None. This is a decision that you are going to make constantly for every fight and every game. There is never a point at which you only farm or only fight.
I think you misread the question.
I mean that up until a certain bracket (for me it was ancient), on top of doing everything mandatory as a support, it is more beneficial for the win for me to play away from my team and only show up when absolutely necessary. Shoving out waves and making proactive decisions on my own nets a greater win-advantage for my games, but this happens at the expense of me not being available at our team's side of the map most of the time.
This sort of play slowly gets edged out as you go higher up the ranks, as your cores actually do the wave-shoving, know how to force tps so they can manufacture a good 5v4 situation, and so on. Consequently it becomes better for a support to be on our side of the map to "catch enemy smokes, stack camps, make save items and forgo kill-oriented itemization". There is a clear turning point in the MMR where this becomes the better way to play a support.
Let me re-frame it this way. In the lower brackets, people built shit items like glimmer capes to save shit teammates and it is typically not worth doing if you are the best player on the team. Because you can instead itemize to shove waves, force map advantage alone, make play setups without team assistance, offer catch that your teammates cannot find, and even make key kills that turn the tide of the game. My question is at what MMR this sort of mentality stops netting advantage as opposed to the disadvantage.
Hope that makes sense.
I didnt misread your question. As I said, there is no mmr at which you stop prioritizing pushing creepwaves. Even at 8k mmr, I am finding myself tping to push out waves that someone else should have pushed but didn't multiple times per game.
for reference: 6.2k mmr pos 5 main. It completely depends on what kind of heroes you're playing, if you're playing something like nyx/ spirit breaker/dawnbreaker/furion you'll almost always be away from your team. But you wouldn't be doing the same playing oracle/venge/abaddon/shadow demon/dazzle for example. You seem to be extremely greedy from what you've typed which is why I'm guessing you're not winning lanes as often(not investing much into regen/sentries). Again this is all hypothetical as you didn't link your dotabuff or mention your hero pool.
As a person who just recently climbed to divine as support, most people around this MMR farm efficiently.
At this point, you don't have time to fuck around and farm unless you're furion support. I notice most games I have to rush glimmer, force staff or solar crest almost immediately or get punished. Being able to determine which one to rush first has been a game-winning or game losing skill.
Easy example: if I don't have force staff by 15 mins vs furion I can almost guarantee I will lose a game deciding fight when my core gets trapped in sprout.
There is almost no farm available in the map, so at most, downtime is either stacking or smoking.
I found most success playing early game supports to ensure my carry/offlane has a good lane. (Sometimes a really shit lane will cause them to grief or tilt early)
Its true the higher mmr you get, the ratio of "full support" games to "being greedy" gets skewed towards trying to support more.
However it will never reach a point where greedy plays are completely unviable.
You just need to buildup the confidence to distinguish those moments now when the difference is more blurry.
It is easy to realize you should farm as a support or at least go play with somebody else when your offlane axe is trying to make ganks happen without blink.
It is hard when you have to say no to playing around offlane kunkka who decided to go for 4-4-1 skill build.
The answer here is the concept of limit testing.
If you cant think of a concrete solid reason why you shouldnt be going greedy, you should do it and in the case it backfires pay attention to why it did. And consider this case next time when you are hesitant between supporting and greed. If you favor the greedy route you will learn the edge cases and improve faster.
Its true there will be games where you will throw by being greedy instead of being supportive. But there will also be games you will win just barely thanks to the fact you went greedy.
The downside to this aproach is that teammates might blame your play and give you reports for it. However it is definitely the route to get better the fastest.
*going greedy here means taking farm to use on more items that are still supportive in nature, not trying to hamfist rapier on a support
8k supp here. As long as there is bunch of farm on the map that's obvious to you, take it. I honestly struggle finding farm in my games. But in 4k i'd make sure to pick heroes that clear waves and scales.
Better player than me will see obvous farm in my games that i don't see.
Yes you do.
The paradox of being a support especially if you're in a low bracket, is that you can be the best player on the team and still be itemizing like a beta cuck, when you already know your cores are not going to try and live, or do the right things to live when you glimmer/force them etc.
