|
Before you judge, this isn't an OMGMATCHMAKINGSUX0RS thread, just a bit of frustration venting.
For those who don't follow my blog, I've been on a mission to play 20 games with every support hero. I'm pretty much there with only a handful of heroes left to learn. However, my MMR has dropped back to noob levels and it had completely killed my desire to play.
A few months ago I got placed into my first Very High match and I was ecstatic that I had finally reached that level. I hovered around the high/very high boundary for a while, occasionally dipping down into normal after bad streaks but always jumping back up after shaking it off. The the tutorial and compendium games were introduced. I played my 10 tutorial matches (before they changed it) and a bunch of compendium matches before they were popular, going about 50/50 because, especially as a support, it can be hard to influence the outcomes of those games. I noticed that it was taking 7-8 minutes to find matches and I was playing against really bad or new players pretty constantly. I posted my experience here back when people were complaining about it. My theory is that losing half of those low-mmr games really sunk my own MMR to a place that I can't get out of. I don't think it's bad matchmaking anymore. At the point I think my MMR is legitimately very low, and it has upset by balance so much I can't crawl out.
Here's the thing- I really like playing hard support. I like having control of map vision, having powerful spells, and figuring out the most cost-efficient ways to spend my gold, levels, and mana. I think of Dota mostly as a puzzle, and I enjoy the challenge of fitting myself into my team as best I can. So when the rest of my team doesn't adhere to the normal 'serious' elements of the game, it puts me completely on tilt and I don't know how to respond.
For instance: a few games ago I was mid as Silencer just because two other teammates randomed supports- KotL and Dazzle, both extremely able to play as 5s. No courier of course... ok, I guess I can buy a courier. No upgraded courier... well I really want my treads asap so I can start ganking so I guess I'll just wait. No wards. Ah, so it's going to be this kind of game. Already I am on the verge of giving up, because I know my teammates don't actually care about playing as a team. I refuse to upgrade the courier just to see how long it takes our supports to do it. At EIGHTEEN MINUTES it finally happens. I check my supports' inventory to see what was so important. Dazzle- mana boots and soul ring, ok that's not too bad. KotL- brown boots and bracer? Surely he hasn't died that ma...omg he has 4000 gold. 4. 1000. Gold. I point this out him. He says something along the lines of "lol nerd" and buys a Dagon. My will to play immediately wilts and dies. I started out a solid 3-1-2 with decent farm, but ended up 5-9-7 because I just didn't care anymore. Of course this is a bad attitude to have. I should just play the game the best I can and not let my teammates affect me. But I really have trouble staying motivated when the rest of my team obviously isn't.
And then there was the game I just played that inspired this post. I pick Silencer and say "I'll support." Medusa wants to ancient farm instead of safelane farm (ended up with 188 gpm). Timbersaw wants to off-lane against PA because she trashtalked at the start (ended up 2-8-4 while PA farmed 6 chrystalyses). I tell all this to one person who hasn't picked yet... so he picks Jakiro. So I think "well I guess I'm farming safelane then" despite having completely bought out in support stuff. Right off the bat Jakiro starts pushing the lane with liquid fire and *bam* I give up. I know there is no way it will be any sort of normal game, so I pretty much just autoattack the lanes until I get ganked over and over. Again, I realize this is not a useful response. I should have just rolled with it and tried to do my best to help my team win, or at worst ignore my team entirely and just try to roflpubstomp snowball. But I get so instantly frustrated that my brain turns off.
I think at least some part of the problem is how seriously I am taking 'learning' the game. I feel like if my game doesn't at least have some semblance to a 'real' game then I am just wasting time. I'm starting law school next month, so I feel a lot of pressure to reach my support goal, and if I'm playing these dumb games I don't feel like I'm making any progress. The same thing happened with my SC2 play. I guess the answer is to just figure out how to let go an enjoy a bad game of of Dota.
Thanks for reading. I think writing this all out helped me sort things out a bit.
 
|
United Kingdom14103 Posts
What you described about bad supports is what made me go support every game, I learnt several of them quite well and it's been one of the best things I could have done I think to start dota, I'm no longer afraid to pick a support if the rest of my team grab carries or whatever.
I started out a solid 3-1-2 with decent farm, but ended up 5-9-7 because I just didn't care anymore. Of course this is a bad attitude to have. I should just play the game the best I can and not let my teammates affect me. But I really have trouble staying motivated when the rest of my team obviously isn't.
I think I've done this one too many times as well.
|
On August 12 2013 04:20 Targe wrote:
What you described about bad supports is what made me go support every game.
