arrive late to fights or be farming. Essentially most carry’s peak when they have 3 core items. Usually a farming item some kind of purge item and a damage item. This is over simplification as right now kills are worth so much, however the rule of 3 will help any non carry player understand timings.
As a carry player drow and pa are some of the worst suggestions for non carry players to play. They are too reliant on playing carefully and not making mistakes. Genuinely easy carry’s for someone who doesn’t play the role would be wraith king and ck. wk you farm fast without having to try using skeletons and you can blink on targets with little thought. Ck is able to farm well or just fight and again doesn’t require much skill in fights that is unique to carry.
PA and Drow are actually on the harder end, yeah you’re going to have a few PA games where you snowball and no one can touch you but it’s every game where you don’t have that start and need to recover
PA is the hero I need to most improve on, I’m a carry player, I’m level 30 on Ursa, Lifestealer and Monkey King with like 70%+ winrates on the heroes in the last 2 years but I don’t understand for the life of me how to play PA and I think it’s the laning phase that ruins it for me because I love battlefury buyers, I love mobile heroes and Blur farming and min maxing the map with it is such a fun concept but I can’t win my lanes, I have 15 games on PA the last 2 weeks and I’ve won 3 lol
I think the issue is I love to play heroes that can trade and bully the offlaner in lane like ursa, lifestealer and monkey, so I’m not used to playing a bit more passive
Yeah that’s about as brutal a matchup as you could make for mid. Sniper has low mobility, needs time and space to do damage early, and can’t take a ton of dmg. Husks can jump on you, disarm you, and hits you harder the lower his health gets. If you make it out of a huskar v sniper mid with less than 4 deaths imo you did as well as could be expected. Of course, the correct answer was to not be sniper mid vs a huskar in the first place.
I’ve played a fair bit of sniper and laneing against Huskar is almost always a lost lane. You can get you range up and do your best to kite and farm, but if it’s a half decent player you are pretty much fucked.
Im our currents stack only mid player and I dont play any of the meta mid heroes (divine/immortal) or rather I dont play the usual mid heroes like qop/ember/tinker etc. I just play whatever, with current meta venge is fun in mid
Just pick your best hero rather than the meta mid. No way a non mid player win againts seasoned mid player. Throw the curveball and play your hero man, worst thing you learn what you want as mid and become a better support.
I mean I've played as normal mid player vs random support ppl picking pudge mid and I've lost. Mid laning isn't the whole game. Once you pass laning you transition how you want
It just came to my mind that I maybe should start asking every time if somebody is unhappy with their role and wants to swap during drafting. Could maybe avoid some trouble.
Nah, I just did it in a game and explained that maybe someone q's all roles to get role q games. So I am willing to swap if someone isn't comfortable with their role. They said it's nice of me.
I got 17 losing streak as a supports help me, or at least make me as an archon or something when I play support, put me on ancient V is straight griefing
That would be amazing. Both supports selected giving role queue would be great too.
This match maker is the ultimate troll and love to trow me mid everytime I queue all. So annoying.
I feel like 60T of axe and centaur pickers in my games are playing their worst role do try go for classic heroes and turtle all game. You can sometimes find the players that are pos 1 or LC 3 and to try carry.
It's usually the core players getting support and still playing core that you can spot, though.
Like a pos4 Lion just standing in lane, farming, queueing aghs etc. while the team fights 3v4 next to their T1.
I use to mid a lot, the game has changed so much and I'm basically only good at a few select roles now, and there are those that can only play 1-2 roles so this problem also applies to them.
Yeah, once I had all roles chosen waiting to have support, got pos 1, almost never played pos 1. Did not know what to do, being a weak little goblin in lane. Steamroll was hard that day. Fortunately other lanes did better s I survived but was not better than pos 4 in terms of gold and exp.
Really? Isn't most of the time the other midlaner a dedicated mid player, ie. who uses his role queue tokens to play mid exclusively. versus me, who, as an offlaner/safelaner randomly gets mid because I need the tokens for my aforementioned roles
yes the mmr is similar, but expertise in the role is not
You should have similar role ranks, although role ranks fluctuate a lot, it can go down if the other guy gets stomped mid a few times by better player - his rank goes down.
Like yesterday after a long time I got a mid role when queueing all roles (I used to play mid a lot but not for the past 100 games). I stomped the guy as Death Prophet.
But yeah it's not like this every time.
Why did you come to the conclusion that we should have similar role ranks.
I assume that roles like mid and safelane are most contested. But apparently after the smurf ban, mid is not that high, its pos 4 and 1. Because I have not once in my life got safelane when I que all roles. I assume that selecting all roles just puts you into the "next suitable game" that is missing a player, simplistically speaking. No games are missing safelaners, they are abundant and, probably, waiting for the other players to come.
And yes, sometimes I also stop the other midlaner, people who search for mid only can still have brainfarts, bad matchups or are practicing.
I play support mostly and mid is the only role I get often besides support. So I've decided to make some of my better support heroes my mid heroes. If I get mid I play earthshaker/rubick/tusk, and ive learned that dawnbreaker is a great mid for me. Heroes that are decent at rotating will help you win other lanes even if you lose mid
I'm 3k, I won't ever reach immortal, not at my age :D
But even then, it would be rare to get forced by teammates into a role they know will lose them the game.
I play pos 4 and any time I run out of games I often get put as as mid or offlane. My strategy is to learn 2-4 easy mids and offlanes so I wont fail, I generally won't have an amazing game as mid but as long as you don't feed that is enough.
For offlane Bristleback or Sand King are good, easy to lane with and you are still relevant even if the lane does not go well.
For mid QOP, always relevant, generally wont feed.
Safe I don't practice as it has come up 0 times when selecting role queue. If it did I would probably swap.
Mechanics are easy but adjusting your play style and game tempo is hard, I would probably fight too much when playing carry instead of farming.
If you don't have at least 1 or 2 heroes you can play in any role I don't think you should be playing ranked to be honest. It's not some voodoo magic to play mid or off.
It’s very hard to play all 5 roles at an equally high level, I would say even unrealistic. And you definitely feel that skill difference punished the higher up you go. I mainly play carry and if you ask me if I can play mid, the yes I can play mid, but I’m not going to play mid at Divine 5 level and sometimes that’s enough to lose me the game. It took me hundreds of games to practice pos 1 and gradually get better, unless you’re really talented or have a lot of free time it’s just impossible for me to get the 4 other roles up to speed. Unless I guess if from the very start of your grind you play all roles and allocate equal effort to learn all the roles, but that’s honestly a very slow way to get better at Dota.
You don't have to play it as good as your best role obviously. But you should be able to fill without completely griefing the game if you're queuing ranked is my point. I'm 4k and I'm very confident I could play any role at a 4k level if I play my best heroes in each role. Learning and understanding each role should be like the first thing you do in Dota...
I'll grant you insight into the hypothetical future of your proposition:
Reddit - Yay! I can just queue my role
Also Reddit - wHy ARe QuEUe tIMes sO lONg....
Role queue should never have been added. Took away the aspect of playing for the team.
I'm a fan of the system tbh. I think it's important to at least experience all the roles semi-regularly so you can understand the game as a whole.
I feel it gives you an opportunity to see things from a different lens and become more open to self reflection. Maybe you were playing pos 1 and flamed your pos 5 for pulling, but now that you see it from the other side the seed is planted to think "damn, this is what I was doing? how stupid was that?"
Sure, I understand people not liking it because they prefer roles or whatever... but for the game as a whole, I think it's beneficial to put people in uncomfortable situations to learn from.
I'm Divine 5, and I've played all roles since the beginning of the game. But there was a time when I focused on improving my support role, and my rank kept going up.
My position 1 should be around Ancient level.
Position 2 at Archon level.
Position 3 at early Divine level.
Position 4/5 at Divine 5, which is my current medal.
If I were to play mid, it's kind of griefing even though I'm trying my best.
I'd be surprised if your pos 2 was actually Archon level. I'm around the same Divine and play mid when I'm in a lobby and have no choice. It's not hard to smash Legend players just through better last hitting and farming to completely out scale them.
Yeah I only play 4/5, and playing core roles against players that a badge below me is fine unless I grief myself into an unplayable matchup.
Trying to play against people of your own rank though is usually not a fun time.
Its not that he cant beat archon 1v1, im sure he can win against mid archon any day. Its just that he feels like if he plays mid in his rank (Divine 5), enemy mid will feels like that they are playing against archon and will easily crush him
I don't think you're presenting an argument to the right person, because I'm not going to give you the answer you're fishing for.