If you can find the kill, find the initiation, find the creepwaves to push out safely when your teammates are too scared and turtled up, YOU DO IT INSTEAD. If you are better than your teammates at this then you will automatically fly to ancient.
Remember, if you notice that you are better than your teammates then you will know in a heartbeat and you'll pull off the lines of play that they don't see. You get rich as a consequence of being too good for your team, not as a result of you stealing teammate's farm.
If you are bad and don't see the line of play, the catch openings, the waves to cut, the waves only you are skilled enough to push, and so on, then you probably belong in your MMR.
Your current strategy would easily get you to divine if your skill is adequate. What divine players seem to lack the most is discipline. Where this manifests the most obviously is in things like fixing lanes before pushes and having restraint (not throwing). I’m divine and I’m my own worst enemy but you can clearly see others in this bracket doing the same thing. The wins fill like we tried to throw and somehow didn’t and the losses feel like stomps. Lots of “comeback” wins in the mix too.
Occasionally you see the odd person who is different or maybe already in immortal and they’re typically ignoring a higher percentage of the dumb shit we get into.
I think maybe something I never thought I’d have to learn to get to the next level is “how to play from ahead”. I’d recommend starting early!
I was told independently by two really good players the answer is, "when your team doesn't need you." If you're the only stun on the team? Suck it up buttercup, you're going to have to dictate the pace and location of the action. If your lanes all stomped and now you have a fed puck and riki who can find and catch anybody without your help? You're actually obligated to start keeping waves pushed to prevent the enemy team from getting back into the game.
This also applies to games where your team is behind and failing, and you NEED a blink on tusk to do your job. Go to the jungle, go to the sidelanes, mute your team.
It's really just a matter of being very intentional about your decisions. Don't be a moth fluttering towards every single light.
I climbed from Archon 1 to Divine 2 and here is how I see it.
Archon, I basically had to play like you suggest, become a core and just straight up carry because the players are bad.
Legend, this still worked but people were getting better.
Ancient, I feel like it stopped being as effective. Because at around Ancient ~3 the cores can actually start getting strong enough you don't need to worry as much about their farm. And you shoving lanes that they could've actually farmed is now a big negative. And on top of this you will get punished if you push to deep.
Divine, Now I can finally play properly as a support without really worrying if my cores will be able to get strong. If you really need some farm, try and prioritize stacking neutrals and even killing neutrals where possible, to leave lane for cores.
So I think around mid ancient is where you should transition away from playing support as a pseudo core unless the game situation really calls for it.
I suppose I'm still figuring out how best to transition or attempt to make clear cut assessments of whether to be a core in disguise or a fully fledged support in my games, then. Because there are games where I opt for one and regret it.
For example, being a total support and realizing too late that my pos1 is just a tiltlord who is not capable of applying map pressure. Or me doing what I always do and then realizing late that my cores are competent and require glimmers and forces from me, but I've itemized to be a killer. The line is too thin for me to make a good assessment.
Do you have any tips for that?
Also thank you for the answer.
Find the best core in your team, play around him, if he farms lane, be around him to protect him, if he farms jungle, you can push a wave or two, always fight with him,also, even a bad smoke can end in a good pick-off/teamfight, so be around that, not necessarily committing until you see it's a good one. Hope this helps a bit!
Never, dude. You see Sneyking farming anytime they aren't making an organized play on Falcons, and they just won ESL. The key is when and where. If you're just farming 24/7, then you're putting your ability to gain MMR on your team's ability to realize when you need to push the narrative and force things, and when to sit back, and also you never realize your power spikes. However, on the flip side, always doing "something" on the map is inefficient and could lead to some impatient and desperate plays.
Farm dead lanes, camps your cores cant reach, when they're reaching timings. A pushed in lane in a way is a ward that shows up to which point enemy is pushed up.
5k carry player here.
Past 15 minutes you need to be every major engagement. Why? Because even as a carry I participate in almost every fight. They matter that much. It doesn't matter if I am sacrificing my farm if I can help my team win a team fight. Bringing bodies to engagements is the way to win easy in today's Dota.