Exactly! I don't mind that much if our carries have less farm than the enemies. That's going to happen in half the games anyway because that's essentially the point of Dota. I don't mind if mid loses, because everyone has tough games and is going to lose sometimes. But when supports don't support, that is an intentional neglect and it drives me insane.
|
Netherlands45349 Posts
The funny thing about playing supports at a decent MMR is that the enemy supports are quite often either not good at it(being forced into it) or not playing one at all, allowing you as a support to have a massive impact on the game(spend those 200 gold on sentry wards and deward the most obvious pull camp and deny ward runes). Secure runes etc, its simple but not many people do it. Moreover at a decent mmr most carries are oke-ish, think 15-16min Bfury on AM with freefarm or so which is quite acceptable.
|
United Kingdom14103 Posts
On August 12 2013 04:31 pullarius1 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2013 04:20 Targe wrote:
What you described about bad supports is what made me go support every game. Exactly! I don't mind that much if our carries have less farm than the enemies. That's going to happen in half the games anyway because that's essentially the point of Dota. I don't mind if mid loses, because everyone has tough games and is going to lose sometimes. But when supports don't support, that is an intentional neglect and it drives me insane.
In my games (where I don't have a 5stack) It's rare for a support to do more than buy the courier, they will still try to farm and everything.
|
where can I see my MMR :D
|
Why don't you find a few friends to play with, so they they the other roles?
that seems like a faster and more fun way to improve.
|
I love playing support, and I think that if you play modes like CM and RD, you might be a bit more likely to get competent teammates. In fact, I've stopped playing AP all together because of that problem.
|
I play support because thats what wins me the game.. if I pick carry, 4 people behind me pick carry too so we have no one buying wards/couriers and its just a lost game. Least when I pick support, I know wards/courier is bought, and I pick whoever needs the farm the most and go babysit them so they own later on (assuming they aren't braindead) - Support wins me games.
So thats why support is so important, and we may not get the KDA to brag, but true supports know that we win or lose the game. Loda can't win without EGM and Akke setting up him for success.
I mean, if support plays well, the carry should have an easy game.. I hate this bias that support is made for newbies and carries are the "skilled" players.. such BS.
|
Yeah, MM is a frustation... but I've got to ask, how do you know which tier you are in?
|
On August 12 2013 09:15 Slakkoo wrote:
Yeah, MM is a frustation... but I've got to ask, how do you know which tier you are in?
Recent games -> filter on your name and then by bracket, start with very high, no games found? go a bracket lower, etc until you see a trend where you got the most recent games.
|
The thing is, you're coming into MM with expectations and assumptions. Until you become aware of them, drop them and understand that queuing alone is entirely a gamble in a game where teamwork is everything, you will be subject to all these negative thoughts and general poisonous mindset. You play support to win games, to make sure the backbone of your team is strong enough to destroy the throne, but when you don't know the people you're playing the game with, let alone when these said players have completely different goal than you do (not to mention not having a goal at all), you have to adapt - otherwise you'll end up tired and disappointed.
|
You can't control what other people do. Either you find people to play with, or you focus on playing the best you can, and correcting your own mistakes instead of blaming others (even if it's justified). If you "give up" or "brain instantly turns off" when you have bad teammate, then you're not going to improve. If your teammates are consistently bad, your opponents should be bad too (unless MM has it out for you?) so go and exploit your opponent's badness.
|
You could try playing CM or IXDL-O if you want more "serious" games. All pick no one is gonna really care about anything and just mess around. Even at high levels you'll get some clowny stuff albeit people do know how to play their roles.
|
Gotta live with it I'm afraid. Yelling at people for their mistakes will just net you a report on pub games apparently, people on normal MMR pubs don't care about team composition, pushing, etc, all they care about is getting the hero they want, getting the lane they want and just somehow roll over the opposing team. If they fail to do so, they will rant like babies and threaten reports and blame one another.
So yeah, playing support sucks especially if even after all those wards you put down, all those kills you gave to your carry, your carry still fucks up and ends up losing the game, and then whats even worse is that sometimes they blame YOU for not supporting them well enough.
|
There's no such thing as support until you're consistently very high bracket, sorry to say it. And believe me, any of the "hard support" players on even mediocre teams will get to very high extremely easily not by playing "full support", but by either getting kills or farming.
|
Surely he hasn't died that ma...omg he has 4000 gold. 4. 1000. Gold. I point this out him. He says something along the lines of "lol nerd" and buys a Dagon. My will to play immediately wilts and dies.
This has happened to me countless times. Gladly I could laugh when I read that.
|
I have eight RL friends who play dota and now I only play when at least three of them are online. Random pubs are morons.
|
This is the reason that I feel I could never play Dota. I don't play (sc2) for "fun", I play to improve and I don't feel this can really be done (strategy wise) without having an equally serious team to play with every time.