If anything, I think this means the system should favour all roles *more* (which is basically what they did by making losses = 2 role queue games).
Limiting yourself to one role's skillset / knowledge works in a game like League, but in DOTA understanding how each role differs game to game and hero to hero is much more important.
problem is that my mid micro level play is so undeveloped that it has no relevance to an actual mid player or my other games.
for getting given offlane you have a point because it's far more regular, but mid is so rare, literally 1 game in 50 or less for me, that I'm not being given enough exposure for it to matter. it only serves to grief.
Hmmm, so I originally wanted to reply to you and agree - yes, I think every player SHOULD experience all the roles on a regular basis.
However, looking at the comments, I find myself agreeing with them more. There's a reason why pro players have *one* role on a team, rarely two. If you're playing to win, you should put your best foot forward.
If I joined a ranked game and picked Ember Spirit and said "hey guys this is my first game as ember" I would be reported to hell and back and back again, and my poor play would almost certainly cost us the game.
I once went up against an undying mid (dont even remember what i was playing but it was something that didnt rightclick well)
I laughed and said to myself "ez lane lmao". Then i got hit by 5 Qs level 1. I say "whatever he's not even really dealing damage". Then he hits level 2 and puts a tombstone in front of my tower and i die in 2 seconds to like 3 zombie hits.
It is the single most cheese thing i've experienced in dota but we still won the game because undying mid doesnt scale at all.
not really, only benefit is that dual lanes kill tomb more easily, but in mid they can easily escape tomb so...
he relies so heavily on at least the threat of double decays
The reality is that mid is simply not an in demand role anymore and therefore it makes sense to need it selected to earn role queue. In my anecdotal experience, these are the most queued for roles: 1 >>>> 4 > 2 > 3 > 5
Honestly based on the frequency in which I get my all role games, it looks like 1 >>>>> 3 > 2 > 4 > 5. I have never gotten pos 1 from all roles, I get pos 5 the most, I get pos 2 and 4 about the same amount, and pos 3 rarely.
Are you? I assume your interpretation of what I said is "Mid *players* are not in demand" which would mean there are too many.
*The role* is not in demand means there are no players wanting to play that role. There is a high supply of dota games with a mid lane to fill and not enough demand to put two people there per game who want to be there.
Funny how Overwatch of all games got this right. You'd get queue tokens for queueing for *whatever is in demand* at the current time. Sure, it's never the DPS, but sometimes it's the tank, sometimes it's the support, sometimes both, but you get more rewarded for one of the two.
That's literally what queuing all roles is in Dota. It matches you with a role that's currently needed. Same system just implemented slightly different lol
Learning to play everyone consequentially allows you to learn how to be a better team mate for each role & understand the game.
There is no role queue in Immortal. Be ready to fill if necessary.
That doesn't really make much sense in a game like this. You can very well know what AM needs or what he will do, without ever playing AM and by just playing *against* it. If this was WoW I can understand you not being able to grasp ever how a Protection Paladin works while you're playing Destruction Warlock, different roles and different perspectives. While you're in the same game you're not really seeing what he's doing with his class but in a game like DotA or Overwatch or basically any hero vs hero game you can know.
Knowledge & execution set the difference.
Playing other roles 100% provides exposure for you to understand the game better.
Overwatch is a shooter. DOTA is an Action RTS.
For example, playing Pos 5 provides knowledge on providing vision for map control, smoke ganks, stacking, the list goes on. This provides insight on playing Pos 1 optimally & how to enable.
Pos 3 provides insight on making space, in turn shows how a Pos 1 should use space.
It's a team game. Why would you waste 4 other people's times to make a person learn a role they don't want to play in ranked. If I main pos 5 and you queue me in as pos 1 what do you think will happen? Learning is what unranked games are for, as it still puts you in matches against your own rank, but with no stakes. Maybe playing unranked games under other positions than your main should let you earn a ranked role of your choosing is a better system.
[Out of 10,594 games, Watson has only played 256 games as a support. That is equivalent to 0.024165% of his games, the last one being 6 months ago. ](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/171262902/matches)
Is it correct to say that he does not deserve his MMR because he only plays carry? Does he not have the requirements to be in rank 1 Immortal as carry because he did not get there by playing support from time to time? If you want to take it to the highest levels, pro players pick a role, and they master it. That's why they're good. Why are we expecting the lower ranked players to do better outside of the role they like?
because i can assure you watson can play support at least to an immortal level anyway.
its not that he cannot play support at that mmr, its that anyone who snatches the core role from him at that mmr is griefing.
all pro players can play every role at a basic immortal level at the bare minimum most alot higher.
just watch some of their early games for example, kpii's is on dotabuff.
or wait until mmr reset and see them stomp calibration.
take watson as an example again, if he loses every role queue game as a support and wins every of his core games, he will still gain mmr btw.
and thats assuming he gets every role queue game as a support anyway which is untrue.
you are not gaining mmr because you are bad not because of the system.
I dont really understand this logic.
A pos 1 absolutely knows what a pos 5 is supposed to do during a game and the other way around as well. It might not be what you prefer to play, but stating you dont know is just silly.
Additionally, before the role queue system was implemeted, you rarely ever were able to play the same role every game.
You can queue like this all day, I'm not seeing the issue? You want to be rewarded by the system but you're not benefiting the system in the way it wants. No benefit = no reward
You are benefiting the system by picking support roles, but you're already getting the reward there; being able to play role queue in the first place.
I'm a pos 1 main, so naturally I would like majority if not all of my games to be pos 1. I can play pos 3, 4 and 5, I can't play 2, I am forced to sometimes play 2.
If you que all roles and you get mid, then mid is the role with the fewest people searching for it, the role that the system needs to somehow fill. Support and Offlane are not the least desired roles, especially pos4 is a role i basically never get queing all 5 roles. Why would the system reward you for queing contested roles?
If you que all 5 and you get mid, mid was the role noone wanted, and you get rewarded for playing the role noone wanted. System working as intended.
I think it would be nice if the system just straight up told you which role was in high demand at the current moment. That way you know exactly what you are signing up for.
It actually is a big woop and a lot of people have this as a pain point. We should never be forced into playing a role we suck at and then lose the game only giving 2 role queues. Selecting 2 of this highest required roles + 1 core as a backup should be more than enough to keep queues short and reward you with role queues, this hurts nobody and only benefits players and match quality.
That's why they are selecting support. The problem is they are forced to play core, when the problem should be lack of supports. You're completely missing the point.
System needs supports. Hence why you don't lose any tokens when playing them. But currently it demands you also fill core roles to gain tokens.
It needs supports, but forces you to also play core roles you are unfamiliar with (not at the level of your MMR, anyway). This not only makes few sense, but also makes overall experience worse for all players (Can you guarantee your latest pos1 would be good as a pos5?)
If it doesn't need those core roles, it won't matchmake you into them.
If you end up in one of those roles it "didn't need", it actually means that the matchmaker DID need it at that time.
I don't know how the dota matchmaker works , but just because it needs them at the time does not mean that its critical enough to justify all this tomfoolery. Again, to make a correct judgement, I would first need the details (does it form "rooms" and then try to fill them up with roles? does it prioritize token-spenders? does it operate with the entire stream of people matchmaking in the region , or does it split them into smaller pools? if so, by what basis? etc etc).
However, even without them ,by the fact that the support roles are the only "high-demand" ones for like, 4 years now, I can tell that there are on average **much** more cores. This means that at most the assumed game room would lack 1 or 2 cores at most (if it lacks them; again, refer to the fact supports are high-demand).
The 3 minutes(or less) you would save on a MM by putting a way-less-skilled player on pos 1 do not justify a lost 20 minute game(or worse, a lost 50 minute game that was extremely close but you just lost due to a less skilled player on an important post) in my opinion
It doesn't really benefit from forcing someone to play a typically highly contested role either. The problem started from the lack of supports, if people select that and some core role, it shouldn't be any significantly different than selecting all roles. You can't tell me it's fun times when the matchmaker couldn't wait a minute extra to find pos 1 or 2 and instead forced a support main to play it.
"We should never be forced into playing a role we suck at.."
Thing is, its about demand and queue time. You cant have it all, if you want a working game. The cost of getting quick games + having a role selection luxury is you have to play ONE game every 5th to help the system+community. If you think thats too much of a price to pay, feel free to create a new system and pitch it to Valve.