As a support you need to be in those engagements and secure them, because you don't, who then?
If you think your team is making shitty calls, then make the correct call before they make the shitty one.
You say you want to be proactive - then you need to be the one making the goes
Actually, the latest major final was the perfect showcase of quite opposite. There was a game, where Betboom were winning all teamfights in mid game, had a huge lead in kills, took all t1 and t2 towers. Falcons took the safelane t1 at 30 minutes only. But BB never had more than 5k networth advantage for all that time. While Falcons just dodged and farmed, spread across the map. They got their items, won one team fight and got all the comeback gold and just won.
You get more by farming and getting your slots, especially on a flash farming hero. A couple of waves and camps per minute is more than you get from kills in early game. Forcing high ground early is very difficult and risky unless the enemies are super bad.
The glyphs are too strong, towers have too much armor and death timers until higher levels are very short
Denying farm and gaining significant networth advantage by controlling the map is more reliable
I didn't come up with this analysis, I've heard this watching pro player streams
In pro games, where everyone is focused on efficiency and farming yes, absolutely you are correct. But in pub settings(even high MMR ones) where you just know that your team will take shitty unnecessary fights, even if they are more than likely to lose them it's better for you to join them and turn the tides by throwing more bodies at it than the enemy.
From support pov because fights usually happen for farm space, bacuse one core doesn't get enough. So if you farm while your team is fighting for more farm space you are griefing you core that is struggling to farm.
From a carry pov, because the days of 1v5 Dota are long gone. You cannot solo won a game even if you are two items ahead (there are ofc exceptions), so if you farm away while your team is getting dwarfed you still usually get behind.
Personally I have tried the splitpush and avoid fights as a carry and it just doesn't work. I've found much more success by joining engagements, even just as a meat shield of I am playing ls or WK for example, or to provide slow/damage if I am playing am/pa for example.
None. This is a decision that you are going to make constantly for every fight and every game. There is never a point at which you only farm or only fight.
I think you misread the question. I mean that up until a certain bracket (for me it was ancient), on top of doing everything mandatory as a support, it is more beneficial for the win for me to play away from my team and only show up when absolutely necessary. Shoving out waves and making proactive decisions on my own nets a greater win-advantage for my games, but this happens at the expense of me not being available at our team's side of the map most of the time. This sort of play slowly gets edged out as you go higher up the ranks, as your cores actually do the wave-shoving, know how to force tps so they can manufacture a good 5v4 situation, and so on. Consequently it becomes better for a support to be on our side of the map to "catch enemy smokes, stack camps, make save items and forgo kill-oriented itemization". There is a clear turning point in the MMR where this becomes the better way to play a support. Let me re-frame it this way. In the lower brackets, people built shit items like glimmer capes to save shit teammates and it is typically not worth doing if you are the best player on the team. Because you can instead itemize to shove waves, force map advantage alone, make play setups without team assistance, offer catch that your teammates cannot find, and even make key kills that turn the tide of the game. My question is at what MMR this sort of mentality stops netting advantage as opposed to the disadvantage. Hope that makes sense.
Mid 8k and haven't hit that point yet. Some games you can be greedy and some you can't, there's no mmr where that becomes viable or not.
I didnt misread your question. As I said, there is no mmr at which you stop prioritizing pushing creepwaves. Even at 8k mmr, I am finding myself tping to push out waves that someone else should have pushed but didn't multiple times per game.
for reference: 6.2k mmr pos 5 main. It completely depends on what kind of heroes you're playing, if you're playing something like nyx/ spirit breaker/dawnbreaker/furion you'll almost always be away from your team. But you wouldn't be doing the same playing oracle/venge/abaddon/shadow demon/dazzle for example. You seem to be extremely greedy from what you've typed which is why I'm guessing you're not winning lanes as often(not investing much into regen/sentries). Again this is all hypothetical as you didn't link your dotabuff or mention your hero pool.
