DOTA 2 MMR: 5 Steps To Increase Dota2 Solo MMR

How to increase MMR? I don't think you would be reading this right now if you knew. After writing the guide on how to improve your gameplay my friend suggested me that I should write a guide on how to get out of the "ELO Hell". If you don't know the term ELO Hell you probably live under a rock. You will meet a lot of players who will always complain about how their rank is not justified or how the system has given them an undeserving MMR bracket and these complain comes with the proof of 1. people feeding in their games 2. people throwing the game 3. tried hard and killed a lot yet lost the game kind of post game screenshots.

I never thought I would break this down to anyone ever but here it is, you are not the only one to play with feeders. If you don't feed and you don't troll then statistically you have 4 potential idiots and your enemies have 5. If you know your role and heroes the potentially you have 4 noobs in your team but the enemy has 5. "My luck is so bad I always get noob carries" - No, you are the only one. Fact is, this doesn't even affect your MMR in the long run, because everyone faces these situations and eventually it cancels out for everyone.

I can't be like "hey! here's your MMR. come back tomorrow in the happy hours for more!" but what I can do is show you a few ways out of the ELO Hell. And this is idiot-proof. Since this is Idiot-proof it has no shortcuts or easy way out. So be prepared.

#1. Fix a goal

How far do you wanna go? Now some of you will be like "is this even a question?". Yes! it is. Decide how far you want to go and set a realistic target. Realistic is the key word here. RTZ or Miracle might be the ranked 1 player right now but they are professional DotA players. They get paid to play the game. They don't have to go to school or college. They have devoted themselves to the game and they are 100% focused on dota. Would you able to be that focused or dedicated? I guess not. Now that I think about it "dedication" could be a point in this article but Nah I am not going to gas you up.

So here it is, fix a realistic goal and try to reach it. Divide the goal into separate parts and achieve slowly. Suppose you are now at 1k (I hope you are not, I can not see that much pain existing in this world) and your target is 2k. Separate it in 200 MMR. Now your goal is to win 200 MMR from where you are. Considering 1 win = 25 MMR. Roughly 8 wins to your target. take the baby steps and move ahead. what now? well, read the rest of the article - follow those steps and GRIND GRIND GRIND duh!

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True That

#2 Picking the heroes

This is one of the most important points in the entire article if not THE most important point. Learn to pick heroes. First thing, never try new heroes in ranked matchmaking. Now, a lot of people will tell you their tales of gaining MMR with OP heroes but that's bullcrap! Because there's is no OP heroes. Say it 10 times in your head now, "There is no OP hero, there are only heroes that noobs can't counter". Then how people gain MMR by spamming? Fact is, players spam a hero that is in the patch and meta, which makes them good enough to survive not to win, what makes them win is their opponent's inability to counter those heroes. Soon you gain MMR and climb high and you meet people in the higher scale bracket who knows how to counter that hero and that is when you get stuck. This is not even worse. The worse part about this is, that you are now stuck in a position where you are losing games and getting reported right and left and you can't play any other hero to save your life, so you start to drop.

My advice, do not master 1 hero, master a set of heroes and make yourself a hero pool of at least 5 heroes that you can use if your hero is taken or not viable in the situation. This way you are now more of a team player who can survive even without your own special hero. This also gives you another advantage, the more heroes you know the more heroes you can counter. So now you can not only play a different hero but you can also pick a hero to ruin your enemies game.

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#3 Versatility wins

Straight facts. The more versatile you are the more chances you have to win a game.

1. You can pick any hero so you don't have to worry about your main being banned.
2. You can counter other heroes because now you know most of the heroes and how they work.
3. You don't have to compromise lanes.
4. You don't have to complain about not having support or offlane in the team, feel free to fill the void (Not the Chrono, don't try to fill that. Just the void.).