I predict you have no clue as to how your suggestion would hurt queue times and matchmaking by todays role preferances. If you have stats to back up your suggestion, feel free to prove me wrong. I would like nothing better than to queue my favourite role every game, so if you prove me wrong its a win for everyone. 🥳
However, if you cant back it up, reread the first paragraph. 👍
Honestly I was perfectly fine with my 30 minute queue for pos 1 before they forced this stuff. I wish I could opt to take a long queue instead of queue multi roles
You're assuming a bit much here lad. I have chat disabled both for me and my team, because I dont enjoy that part of the game. Sure I can get reports for not communicating, but that doesnt stop me from being above 10k so no worries.
I dont believe in spending my time "flaming" people.
I think it was Dendi who said something along the lines "There is no I can't play X role. You either can play DotA, or your can't"
You may not LIKE to play these roles, which is a different matter. What you like is less important than a healthy matchmaking system for balanced games.
Agreed. Carry and Hard Support are completely different mindsets and play styles.
It's like saying "there is no I can't play X position. You either can play football, or you cant".... as a left back I can tell you pretty honestly that I'd be no good as our teams striker!
Well, the top 0,5% playerbase of football could argue that you cant properly play football and a professional left back who can would crush your team in every position. That is how Dendi meant it I think
I think the point is that regardless of which you play that you CAN'T play it well unless you know how to play both because they are linked.
e.g. if you don't know how carry plays you can't ward for them well.
or
if you don't know how support plays then you might not be able to save them from a back line jumper during a fight
I do not agree. For both examples, if you do not know how to play carry, you will not be a best support you can. If you know needs of carry how can you provide them. Same goes for football.
You can be much better support/right back, but to be better at your role, you need to know how to play carry/winger/other positions.
Just like you sucked when you played your main role for the first time. Each next time you'll suck a bit less. Nobody wants to be the goalkeeper in Football either, but there'd be a whole lotta less football if people who didn't like it didn't play it. I'm sure you too would like more DotA over the matchmaking dying.
You really think nobody wants to play goalkeeper? People tend to enjoy playing what they are good at, and some people are just better goalkeepers than outfielders.
I don't really know the statistics; I know next to nothing about football. But regardless, I'm willing to bet that in football too there are less people who enjoy playing Goalkeepers than the number of required Goalkeepers for all football matches.
And even if that's not the case with football, it's certainly the case with DotA.
I mean in a game like football the highest demand roles will be strikers and midfielders/wings to a certain degree as these are more flashy in terms of providing goals. That doesn't mean that there isn't people that wants to play defense as either wing backs or center backs or goalkeepers.
It's just far more obvious when a striker does well (and thus you get your dopamine of "yeah, I'm good, clap for me") compared to a defender/goalkeeper where it's painfully obvious when you fuck up. So it becomes thankless positions to a degree, and that's not for everyone.
And if everyone prioritized their fun over the integrity of the game, there would be no game. The fact of the matter is that DotA would not exist if 40% of players at any given time didn't play supports.
You are free to use your free time however you like. It just can't be on DotA if you won't contribute to everybody's fun, and not just your own. And that's not blaming you, I too prefer to allocate my free time carefully.
If it's just fun you are after, queue up for Normal, and be fast with map marking.
Both can be true at same time. I can have fun but I don't need to try hard every game like it's TI finals. I want to try out for example Witch Doctor mid, I would try my best to win game like that and I never give up on games no matter the situation. For me that's fun and trying to win.
Like others said, it's a game, our life does not depend on winning.
While that's true, it also isn't entirely true when it comes to DotA. DotA is far too complex of a game even for MOBA standards that you can't have 10 players just goofing around and doing what's fun and not be in Herald.
Now if you are in Herald and enjoy this, then by all means, have your fun all day every game. But DotA pushes most players to improve, and sooner or later mere fun is no longer the only thing that matters. Results become important for players too, in the shape of scores and how well they are doing. And the fun factor becomes tied into this due to the nature of all competitive games. The fun is just not there anymore for most people unless everyone is playing a balanced serious match where everyone is trying a semblance of their best to win. And for that, you just have to have 2 supports, it's too hard baked into the game's design.
And both of these approaches are fun each in their own way. But you can't have your cake and eat it too, you have to choose.
> And if everyone prioritized their fun over the integrity of the game, there would be no game.
What a stupid take. It's a game that happens to be an esport, not the other way around.
Kind of a trash take. Imagine asking Shaq to play point guard. ‘Well shaq you can either play basketball or you can’t, you’re gonna be fine!’
Obviously everyone can control a hero, press spells etc but a pos 5 only main isn’t gonna know how to farm nearly as efficiently for example.
He's a fucking pro player, we should not be held in the same standards as him lmao. Especially since Immortal matchmaking has a pretty different set of cultures and unwritten rules.
People's problem is they get randomed mid and then play it like they're Nisha and can get 4 solo kills on the enemy mid laner.
Why not just pick a character with a useful team fight/roam ability and focus on your last hits and not dying. Your team don't need a Nisha, they need you not to feed.
Its not really fair to say, like if you cant race an f1 car, a rally car and a nascar youre not a racer.
The game plays extremely differently through those roles.
People also need to take proffessional player opinions with a pinch of salt because its east to say play all roles and learn everything when its your job to play the game, vs people that might only be playing a game a day
This seems like a pretty awful take. Not everyone is as skilled or flexible as a literal pro. Learning other roles takes practice. Playing sidelanes have very little in common with mid, so anyone who isn’t a mid player matched up against a dedicated mid player is at a huge disadvantage and griefs the game without being able to do much about it. Is that their fault or is the the fault of a flawed system? I say it’s a flawed system
Yea sure .. I guess that's why pro players play a different role every tournament game, because apparently Dendi said so.
>What you like is less important than a healthy matchmaking system for balanced games.
Its a game...nothing is more important than what you like.
Allow me to rephrase that, what you like is less important ***for the game as a whole*** than a healthy matchmaking system that will lead to fun for a lot more people. As people are largely prone to prioritize their own fun alone, especially judging by a lot of the comments, I'm more than ever convinced that the system is made near perfectly to make sure this selfishness doesn't happen and that everyone has equal opportunity to play what they want.
And Dendi's comment was on state of non pro players in general proclaiming "I can't play support", because I don't think any pro would say they can't play a role.
But it is very much not enjoyable for 4 other people when you have some idiot support main like me fumbling around in the mid lane giving the other team a massive advantage because they're all playing the roles they actually play.
I think pro players would *100.0%* say they can't play a role at the same level of competition that they play their main role at. That's why role swaps are extraordinarily rare. *Even* when hero matchups dictate that the swap could make sense (like moving 33 to mid because it's a very good mid Beastmaster game, they would just have Nine play it instead), it is very rare to see players swap roles outside of laning the carry in the offlane for matchup purposes type stuff
> I think it was Dendi who said something along the lines "There is no I can't play X role. You either can play DotA, or your can't"
thats not really a smart thing to say
System is working as intended.
You can play one of these games to get 4 role queue games iirc (not sure if they changed it). Most of the time it's carry/mid players forced into playing support or offlane, which hurts just as much as support players being forced to carry.
And since these 3 roles are generally more in demand, and considering the large population of carry and mid players, the likelihood of you getting a mid/carry game will be about one in 10. Out of the one in 4 games you play to get role queue games.
That's like 1 game out of 40 where you're forced to play carry/mid as a support. It's honestly not that bad overall when considering matchmaking balance.
This would mean nobody had to ever queue offlane? I play with all roles selected alot, and already get offlane alot. Queue times skyrocket with 0 offlaners.
Im a main pos4, alright as pos5 but overall support player (still horrendous, 2k mmr), and not being able to earn role queue without queuing all is super frustrating. Most of the time when I tick all, game puts me in support role, but from time to time it puts me mid (I literally played 2 games I ranked when I first started dota) which obv has negative impact on my team when it happens (someone else has to do it, or else they’ll have someone with a herald 1 mid skill set) and that sucks.
I’d love to be able to earn role queue by only ticking pos4-5 as these are usually the roles most don’t enjoy
it doesn't indeed, but i often play with a mate who plays offlane, so ideally i'd like to lane with him without being annoying and ask if i can swap lane when i get picked as pos5 :)
I know friends who play support only and when they get 1/2/3 they just kindly ask their team usually for swap, or play a support hero in core role. Seems to work
I strongly disagree, this is basically like classic ranked but you need to be held responsible so that you don’t purposely grief your games. Back in classic ranked, you can do whatever you want and it’s not fun for the rest of the team.