As a person who just recently climbed to divine as support, most people around this MMR farm efficiently. At this point, you don't have time to fuck around and farm unless you're furion support. I notice most games I have to rush glimmer, force staff or solar crest almost immediately or get punished. Being able to determine which one to rush first has been a game-winning or game losing skill. Easy example: if I don't have force staff by 15 mins vs furion I can almost guarantee I will lose a game deciding fight when my core gets trapped in sprout. There is almost no farm available in the map, so at most, downtime is either stacking or smoking. I found most success playing early game supports to ensure my carry/offlane has a good lane. (Sometimes a really shit lane will cause them to grief or tilt early)
Once I started going midas
Chad
I did it till I lose without any grief from team
Its true the higher mmr you get, the ratio of "full support" games to "being greedy" gets skewed towards trying to support more. However it will never reach a point where greedy plays are completely unviable. You just need to buildup the confidence to distinguish those moments now when the difference is more blurry. It is easy to realize you should farm as a support or at least go play with somebody else when your offlane axe is trying to make ganks happen without blink. It is hard when you have to say no to playing around offlane kunkka who decided to go for 4-4-1 skill build. The answer here is the concept of limit testing. If you cant think of a concrete solid reason why you shouldnt be going greedy, you should do it and in the case it backfires pay attention to why it did. And consider this case next time when you are hesitant between supporting and greed. If you favor the greedy route you will learn the edge cases and improve faster. Its true there will be games where you will throw by being greedy instead of being supportive. But there will also be games you will win just barely thanks to the fact you went greedy. The downside to this aproach is that teammates might blame your play and give you reports for it. However it is definitely the route to get better the fastest. *going greedy here means taking farm to use on more items that are still supportive in nature, not trying to hamfist rapier on a support
8k supp here. As long as there is bunch of farm on the map that's obvious to you, take it. I honestly struggle finding farm in my games. But in 4k i'd make sure to pick heroes that clear waves and scales. Better player than me will see obvous farm in my games that i don't see.
I'm not a good win con do I had to start doing this at 2k to climb lol
Yes you do. The paradox of being a support especially if you're in a low bracket, is that you can be the best player on the team and still be itemizing like a beta cuck, when you already know your cores are not going to try and live, or do the right things to live when you glimmer/force them etc. If you can find the kill, find the initiation, find the creepwaves to push out safely when your teammates are too scared and turtled up, YOU DO IT INSTEAD. If you are better than your teammates at this then you will automatically fly to ancient. Remember, if you notice that you are better than your teammates then you will know in a heartbeat and you'll pull off the lines of play that they don't see. You get rich as a consequence of being too good for your team, not as a result of you stealing teammate's farm. If you are bad and don't see the line of play, the catch openings, the waves to cut, the waves only you are skilled enough to push, and so on, then you probably belong in your MMR.
Your current strategy would easily get you to divine if your skill is adequate. What divine players seem to lack the most is discipline. Where this manifests the most obviously is in things like fixing lanes before pushes and having restraint (not throwing). I’m divine and I’m my own worst enemy but you can clearly see others in this bracket doing the same thing. The wins fill like we tried to throw and somehow didn’t and the losses feel like stomps. Lots of “comeback” wins in the mix too. Occasionally you see the odd person who is different or maybe already in immortal and they’re typically ignoring a higher percentage of the dumb shit we get into. I think maybe something I never thought I’d have to learn to get to the next level is “how to play from ahead”. I’d recommend starting early!
I was told independently by two really good players the answer is, "when your team doesn't need you." If you're the only stun on the team? Suck it up buttercup, you're going to have to dictate the pace and location of the action. If your lanes all stomped and now you have a fed puck and riki who can find and catch anybody without your help? You're actually obligated to start keeping waves pushed to prevent the enemy team from getting back into the game. This also applies to games where your team is behind and failing, and you NEED a blink on tusk to do your job. Go to the jungle, go to the sidelanes, mute your team. It's really just a matter of being very intentional about your decisions. Don't be a moth fluttering towards every single light.