If you have picked invoker and then your teammate picks SF what do you do? you dual lane mid, end up not having enough XP or farm and lose. Well now that you are versatile enough and you can pick versatile heroes, you can easily pick Mirana. If they still pick another mid you can offlane or even play the 4th position. If someone has picked CK, considering that person is dumb af and eventually you will lose the game what would do? still, pick Slark? or rather just go with Axe? Maybe you will lose the game playing Axe because your carry is an idiot but you will still get to play the game and see what happens, you might as well win because remember the statistics? The easier way to have fewer idiots in the team is to not be one of them. If you are not being an idiot, your team now has 4 idiots and the enemy has 5. You win. ez pz. If you pick Axe you are creating a chance to win, even if it is 1% but if you pick Slark after CK you are losing the game before it starts, might as well abandon and clear LP. Learn more roles so you can fit in any team, solo ranks have all kind of players and all of them have preferable roles just like you, if he had to sacrifice maybe he will get tilted and throw - you lose the game. If you had to sacrifice maybe you will not be an idiot and play sensibly - You win. Simple math.

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Big Daddy N0TAIL

#4 Train yourself and Improvise

Now you have fixed a goal, you are picking heroes according to the draft and role and you are good at them. Still stuck? This is the time to grow your hero-pool and skills. But how do you define skills? If someone has 90 last hits at 10 minutes they are definitely mechanically skilled but are they communicating? do they realize when to push and when to hide in the trees?

How to train yourself with heroes -

1. Focus and think of a role you are failing at, watch a few pub games, check the meta and find out heroes that are good in this patch for that role.
2. Play bots. No joke. Play bots or even without bots and just figure out the spells, movement speed, spell combination, cooldowns, early items, and mid game items.
3. Try them in normal matches until you feel like you are good enough.

How to improve your skills -

1. Mechanical skills can only be improved with practice so practice.
2. Focus in the game and try to find out what you did wrong.
3. Watch your replays, memorize your mistake so you do not repeat it again.
4. Watch pro players play or top MMR ranked games to watch and learn what to do and when to do.
5. Communicate with your teammates. A lot of people don't consider this a skill but you actually win a lot of games when you have good communication. Instead of screaming on the mic about how the Axe missed his call, tell him when to jump and call. Or if you are the Axe just yell at your Invoker "Use the tornado after my call ends".

When the game is going full retard, go full retard. If you stop going with the flow well, you can't row against the stream.

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Do not baby rage!!

#5 In-game strategy

There is only one rule once you have accepted the match- Play to Win. No messing around, no trolling, no making items for fun and most importantly NO TILTING.

In the pick phase pay attention to everything, which hero gets banned, which heroes get picked and which heroes your teammates have called or asked for. This will allow you to spot a weakness in your enemy line up and exploit it. If the enemy team picks a sniper you can counter with Spectre or PA, you can even pick something that has a synergy with the existing pick. Suppose you have a Spirit Breaker in your team, in that case, you can pick lifestealer and chase sniper around the map in your private uber.

When the countdown is going on consider these things as your guideline-

1. If you want to pick a carry or mid and not get countered, call it beforehand and make your teammates aware of your lane.
2. Don't instantly pick a hard carry because you are going to get hard-countered in lane phase and eventually it will ruin your game.
3. Supports should not be picked late. Earthshaker first pick cannot be countered but a juggernaut or PA first pick can be countered easily. So if you are picking support, pick early.

##Grow it don't throw it - People give up easily but you don't. Did mama raise a quitter? Teams can come back and heroes fall from their peak time. Never throw a game just because you are badly wrecked in the early game. Teams come back, in Dota you win in ways that you never imagined, seen or heard before.

Keep the vision - You can't win ranked games without warding. Period. Someone has to ward. Does not matter if you are winning or losing the game, keep warding and keep an eye on the map. Vision is very important. Even for a winning side because comebacks are very very real.

Here is one more bonus tip, it is an option to back down. Yes, you are a Dota player, not a gladiator. It's okay to back down, rest a little, charge yourself up. Never play ranked if you are tensed, sleepy, tired, drunk or tilted. These affect your reflex and your mentality in a massive way. Fix a time for ranked matches if possible, go offline mode on steam and just be focused on the game. Most important of all? GRIND GRIND GRIND. Keep practicing.

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