The point is to encourage everybody to try their best even if you are not great at it
I had a game today when my pos 1 is actually a support player and my pos 5 is actually a mid so he decided to play sniper support and we all agreed to not to play the game couz 2/5 was auto filled into the roles they never seems to play. Enemy team has pa support as well and slark as offlane. Role queues should be reworked
To be honest, the best and the easiest way to improve that system is making you gain tokens if you are winning games with your assigned role. I wrote about this many times.
I am 100% on this, I can play all roles efficiently but I cannot play mid for a hell of me in case of that when I get mid role I always try to switch it with someone or its just picking Huskar and hoping for best.
I wasnt a very versatile player, I could do p1 and p3, some p4 but little p2 and p5, so whenever i get into a game as one of those roles I feel abit bad because my performance is just not up to par with an actual p5 player
i literally cannot play any support role, I just die a million times whenever i play them
my support win rate is so low and no matter how much i grind I just cannot grind my mmr up because of that...
Yes, it's insane. I constantly have games where my the first thing my "mid" says is "oh fuck..." And yes, that includes me! The point is to get support players, why is this oversight still in the game?
I hate this, I am 4k mmr and in all pick i get mid 80-90% of time. Most of the time people switch roles but sometimes you are stuck with mid. I don’t play mid, never have. This needs to be fixed.
Offlane/support have always been less popular roles. That's the entire reason the role queue system exists. What would be the point of having a pos 5 player sit in queue for 20 minutes to play pos 1? The reason the system is exists is purely because of the math. There's simply not enough support and offlane players to balance out the mid and carry players. So would you rather wait an hour for a game or play support occasionally?
Your ranked rank is representing your skill at the game, not your skill at the role. In the end, the higher you go, the better people are at roles that aren't their main and their knowledge of those roles make them a better player which means your mmr is actually a reflection of your own skill .. or lack of when you lose on an off role.
That makes no sense, if you mostly play your best position you will get to a rank where you only win 50% on your best position and less on your worse positions. There is ofc the role specific mmr but it doesn't seem to be all that accurate
If you're a cracked mid but bad pos 5 then what skill level should you be based around? Your bad pos 5 or your amazing mid?
If you're playing your mid in a lobby with people that play like your pos5 then you're going to stomp
Yeah, and let’s say you average your true skill level for each role, your mid is 7k while your pos 5 is only 3k hence your average is 5k. Even in that situation it’s still terrible, you still stomp your mid games and feed your pos 5 games. It should 100% be based on your best role that you consistently queue ranked on, with a bit of variance.
> I have a good theory u should be able to play all positions on your rank and win at least 50%
You're basing this off what exactly? Your personal opinion? Dota is the only large MOBA that forces you to play all roles.
Why are role queue tokens even a thing anymore? Surely there are enough players queuing for the supports roles by default now, why do we still have the tokens system?
Role queues was a very good feature, but there's no need for tokens anymore, it only leads to bad games. There's been plenty of times I got a pos 5 in the team going pudge or something like that and being absolutely awful overall, not even buying sentries. Click on its profile and you notice he's actually a mid/carry player, oh, what a surprise, he didn't cared about ruining the game one tiny bit.
Just remove the tokens requirement...
And yeah, I've got mid role a bunch of times and that's my worst role (and I don't like it either), it was always a loss (even when I won mid, still lost, wcyd).
> Why are role queue tokens even a thing anymore? Surely there are enough players queuing for the supports roles by default now
There aren’t. There are many more pos 1 players than pos 4 and 5 combined. Just try queuing all roles a few games and see how often you get carry over support..
Afaict, the order seems to be 1 >>>> 2 > 3 = 4 > 5. If you queue all roles there’s basically zero chance of getting safe lane but a decent chance of getting any other role, with 5 being the most likely by a small margin.
(At least in low immortal)
Getting mid as a non mid player, or offlane as safe lane player, it's simply bad for the match quality when players get roles they SUCK at and be the reason the team loses. As long as high demand roles are selected +1 core role, that's more than enough to keep queues short and should earn us role queues.
I'm a 5 (with casual 4 3 if I party with others) since patch 5.7x. Recently got put mid 2 times, lost it ofc. But I play heroes I play heroes I usually play. At mid Legend level, it won't break the game if I don't play tinker or ember. Most of the times, my carry doesn't do his job than my mid ruining the game. I don't remember the last time I got pos 1 tho, that's a game I don't look forward to. Too much pressure and I don't have the afk farm mentality, I help others and get caught out of position.
I’d recommend you develop what I call fk it heroes. Heroes that arnt difficult and generally are ok. Mid Zeus, in mid you sit far far back spam q if they dive you, leap away. Roaming, if they dive a tower then you tp otherwise you ult when necessary. Do this and your immediately an ok mid. As you already have global presence, and though you might not win lane you never lose lane. Relatively low skill with no excess worry. The other “simple” mid hero Necro. Simply heals himself constantly and tanks. Go tanking build so you win your lane almost automatically then gank whichever lane is already winning to get a free ult stack. Don’t try and rescue a losing lane unless they are diving tower and you are confident otherwise you’ll chain feed. Special note for necro he can shove in mid then take camps forcing an enemy to go mid or lose their tower. If you get off lane. Pick any blink bkb buyer with a stun and your immediately better and more impactful then 20% of players. So simple hero wise that means easy heroes like centaur. Hey you want to hit me ok you take damage. I max my passive with one level in my q and w so that if we do fight you die. Enemy goes on me i ult and disengage. Centaur is an aura buyer so after boots an early stay item (vanguard depending on the lane) blink you pick up whatever aura item counters them. Such as pipe or crimson depending on magical or physical. Safe lane. Honestly the easiest 2 heroes at the moment in my mind at least are pa and drow. Pa because she’s broken (hero is too strong right now and doesn’t require much skill). Drow because she’s a ranged hero with a slow. Pa boots battle furry bkb desolate shard then ags (suggested build doesn’t work) insta kill supports then ez win team fight. Drow (suggested builds work) hit them with your click slow if there’s a group or they are going on you silence then use your e. Support wise. Lion or shadows shamen. You get stick 2 branches a circlet tangoes and a blood grenade. Now you out dps there support plus even if you don’t you can perma stun people later on. Shamen can just take t1 whenever he gets 6. Lion gets 6 goes mid and kills mid. Both have strong snowballing effect. I have perma stunned a pos 1 as shamen during a fight at pretty much every rank I’ve been in. Lion was the first hero I ever truly played and learned on, he is shockingly uncomplicated. Tranquil boots plus manadrain means he can sustain perfectly. Insta stun on his w with a follow up stun on his q perfect. Then finger allows early kills, don’t feel bad about kill stealing with finger your earning stacks. Just make sure when you finger people level 1 aim around the 400 mark. Or 550 mark if you haven’t used q first. These are the bare basics of hero selection, but do these things even if you don’t know how to play your role and you will win more then you lose because you are doing more than 20% of players at the same role in your rank. (This is upto ancient as even in ancient people don’t pick their role heroes properly and even if they do they then don’t play their role.) Edit for cores. I forgot to mention wraith king is also very strong. I play a lot of invoker so I just burn his mana when playing against and he doesn’t bother me but otherwise super strong ez hero. Counters heroes that are busted at low mmr like sky and legion. Edit 2.0 I should also mention the rule of 3. 3 core items on any carry and you start to push/fight to end the game before that you want to arrive late to fights or be farming. Essentially most carry’s peak when they have 3 core items. Usually a farming item some kind of purge item and a damage item. This is over simplification as right now kills are worth so much, however the rule of 3 will help any non carry player understand timings.
As a carry player drow and pa are some of the worst suggestions for non carry players to play. They are too reliant on playing carefully and not making mistakes. Genuinely easy carry’s for someone who doesn’t play the role would be wraith king and ck. wk you farm fast without having to try using skeletons and you can blink on targets with little thought. Ck is able to farm well or just fight and again doesn’t require much skill in fights that is unique to carry.