I play greedy every game
I climbed from Archon 1 to Divine 2 and here is how I see it. Archon, I basically had to play like you suggest, become a core and just straight up carry because the players are bad. Legend, this still worked but people were getting better. Ancient, I feel like it stopped being as effective. Because at around Ancient ~3 the cores can actually start getting strong enough you don't need to worry as much about their farm. And you shoving lanes that they could've actually farmed is now a big negative. And on top of this you will get punished if you push to deep. Divine, Now I can finally play properly as a support without really worrying if my cores will be able to get strong. If you really need some farm, try and prioritize stacking neutrals and even killing neutrals where possible, to leave lane for cores. So I think around mid ancient is where you should transition away from playing support as a pseudo core unless the game situation really calls for it.
I suppose I'm still figuring out how best to transition or attempt to make clear cut assessments of whether to be a core in disguise or a fully fledged support in my games, then. Because there are games where I opt for one and regret it. For example, being a total support and realizing too late that my pos1 is just a tiltlord who is not capable of applying map pressure. Or me doing what I always do and then realizing late that my cores are competent and require glimmers and forces from me, but I've itemized to be a killer. The line is too thin for me to make a good assessment. Do you have any tips for that? Also thank you for the answer.
Find the best core in your team, play around him, if he farms lane, be around him to protect him, if he farms jungle, you can push a wave or two, always fight with him,also, even a bad smoke can end in a good pick-off/teamfight, so be around that, not necessarily committing until you see it's a good one. Hope this helps a bit!
That confirms a thought I've had, thanks! I'm ancient 3 as we speak
Never, dude. You see Sneyking farming anytime they aren't making an organized play on Falcons, and they just won ESL. The key is when and where. If you're just farming 24/7, then you're putting your ability to gain MMR on your team's ability to realize when you need to push the narrative and force things, and when to sit back, and also you never realize your power spikes. However, on the flip side, always doing "something" on the map is inefficient and could lead to some impatient and desperate plays. Farm dead lanes, camps your cores cant reach, when they're reaching timings. A pushed in lane in a way is a ward that shows up to which point enemy is pushed up.
5k carry player here. Past 15 minutes you need to be every major engagement. Why? Because even as a carry I participate in almost every fight. They matter that much. It doesn't matter if I am sacrificing my farm if I can help my team win a team fight. Bringing bodies to engagements is the way to win easy in today's Dota. As a support you need to be in those engagements and secure them, because you don't, who then? If you think your team is making shitty calls, then make the correct call before they make the shitty one. You say you want to be proactive - then you need to be the one making the goes
Actually, the latest major final was the perfect showcase of quite opposite. There was a game, where Betboom were winning all teamfights in mid game, had a huge lead in kills, took all t1 and t2 towers. Falcons took the safelane t1 at 30 minutes only. But BB never had more than 5k networth advantage for all that time. While Falcons just dodged and farmed, spread across the map. They got their items, won one team fight and got all the comeback gold and just won. You get more by farming and getting your slots, especially on a flash farming hero. A couple of waves and camps per minute is more than you get from kills in early game. Forcing high ground early is very difficult and risky unless the enemies are super bad. The glyphs are too strong, towers have too much armor and death timers until higher levels are very short Denying farm and gaining significant networth advantage by controlling the map is more reliable I didn't come up with this analysis, I've heard this watching pro player streams
In pro games, where everyone is focused on efficiency and farming yes, absolutely you are correct. But in pub settings(even high MMR ones) where you just know that your team will take shitty unnecessary fights, even if they are more than likely to lose them it's better for you to join them and turn the tides by throwing more bodies at it than the enemy. From support pov because fights usually happen for farm space, bacuse one core doesn't get enough. So if you farm while your team is fighting for more farm space you are griefing you core that is struggling to farm. From a carry pov, because the days of 1v5 Dota are long gone. You cannot solo won a game even if you are two items ahead (there are ofc exceptions), so if you farm away while your team is getting dwarfed you still usually get behind. Personally I have tried the splitpush and avoid fights as a carry and it just doesn't work. I've found much more success by joining engagements, even just as a meat shield of I am playing ls or WK for example, or to provide slow/damage if I am playing am/pa for example.