Find some stable people to play with. If your RL friends don't play you can surely find some on the internet.
|
I like the thill at very high at the beginning of every game. Will the offlaner buy wards? Will be request wards? Or will he just go without wards and lose the lane/probably the game.
Sad cases are: support instantly buys courier and wards but takes them to easy lane or we discuss until 30 sec before game starts then offlaner checks rune, walks uphill into 3 to block the pull and game was nice.
|
That moment when you just pray your supports just buys a courier, not even wards. And they dont 
|
I thought I was at the very bottom of the MMR pool. But even I havent seen dagon KOTL and 6 crys PA... Its ridiculous that the system punishes you so hard for playing a specific role
|
On August 12 2013 14:42 5-s wrote:
There's no such thing as support until you're consistently very high bracket, sorry to say it. And believe me, any of the "hard support" players on even mediocre teams will get to very high extremely easily not by playing "full support", but by either getting kills or farming.
Even in high I get supports that genuinely support.
|
it's funny when you play single draft / random draft and everyone decides to pick hard carry instead of building a good team comp. dota isnt very fun when you don't have a party.  what's your steam id?!
|
On August 12 2013 23:52 Metal[x] wrote:it's funny when you play single draft / random draft and everyone decides to pick hard carry instead of building a good team comp. dota isnt very fun when you don't have a party. what's your steam id?!
This is why I quit Dota recently, no friends who play the game makes it one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever been a part of.
|
On August 12 2013 23:53 Esoterikk wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2013 23:52 Metal[x] wrote:it's funny when you play single draft / random draft and everyone decides to pick hard carry instead of building a good team comp. dota isnt very fun when you don't have a party. what's your steam id?! This is why I quit Dota recently, no friends who play the game makes it one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever been a part of.
This is how I feel. Theres just not enough english speakers playing on SEA at my (very low) level. I feel like I'm just gonna have to give up playing dota
|
@OP seems like the obvious (if painful for your goal) solution is to get good at one or two carries and just farm your way back into high before you start playing support again. Otherwise you will probably never reach your "appropriate" mmr.
|
On August 12 2013 22:20 woreyour wrote:That moment when you just pray your supports just buys a courier, not even wards. And they dont
You don’t play with me enough. I will buy courier and wards all day if you give me Visage. I don’t need anything but that and maybe some better boots until the match gets going. Supports who steal farm are just confused and think they can do something productive with the Dagon they are going to buy.
|
|
|
If you haven't really broken into very high, you can't really have good expectations of your team, OR of yourself. I'm like mid-very-high and I still get games with no wards bought lvl 1, tri lanes that don't understand double-pulling or zoning off laners etc. The thing is, the only constant in these games is yourself. Even if you think you are playing an awesome support and it's your team that doesn't know how to play, there are 100s of little things that you could've done better. Maybe it would've resulted in a win, maybe it was unwinnable. But if you are truly playing to improve yourself you can only focus on the constants, not the uncontrollable variables.
|
On August 13 2013 20:00 EchelonTee wrote:
If you haven't really broken into very high, you can't really have good expectations of your team, OR of yourself. I'm like mid-very-high and I still get games with no wards bought lvl 1, tri lanes that don't understand double-pulling or zoning off laners etc. The thing is, the only constant in these games is yourself. Even if you think you are playing an awesome support and it's your team that doesn't know how to play, there are 100s of little things that you could've done better. Maybe it would've resulted in a win, maybe it was unwinnable. But if you are truly playing to improve yourself you can only focus on the constants, not the uncontrollable variables.
This is so much true.
OP, if I understood you right your goal was to learn, not win games. If pro support players would have been in your position, do you think they would have had any problems taking out the "horrible players who are for no good reason in my matchmaking game"?
|
Supporting in pubs needs some serious masochism unless you're in the upper area of very high. =P
Supporting in tmm however... just needs a bit of masochism. <3
|
On August 14 2013 04:46 r.Evo wrote:
Supporting in pubs needs some serious masochism unless you're in the upper area of very high. =P
Supporting in tmm however... just needs a bit of masochism. <3
Not really. Just be a hero with a stun (supports without stuns pretty much suck in pubs with only a few exceptions) and walk around on the map slaying people. The lower MMR you are the lesser the chance of wards that spot you. Make sure to ping a lot before going because pub players who are farming rarely notice anything else. If people don't follow up on your stuns, start trashtalking (if you're into that) and tell yourself your team sucked when you lose. It helps.
I only play real support (you know wards, runes, all that jazz) for people I stack with or for players who communicate with me in a positive manner in game. And carry players, it's not much. "Pull plz," "tango plz." Little things that show you're aware about the game and are trying to win.
But the real secret is to just play and have fun, then the wins come on their own. IMO obsessing too much about matchmaking only makes you mad, and mad people play like shit. That is fundamental truth.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