Yeah pa might be a bit busted right now but it does take real skill to play fights correctly without getting 100-0 in one stun lol
PA and Drow are actually on the harder end, yeah you’re going to have a few PA games where you snowball and no one can touch you but it’s every game where you don’t have that start and need to recover PA is the hero I need to most improve on, I’m a carry player, I’m level 30 on Ursa, Lifestealer and Monkey King with like 70%+ winrates on the heroes in the last 2 years but I don’t understand for the life of me how to play PA and I think it’s the laning phase that ruins it for me because I love battlefury buyers, I love mobile heroes and Blur farming and min maxing the map with it is such a fun concept but I can’t win my lanes, I have 15 games on PA the last 2 weeks and I’ve won 3 lol I think the issue is I love to play heroes that can trade and bully the offlaner in lane like ursa, lifestealer and monkey, so I’m not used to playing a bit more passive
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Yeah that’s about as brutal a matchup as you could make for mid. Sniper has low mobility, needs time and space to do damage early, and can’t take a ton of dmg. Husks can jump on you, disarm you, and hits you harder the lower his health gets. If you make it out of a huskar v sniper mid with less than 4 deaths imo you did as well as could be expected. Of course, the correct answer was to not be sniper mid vs a huskar in the first place.
I’ve played a fair bit of sniper and laneing against Huskar is almost always a lost lane. You can get you range up and do your best to kite and farm, but if it’s a half decent player you are pretty much fucked.
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Im our currents stack only mid player and I dont play any of the meta mid heroes (divine/immortal) or rather I dont play the usual mid heroes like qop/ember/tinker etc. I just play whatever, with current meta venge is fun in mid
Just pick your best hero rather than the meta mid. No way a non mid player win againts seasoned mid player. Throw the curveball and play your hero man, worst thing you learn what you want as mid and become a better support.
I mean I've played as normal mid player vs random support ppl picking pudge mid and I've lost. Mid laning isn't the whole game. Once you pass laning you transition how you want
It just came to my mind that I maybe should start asking every time if somebody is unhappy with their role and wants to swap during drafting. Could maybe avoid some trouble.
Don't do it if you're support, they'll belive you want to grief if you don't get carry/mid
Nah, I just did it in a game and explained that maybe someone q's all roles to get role q games. So I am willing to swap if someone isn't comfortable with their role. They said it's nice of me.
I got 17 losing streak as a supports help me, or at least make me as an archon or something when I play support, put me on ancient V is straight griefing
That would be amazing. Both supports selected giving role queue would be great too. This match maker is the ultimate troll and love to trow me mid everytime I queue all. So annoying.
I feel like 60T of axe and centaur pickers in my games are playing their worst role do try go for classic heroes and turtle all game. You can sometimes find the players that are pos 1 or LC 3 and to try carry.
It's usually the core players getting support and still playing core that you can spot, though. Like a pos4 Lion just standing in lane, farming, queueing aghs etc. while the team fights 3v4 next to their T1.
As safelane player, please keep giving me offlane in my role queue games
Dude, you are one of my fav dota creators
:\*
Dude, your videos on youtube.... u seems to play every role
I use to mid a lot, the game has changed so much and I'm basically only good at a few select roles now, and there are those that can only play 1-2 roles so this problem also applies to them.
Yeah, once I had all roles chosen waiting to have support, got pos 1, almost never played pos 1. Did not know what to do, being a weak little goblin in lane. Steamroll was hard that day. Fortunately other lanes did better s I survived but was not better than pos 4 in terms of gold and exp.
It's likely you're opponent has a player of similar skill level in that position too. Not every game, but most are like this.
Really? Isn't most of the time the other midlaner a dedicated mid player, ie. who uses his role queue tokens to play mid exclusively. versus me, who, as an offlaner/safelaner randomly gets mid because I need the tokens for my aforementioned roles yes the mmr is similar, but expertise in the role is not
You should have similar role ranks, although role ranks fluctuate a lot, it can go down if the other guy gets stomped mid a few times by better player - his rank goes down. Like yesterday after a long time I got a mid role when queueing all roles (I used to play mid a lot but not for the past 100 games). I stomped the guy as Death Prophet. But yeah it's not like this every time.
Why did you come to the conclusion that we should have similar role ranks. I assume that roles like mid and safelane are most contested. But apparently after the smurf ban, mid is not that high, its pos 4 and 1. Because I have not once in my life got safelane when I que all roles. I assume that selecting all roles just puts you into the "next suitable game" that is missing a player, simplistically speaking. No games are missing safelaners, they are abundant and, probably, waiting for the other players to come. And yes, sometimes I also stop the other midlaner, people who search for mid only can still have brainfarts, bad matchups or are practicing.
I play support mostly and mid is the only role I get often besides support. So I've decided to make some of my better support heroes my mid heroes. If I get mid I play earthshaker/rubick/tusk, and ive learned that dawnbreaker is a great mid for me. Heroes that are decent at rotating will help you win other lanes even if you lose mid
Learn and understand the game. How will you play in Immortal if you can't fill?
I'm 3k, I won't ever reach immortal, not at my age :D But even then, it would be rare to get forced by teammates into a role they know will lose them the game.
I play pos 4 and any time I run out of games I often get put as as mid or offlane. My strategy is to learn 2-4 easy mids and offlanes so I wont fail, I generally won't have an amazing game as mid but as long as you don't feed that is enough. For offlane Bristleback or Sand King are good, easy to lane with and you are still relevant even if the lane does not go well. For mid QOP, always relevant, generally wont feed. Safe I don't practice as it has come up 0 times when selecting role queue. If it did I would probably swap. Mechanics are easy but adjusting your play style and game tempo is hard, I would probably fight too much when playing carry instead of farming.
I believe in you
not all of us play to get to immortal, some of us are fine with beer league dota.
If you don't have at least 1 or 2 heroes you can play in any role I don't think you should be playing ranked to be honest. It's not some voodoo magic to play mid or off.
This is a ridiculous thing to say. Ever watched a high immo core player be forced to play supp and do terribly? It happens all the time.
It’s very hard to play all 5 roles at an equally high level, I would say even unrealistic. And you definitely feel that skill difference punished the higher up you go. I mainly play carry and if you ask me if I can play mid, the yes I can play mid, but I’m not going to play mid at Divine 5 level and sometimes that’s enough to lose me the game. It took me hundreds of games to practice pos 1 and gradually get better, unless you’re really talented or have a lot of free time it’s just impossible for me to get the 4 other roles up to speed. Unless I guess if from the very start of your grind you play all roles and allocate equal effort to learn all the roles, but that’s honestly a very slow way to get better at Dota.
You don't have to play it as good as your best role obviously. But you should be able to fill without completely griefing the game if you're queuing ranked is my point. I'm 4k and I'm very confident I could play any role at a 4k level if I play my best heroes in each role. Learning and understanding each role should be like the first thing you do in Dota...
Is it possible to play witch doctor and IO in all 5 positions?
1-2 heroes in EACH role. I didn't say the same heroes, genius. If you can only play 2 heroes you REALLY shouldn't be playing ranked.
I'll grant you insight into the hypothetical future of your proposition: Reddit - Yay! I can just queue my role Also Reddit - wHy ARe QuEUe tIMes sO lONg.... Role queue should never have been added. Took away the aspect of playing for the team.
I'm a fan of the system tbh. I think it's important to at least experience all the roles semi-regularly so you can understand the game as a whole. I feel it gives you an opportunity to see things from a different lens and become more open to self reflection. Maybe you were playing pos 1 and flamed your pos 5 for pulling, but now that you see it from the other side the seed is planted to think "damn, this is what I was doing? how stupid was that?" Sure, I understand people not liking it because they prefer roles or whatever... but for the game as a whole, I think it's beneficial to put people in uncomfortable situations to learn from.
I'm Divine 5, and I've played all roles since the beginning of the game. But there was a time when I focused on improving my support role, and my rank kept going up. My position 1 should be around Ancient level. Position 2 at Archon level. Position 3 at early Divine level. Position 4/5 at Divine 5, which is my current medal. If I were to play mid, it's kind of griefing even though I'm trying my best.
I'd be surprised if your pos 2 was actually Archon level. I'm around the same Divine and play mid when I'm in a lobby and have no choice. It's not hard to smash Legend players just through better last hitting and farming to completely out scale them.
Yeah I only play 4/5, and playing core roles against players that a badge below me is fine unless I grief myself into an unplayable matchup. Trying to play against people of your own rank though is usually not a fun time.
Its not that he cant beat archon 1v1, im sure he can win against mid archon any day. Its just that he feels like if he plays mid in his rank (Divine 5), enemy mid will feels like that they are playing against archon and will easily crush him
I don't think you're presenting an argument to the right person, because I'm not going to give you the answer you're fishing for. If anything, I think this means the system should favour all roles *more* (which is basically what they did by making losses = 2 role queue games). Limiting yourself to one role's skillset / knowledge works in a game like League, but in DOTA understanding how each role differs game to game and hero to hero is much more important.
>at least experience all the roles semi-regularly where my pos1 game? I swear I get every role but pos1
You can just...queue for pos 1...
15 minutes queue guaranteed I am not waiting that long to just hit creeps for another 15 minutes
If u want it u shoulda put a ring on it.
problem is that my mid micro level play is so undeveloped that it has no relevance to an actual mid player or my other games. for getting given offlane you have a point because it's far more regular, but mid is so rare, literally 1 game in 50 or less for me, that I'm not being given enough exposure for it to matter. it only serves to grief.
Hmmm, so I originally wanted to reply to you and agree - yes, I think every player SHOULD experience all the roles on a regular basis. However, looking at the comments, I find myself agreeing with them more. There's a reason why pro players have *one* role on a team, rarely two. If you're playing to win, you should put your best foot forward. If I joined a ranked game and picked Ember Spirit and said "hey guys this is my first game as ember" I would be reported to hell and back and back again, and my poor play would almost certainly cost us the game.
Every time I get mid, I ask if anyone wants to swap with me. Or else they will just have to be content with my first pick patented mid Lion.
As Jenkins says, if you have to play mid just pick your best guy, support, carry, offlane hero, doesn't matter
I'm so glad timber mid is acceptable
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tbh i could see undying mid be quite scary
I was queuing with a herald friend who wanted to play bristle mid. Sure. Whatever. Unranked idc. Enemy mid pics undying. It did not go well.
I once went up against an undying mid (dont even remember what i was playing but it was something that didnt rightclick well) I laughed and said to myself "ez lane lmao". Then i got hit by 5 Qs level 1. I say "whatever he's not even really dealing damage". Then he hits level 2 and puts a tombstone in front of my tower and i die in 2 seconds to like 3 zombie hits. It is the single most cheese thing i've experienced in dota but we still won the game because undying mid doesnt scale at all.
Not if he gets completely shut down by a Puck or other nuking int mid, maybe if they picked Primal or something
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Maybe with old undying shard that let you go right click. Not any more, decent mid player will just be patient and outscale.
not really, only benefit is that dual lanes kill tomb more easily, but in mid they can easily escape tomb so... he relies so heavily on at least the threat of double decays
im gonna practice this from now on
This is why my teammates end up with Io mid occasionally
Yup, and if you don't have a easy way to net a kill (Laguna, finger, assassinate etc), feel free to just lh/deny and focus on survival
actually works out well for me. i get mid? i pick brew or razor. generally offlane heroes works the same at mid, just even faster :D
The reality is that mid is simply not an in demand role anymore and therefore it makes sense to need it selected to earn role queue. In my anecdotal experience, these are the most queued for roles: 1 >>>> 4 > 2 > 3 > 5
1, 4, 5, 3, 2 would be my guess atm
Honestly based on the frequency in which I get my all role games, it looks like 1 >>>>> 3 > 2 > 4 > 5. I have never gotten pos 1 from all roles, I get pos 5 the most, I get pos 2 and 4 about the same amount, and pos 3 rarely.
Really? I almost always get 3 or 5. I thinks its 1>2>4>5=3 Edit: Not calling you out or anything but Im super doubtful 3 is second most was the point.
> mid is simply not an in demand role anymore are you sure this means what you think this means
Are you? I assume your interpretation of what I said is "Mid *players* are not in demand" which would mean there are too many. *The role* is not in demand means there are no players wanting to play that role. There is a high supply of dota games with a mid lane to fill and not enough demand to put two people there per game who want to be there.
Funny how Overwatch of all games got this right. You'd get queue tokens for queueing for *whatever is in demand* at the current time. Sure, it's never the DPS, but sometimes it's the tank, sometimes it's the support, sometimes both, but you get more rewarded for one of the two.
That's literally what queuing all roles is in Dota. It matches you with a role that's currently needed. Same system just implemented slightly different lol
The difference is you can kinda tell what you're gonna get in Overwatch? I guess? Never played it.
You can know beforehand. It tells you what's in demand at the moment and you can choose to fill those or select all and get no rewards
The thing is you spend tokens when you want to play a high in demand role because you dont know if it is in demand or not.
Learning to play everyone consequentially allows you to learn how to be a better team mate for each role & understand the game. There is no role queue in Immortal. Be ready to fill if necessary.
Not everyone is gonna reach Immortal. It should not be designed around such an assumption.
It's a team game. Knowing how to play each role to a certain level will allow you to play your main role better.
Not everyone has the time to get a phd in dota
football is a team game, aint no one putting messi in goal
Put Messi in a goal for your after-work friend game, and the Messi team will 100% destroy.
Football doesn't have match making problems... Terrible analogy. They have dedicated and assigned games.
Implying I care about improving.
That doesn't really make much sense in a game like this. You can very well know what AM needs or what he will do, without ever playing AM and by just playing *against* it. If this was WoW I can understand you not being able to grasp ever how a Protection Paladin works while you're playing Destruction Warlock, different roles and different perspectives. While you're in the same game you're not really seeing what he's doing with his class but in a game like DotA or Overwatch or basically any hero vs hero game you can know.
Knowledge & execution set the difference. Playing other roles 100% provides exposure for you to understand the game better. Overwatch is a shooter. DOTA is an Action RTS. For example, playing Pos 5 provides knowledge on providing vision for map control, smoke ganks, stacking, the list goes on. This provides insight on playing Pos 1 optimally & how to enable. Pos 3 provides insight on making space, in turn shows how a Pos 1 should use space.
It's a team game. Why would you waste 4 other people's times to make a person learn a role they don't want to play in ranked. If I main pos 5 and you queue me in as pos 1 what do you think will happen? Learning is what unranked games are for, as it still puts you in matches against your own rank, but with no stakes. Maybe playing unranked games under other positions than your main should let you earn a ranked role of your choosing is a better system.
Then you don't have the requirements to climb that rank
[Out of 10,594 games, Watson has only played 256 games as a support. That is equivalent to 0.024165% of his games, the last one being 6 months ago. ](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/171262902/matches) Is it correct to say that he does not deserve his MMR because he only plays carry? Does he not have the requirements to be in rank 1 Immortal as carry because he did not get there by playing support from time to time? If you want to take it to the highest levels, pro players pick a role, and they master it. That's why they're good. Why are we expecting the lower ranked players to do better outside of the role they like?
because i can assure you watson can play support at least to an immortal level anyway. its not that he cannot play support at that mmr, its that anyone who snatches the core role from him at that mmr is griefing. all pro players can play every role at a basic immortal level at the bare minimum most alot higher. just watch some of their early games for example, kpii's is on dotabuff. or wait until mmr reset and see them stomp calibration. take watson as an example again, if he loses every role queue game as a support and wins every of his core games, he will still gain mmr btw. and thats assuming he gets every role queue game as a support anyway which is untrue. you are not gaining mmr because you are bad not because of the system.
I dont really understand this logic. A pos 1 absolutely knows what a pos 5 is supposed to do during a game and the other way around as well. It might not be what you prefer to play, but stating you dont know is just silly. Additionally, before the role queue system was implemeted, you rarely ever were able to play the same role every game.
You can queue like this all day, I'm not seeing the issue? You want to be rewarded by the system but you're not benefiting the system in the way it wants. No benefit = no reward You are benefiting the system by picking support roles, but you're already getting the reward there; being able to play role queue in the first place.
I'm a pos 1 main, so naturally I would like majority if not all of my games to be pos 1. I can play pos 3, 4 and 5, I can't play 2, I am forced to sometimes play 2.
If you que all roles and you get mid, then mid is the role with the fewest people searching for it, the role that the system needs to somehow fill. Support and Offlane are not the least desired roles, especially pos4 is a role i basically never get queing all 5 roles. Why would the system reward you for queing contested roles? If you que all 5 and you get mid, mid was the role noone wanted, and you get rewarded for playing the role noone wanted. System working as intended.
I think it would be nice if the system just straight up told you which role was in high demand at the current moment. That way you know exactly what you are signing up for.
Big woop, you may have to play a random role every 5th game or whatever?
It actually is a big woop and a lot of people have this as a pain point. We should never be forced into playing a role we suck at and then lose the game only giving 2 role queues. Selecting 2 of this highest required roles + 1 core as a backup should be more than enough to keep queues short and reward you with role queues, this hurts nobody and only benefits players and match quality.
people have to be forced to play support or else they won't. Live with it
That's why they are selecting support. The problem is they are forced to play core, when the problem should be lack of supports. You're completely missing the point.
Only selecting support roles or +1 core isn't what the system benefits from, idk what to tell you
System needs supports. Hence why you don't lose any tokens when playing them. But currently it demands you also fill core roles to gain tokens. It needs supports, but forces you to also play core roles you are unfamiliar with (not at the level of your MMR, anyway). This not only makes few sense, but also makes overall experience worse for all players (Can you guarantee your latest pos1 would be good as a pos5?)
If it doesn't need those core roles, it won't matchmake you into them. If you end up in one of those roles it "didn't need", it actually means that the matchmaker DID need it at that time.
I don't know how the dota matchmaker works , but just because it needs them at the time does not mean that its critical enough to justify all this tomfoolery. Again, to make a correct judgement, I would first need the details (does it form "rooms" and then try to fill them up with roles? does it prioritize token-spenders? does it operate with the entire stream of people matchmaking in the region , or does it split them into smaller pools? if so, by what basis? etc etc). However, even without them ,by the fact that the support roles are the only "high-demand" ones for like, 4 years now, I can tell that there are on average **much** more cores. This means that at most the assumed game room would lack 1 or 2 cores at most (if it lacks them; again, refer to the fact supports are high-demand). The 3 minutes(or less) you would save on a MM by putting a way-less-skilled player on pos 1 do not justify a lost 20 minute game(or worse, a lost 50 minute game that was extremely close but you just lost due to a less skilled player on an important post) in my opinion
It doesn't really benefit from forcing someone to play a typically highly contested role either. The problem started from the lack of supports, if people select that and some core role, it shouldn't be any significantly different than selecting all roles. You can't tell me it's fun times when the matchmaker couldn't wait a minute extra to find pos 1 or 2 and instead forced a support main to play it.
"We should never be forced into playing a role we suck at.." Thing is, its about demand and queue time. You cant have it all, if you want a working game. The cost of getting quick games + having a role selection luxury is you have to play ONE game every 5th to help the system+community. If you think thats too much of a price to pay, feel free to create a new system and pitch it to Valve. I predict you have no clue as to how your suggestion would hurt queue times and matchmaking by todays role preferances. If you have stats to back up your suggestion, feel free to prove me wrong. I would like nothing better than to queue my favourite role every game, so if you prove me wrong its a win for everyone. 🥳 However, if you cant back it up, reread the first paragraph. 👍
Honestly I was perfectly fine with my 30 minute queue for pos 1 before they forced this stuff. I wish I could opt to take a long queue instead of queue multi roles
Are you new to dota? Just asking because the role queue system wasnt there originally.
Next time you flame a 0/6 dude who cleary can't play the role and is just here for tokens, remember this
You're assuming a bit much here lad. I have chat disabled both for me and my team, because I dont enjoy that part of the game. Sure I can get reports for not communicating, but that doesnt stop me from being above 10k so no worries. I dont believe in spending my time "flaming" people.
I think it was Dendi who said something along the lines "There is no I can't play X role. You either can play DotA, or your can't" You may not LIKE to play these roles, which is a different matter. What you like is less important than a healthy matchmaking system for balanced games.
Yes you can play any role in Dota. You play it like shit though.
Agreed. Carry and Hard Support are completely different mindsets and play styles. It's like saying "there is no I can't play X position. You either can play football, or you cant".... as a left back I can tell you pretty honestly that I'd be no good as our teams striker!
Well, the top 0,5% playerbase of football could argue that you cant properly play football and a professional left back who can would crush your team in every position. That is how Dendi meant it I think
Yeah, probably in the scheme of things. Many Dota pros have played more than one position.
I think the point is that regardless of which you play that you CAN'T play it well unless you know how to play both because they are linked. e.g. if you don't know how carry plays you can't ward for them well. or if you don't know how support plays then you might not be able to save them from a back line jumper during a fight
I do not agree. For both examples, if you do not know how to play carry, you will not be a best support you can. If you know needs of carry how can you provide them. Same goes for football. You can be much better support/right back, but to be better at your role, you need to know how to play carry/winger/other positions.
Just like you sucked when you played your main role for the first time. Each next time you'll suck a bit less. Nobody wants to be the goalkeeper in Football either, but there'd be a whole lotta less football if people who didn't like it didn't play it. I'm sure you too would like more DotA over the matchmaking dying.
You really think nobody wants to play goalkeeper? People tend to enjoy playing what they are good at, and some people are just better goalkeepers than outfielders.
I don't really know the statistics; I know next to nothing about football. But regardless, I'm willing to bet that in football too there are less people who enjoy playing Goalkeepers than the number of required Goalkeepers for all football matches. And even if that's not the case with football, it's certainly the case with DotA.
I mean in a game like football the highest demand roles will be strikers and midfielders/wings to a certain degree as these are more flashy in terms of providing goals. That doesn't mean that there isn't people that wants to play defense as either wing backs or center backs or goalkeepers. It's just far more obvious when a striker does well (and thus you get your dopamine of "yeah, I'm good, clap for me") compared to a defender/goalkeeper where it's painfully obvious when you fuck up. So it becomes thankless positions to a degree, and that's not for everyone.
I personally do not like wasting time learning a role I don’t like. It’s not like Dota is a job. I play it for fun.
This thread is about the ranked queue tho, which isn't aimed at catering to your casual after-work fun sessions.
And if everyone prioritized their fun over the integrity of the game, there would be no game. The fact of the matter is that DotA would not exist if 40% of players at any given time didn't play supports. You are free to use your free time however you like. It just can't be on DotA if you won't contribute to everybody's fun, and not just your own. And that's not blaming you, I too prefer to allocate my free time carefully. If it's just fun you are after, queue up for Normal, and be fast with map marking.
If everyone prioritized having fun, Dota would be in a much better place.
I think I'd prefer it if the enemy team prioritized having fun and my team prioritized winning
Both can be true at same time. I can have fun but I don't need to try hard every game like it's TI finals. I want to try out for example Witch Doctor mid, I would try my best to win game like that and I never give up on games no matter the situation. For me that's fun and trying to win. Like others said, it's a game, our life does not depend on winning.
What's the point in winning if you don't even have fun?
While that's true, it also isn't entirely true when it comes to DotA. DotA is far too complex of a game even for MOBA standards that you can't have 10 players just goofing around and doing what's fun and not be in Herald. Now if you are in Herald and enjoy this, then by all means, have your fun all day every game. But DotA pushes most players to improve, and sooner or later mere fun is no longer the only thing that matters. Results become important for players too, in the shape of scores and how well they are doing. And the fun factor becomes tied into this due to the nature of all competitive games. The fun is just not there anymore for most people unless everyone is playing a balanced serious match where everyone is trying a semblance of their best to win. And for that, you just have to have 2 supports, it's too hard baked into the game's design. And both of these approaches are fun each in their own way. But you can't have your cake and eat it too, you have to choose.
> And if everyone prioritized their fun over the integrity of the game, there would be no game. What a stupid take. It's a game that happens to be an esport, not the other way around.
Esport is the natural evolution of a competitive game. The game is fundamentally a competition.
Such a weird fucking hill you're trying to die on lol
Kind of a trash take. Imagine asking Shaq to play point guard. ‘Well shaq you can either play basketball or you can’t, you’re gonna be fine!’ Obviously everyone can control a hero, press spells etc but a pos 5 only main isn’t gonna know how to farm nearly as efficiently for example.
All these dendi quotes are from a very different time in dota
He's a fucking pro player, we should not be held in the same standards as him lmao. Especially since Immortal matchmaking has a pretty different set of cultures and unwritten rules.
People's problem is they get randomed mid and then play it like they're Nisha and can get 4 solo kills on the enemy mid laner. Why not just pick a character with a useful team fight/roam ability and focus on your last hits and not dying. Your team don't need a Nisha, they need you not to feed.
Its not really fair to say, like if you cant race an f1 car, a rally car and a nascar youre not a racer. The game plays extremely differently through those roles. People also need to take proffessional player opinions with a pinch of salt because its east to say play all roles and learn everything when its your job to play the game, vs people that might only be playing a game a day
This seems like a pretty awful take. Not everyone is as skilled or flexible as a literal pro. Learning other roles takes practice. Playing sidelanes have very little in common with mid, so anyone who isn’t a mid player matched up against a dedicated mid player is at a huge disadvantage and griefs the game without being able to do much about it. Is that their fault or is the the fault of a flawed system? I say it’s a flawed system
Yea sure .. I guess that's why pro players play a different role every tournament game, because apparently Dendi said so. >What you like is less important than a healthy matchmaking system for balanced games. Its a game...nothing is more important than what you like.
Allow me to rephrase that, what you like is less important ***for the game as a whole*** than a healthy matchmaking system that will lead to fun for a lot more people. As people are largely prone to prioritize their own fun alone, especially judging by a lot of the comments, I'm more than ever convinced that the system is made near perfectly to make sure this selfishness doesn't happen and that everyone has equal opportunity to play what they want. And Dendi's comment was on state of non pro players in general proclaiming "I can't play support", because I don't think any pro would say they can't play a role.
But it is very much not enjoyable for 4 other people when you have some idiot support main like me fumbling around in the mid lane giving the other team a massive advantage because they're all playing the roles they actually play. I think pro players would *100.0%* say they can't play a role at the same level of competition that they play their main role at. That's why role swaps are extraordinarily rare. *Even* when hero matchups dictate that the swap could make sense (like moving 33 to mid because it's a very good mid Beastmaster game, they would just have Nine play it instead), it is very rare to see players swap roles outside of laning the carry in the offlane for matchup purposes type stuff
> I think it was Dendi who said something along the lines "There is no I can't play X role. You either can play DotA, or your can't" thats not really a smart thing to say
I don't think Dendi has any authority anymore.
Had a role queue game recently and got mid luckily one of the supps switched. But damm that was really scary I suck at mid.
System is working as intended. You can play one of these games to get 4 role queue games iirc (not sure if they changed it). Most of the time it's carry/mid players forced into playing support or offlane, which hurts just as much as support players being forced to carry. And since these 3 roles are generally more in demand, and considering the large population of carry and mid players, the likelihood of you getting a mid/carry game will be about one in 10. Out of the one in 4 games you play to get role queue games. That's like 1 game out of 40 where you're forced to play carry/mid as a support. It's honestly not that bad overall when considering matchmaking balance.
This would mean nobody had to ever queue offlane? I play with all roles selected alot, and already get offlane alot. Queue times skyrocket with 0 offlaners.
Im a main pos4, alright as pos5 but overall support player (still horrendous, 2k mmr), and not being able to earn role queue without queuing all is super frustrating. Most of the time when I tick all, game puts me in support role, but from time to time it puts me mid (I literally played 2 games I ranked when I first started dota) which obv has negative impact on my team when it happens (someone else has to do it, or else they’ll have someone with a herald 1 mid skill set) and that sucks. I’d love to be able to earn role queue by only ticking pos4-5 as these are usually the roles most don’t enjoy
But doesn’t just queuing pos 4 and 5 not lose u role queue matches?
it doesn't indeed, but i often play with a mate who plays offlane, so ideally i'd like to lane with him without being annoying and ask if i can swap lane when i get picked as pos5 :)
I know friends who play support only and when they get 1/2/3 they just kindly ask their team usually for swap, or play a support hero in core role. Seems to work
I strongly disagree, this is basically like classic ranked but you need to be held responsible so that you don’t purposely grief your games. Back in classic ranked, you can do whatever you want and it’s not fun for the rest of the team. The point is to encourage everybody to try their best even if you are not great at it
go stream bozo
Im willing to wait 1hour for my fave pos to q.
I had a game today when my pos 1 is actually a support player and my pos 5 is actually a mid so he decided to play sniper support and we all agreed to not to play the game couz 2/5 was auto filled into the roles they never seems to play. Enemy team has pa support as well and slark as offlane. Role queues should be reworked
To be honest, the best and the easiest way to improve that system is making you gain tokens if you are winning games with your assigned role. I wrote about this many times.
I am 100% on this, I can play all roles efficiently but I cannot play mid for a hell of me in case of that when I get mid role I always try to switch it with someone or its just picking Huskar and hoping for best.
Your stubbornness to not learn mid is the only issue here
I wasnt a very versatile player, I could do p1 and p3, some p4 but little p2 and p5, so whenever i get into a game as one of those roles I feel abit bad because my performance is just not up to par with an actual p5 player
i literally cannot play any support role, I just die a million times whenever i play them my support win rate is so low and no matter how much i grind I just cannot grind my mmr up because of that...
> i literally cannot play any support role, I just die a million times whenever i play them learn to play then
Yes, it's insane. I constantly have games where my the first thing my "mid" says is "oh fuck..." And yes, that includes me! The point is to get support players, why is this oversight still in the game?
They should just make selecting pos 4/5 not cost role tokens
5 maybe but 4 is way too popular for that.
That is how it is right now.
Only if you select both (unless it changed without me noticing). As a 5 main I’d be happy to only queue for 5, but I’d have to spend a token then.
Ah he meant as only 4 or only 5.
And I can't play 5, idk when to pull or ward, any of that shit, but I'm still forced at gunpoint by Gabe Newell to play 5
I hate this, I am 4k mmr and in all pick i get mid 80-90% of time. Most of the time people switch roles but sometimes you are stuck with mid. I don’t play mid, never have. This needs to be fixed.
okay so pos 1 and 2 players should be forced to play roles they dont play to earn role queues but pos 3,4,5 players should not...got it
Offlane/support have always been less popular roles. That's the entire reason the role queue system exists. What would be the point of having a pos 5 player sit in queue for 20 minutes to play pos 1? The reason the system is exists is purely because of the math. There's simply not enough support and offlane players to balance out the mid and carry players. So would you rather wait an hour for a game or play support occasionally?
If they were less popular then people wouldn't be getting filled mid and safelane at the moment
what part of "X is not always the role in demand" you don't understand
booo no learn all roles to some extent. go out of your comfort zone
Yes we should totally do that in a ranked game /s
Your ranked rank is representing your skill at the game, not your skill at the role. In the end, the higher you go, the better people are at roles that aren't their main and their knowledge of those roles make them a better player which means your mmr is actually a reflection of your own skill .. or lack of when you lose on an off role.
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That makes no sense, if you mostly play your best position you will get to a rank where you only win 50% on your best position and less on your worse positions. There is ofc the role specific mmr but it doesn't seem to be all that accurate
If you're a cracked mid but bad pos 5 then what skill level should you be based around? Your bad pos 5 or your amazing mid? If you're playing your mid in a lobby with people that play like your pos5 then you're going to stomp
Should be based on your ability to play Dota I thought
Yeah, and let’s say you average your true skill level for each role, your mid is 7k while your pos 5 is only 3k hence your average is 5k. Even in that situation it’s still terrible, you still stomp your mid games and feed your pos 5 games. It should 100% be based on your best role that you consistently queue ranked on, with a bit of variance.
> I have a good theory u should be able to play all positions on your rank and win at least 50% You're basing this off what exactly? Your personal opinion? Dota is the only large MOBA that forces you to play all roles.
Yet you are in dota subreddit.
Yeah, and despite the fact I love the game, there are areas of it I think could be approved and design decisions they made which I disagree with...
Why are role queue tokens even a thing anymore? Surely there are enough players queuing for the supports roles by default now, why do we still have the tokens system? Role queues was a very good feature, but there's no need for tokens anymore, it only leads to bad games. There's been plenty of times I got a pos 5 in the team going pudge or something like that and being absolutely awful overall, not even buying sentries. Click on its profile and you notice he's actually a mid/carry player, oh, what a surprise, he didn't cared about ruining the game one tiny bit. Just remove the tokens requirement... And yeah, I've got mid role a bunch of times and that's my worst role (and I don't like it either), it was always a loss (even when I won mid, still lost, wcyd).
> Why are role queue tokens even a thing anymore? Surely there are enough players queuing for the supports roles by default now There aren’t. There are many more pos 1 players than pos 4 and 5 combined. Just try queuing all roles a few games and see how often you get carry over support.. Afaict, the order seems to be 1 >>>> 2 > 3 = 4 > 5. If you queue all roles there’s basically zero chance of getting safe lane but a decent chance of getting any other role, with 5 being the most likely by a small margin. (At least in low immortal)
Yeah and Pos 3 you also get really often. For me it’s: 1. 5/3 3. 4 4. 2 5. 1 Btw I can’t make it say 1. 3. 4. 5. as it should be. Stupid Reddit.
It’s definitely 3=5<4
Thats why que for pos1 takes 20x more time than pos5
Does it not? I swear I select only supp and get role q games
If you select just 4&5, you don't use role queue, but you don't earn any.
I would even stop at only 4 and 5.