General DiscussionNeed advice to improve my DOTA game effectively -

I like your spirit man! first off add me up so I can check your games.

Now, I always say this, find that hero that youll always give consistent performance every game. If u really wnt to climb, u need to be that consistent performer every game!

stop playing this dogshit razor hero, play some actual heroes, but shit idk how you can't win at <1k mmr.

just a question, how many last hits you get at min 10?

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1701630909
just took a brief look at this game, how can you have 8k hero damage as razor in 50 minutes, and 0 hero healing with mek?

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1678436905

compare your game to my game (razor picked for hero challenge in stack with some friends)

me being the worst razor player

and i didn't deliberately select a bad game of yours, look http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1700073834
10k hero damage in 1 hour>? 0 healing with mek again? do you even use it man

again almost lowest hero damage http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1699515173

dude razor is not a farming hero don't focus too much on farming, he is a hero for push, tank and manfight

dont get me wrong im trying to help :
1.be aware of your items and use them (tps when stuns were used/are not present, mek, bkb)
2.be aware of your heroe's role and what it should do (mek>push with razor, lvl 6 gank with clock etc.)
3.don't focus too much on farming, at this low mmr just try to outplay the players.
4.work on your picks (pick better heroes).
5.work on map awareness, just look at the minimap often.
6.know timings (stacking hard camp at :53, medium :55, aegis 6 min etc)
7.don't flame teammates, it won't help you.
8.watch some replays of a good player, from player perspective, and watch your replay from player perspective and see the difference.

good luck

Thanks bad intentions. I agree with you big time.

Sunris, you have pointed out a lot which I haven't picked up on myself so thanks for that.

I am not the best at remembering to use some of my items, maybe because I am too busy worrying about what my teammates are doing or focusing too much on something else. I'd say its getting distracted with others making mistakes, then I get angry and lose concentration.

Who would you recommend playing?

ohh we replied at same time, thank you for that list, something to actually work on. Cheers dude!

I should add, i have learnt to stack and pull also through watching Synderen (Troels Nielsen)

I have never heard anyone say don't focus on farming at the low levels. Interesting. I find it really hard not to farm, I'm not good at wasting valuable time farming, I like to see it that way.

why the fuck would u want to play as a team in a fucking sub 1k game ?!@?!@?

i got female friend she picks bane and builds boots of travel into crystalys every single game shes 1.2k mmr

take 1 carry/mid/jungle hero learn how to play him properly and spam him until u finaly get out of trench

then learn other heroes as u get better team mates and play with wider hero pool

It's seems like you're overcomplicating a lot of things. Sometimes you just have to step back for a moment, take a deep breath, and think "what do I need to do to help the team?" Razor and Spirit Breaker aren't exactly the best heroes to single handedly win games. And since you're at a lower rank, it's difficult to rely on your teammates.

I get the vibe that you might be one of those people that talks too much to their team. While communication is good, sometimes too much talking overwhelms your team.

Perhaps watch videos from people like Purge who give lots of insightful information for beginners

^vaga, pls elaborate on female friend.

Because this game is supposed to be a team game, I feel it's ruined and given a bad name because of all the annoying little twats that play.

I get your point though vaga.

I like your advice though, thanks for the help.

Salza, thanks for the advice. Very on point and true in what you say with regards to me.

I have watched purge a lot and picked a lot of stuff up from him.

Maybe need to step back big time and breath.

Thanks man.

@Bad Intentions - I added you on steam by the way, did you mean on here?

just get a proper coach, just from discussing strategy + ironing out proper starting item builds/progression you can get to at least 2k in a week

dont be like those redditards who grind 1k games to reach 2k or whatever

"I'm okayish at last hitting, averaging out at 140 a game "
assuming the average match is 40 mins, 140 cs in 40 mins is 3.5 last hits a minute, which is NOT good. lower skilled players cannot farm for shit, because they spend too much time grouping up under towers waiting for the enemy to come gank instead of farming empty lanes and have no map awareness which leads to deaths, which leads to less farm.

so accept that you're not good at last hitting, and spend some time practiicing in private lobbies. in an empty lane you should be expected to get at least 60 last hits by the 10 minute mark.

"follow build guides"
think for yourself. builds are helpful for heroes that you've never played before, but about 20 matches with a hero you can probably think for yourself as to what items you should build. same with skill point allocation.

"My biggest downfall, I believe, is not being able to deal with teammates"
your attitude does not help you play better, and the fact that you're making excuses and unwilling to accept that you're part of the problem for your losses, is also hindering your improvement

at higher skill levels, coordination and teamplay is important, but at lower levels, games can be won single handedly if you just play well enough.

if you follow this mentaility, that you can always win a game on your own if you play well enough, that'll help you get better at the game because you'll try to find the mistakes that you made, not your teammates. the factors that determine a win or a loss are you, and your teammates to put it simply. you cannot control your teammates, so you should focus on the one thing that you can control, which is your own hero.

I would honestly start a new account and start from scratch. Idk maybe you can win there but i will just try to calibrate at at least 1k mmr.
through yea, if you are better than you think you are you should win more games in your bracket. But you doesnt sound to be better, forgetting using items its not smth iheard very often even though i have some friends in 1k mmr.

now i wont give you many tips as i am only a 3k scrub but here are some
1.Always carry a TP. And always watch the minimap,look for upcoming ganks, or maybe hey that bristleback is towerdiving your teammate on top lane go help them. Well if you are playing carry i guess dont help them during laning stage as you need to get farm but you get the overall idea.
2. Regarding your innability "not find anything to do other from farm" you kinda have the same problem as one of mt friends who is 1.5k. He usually plays supports and at some point he never know what to do. He is sitting with me in lane at 12-13 mkn while our team is fighting or smth like that.
3. Know your limits.know when you can go for that kill/chase after the fleeing enemy. Do i have vision on enemy team? Are they in a place/position to counter gank me? Most of the time if you arw a carry its not worth going for that support when enemy can kill you in return. The kill is like 200-150 gold depending on your networth. Thats ~4-5 creeps. But if you die you lose that gold, you lose more time from gaining any gold or any exp.
4. Also as doge said at that mmr you basically won more from outplaying your enemy then from outfarming them
5. This is probably the most important. Everybody on your team is a fucking idiot. Guess what. You are a fucking idiot too but you have that desire to improve and win. Well you arw ginna say hey i cant carry 4 noobs who dont even want to win. Well guess what, the enemies are idiots too. I discovered over my experience( which isnt big :P) that mmr ranks you based on your ability to carry 4 idiots. I really mean it. In my bracket at least( as i said, 3k its not big or good, but its decent, a bit over average) i rarely see games which are won by team play, very very hard games where everybody shits out of their brain( they do happen but extremely rarely).No. every game is usually carried by one or two players
They can be supports as well, they gank mid and win the lane for their teammate or securs farm for tbe carry etc. Very rarely all of your teammates contributed hard ( well they do bit, by non feeding, or getting that farm and kills, help you set up kills sometimes) to the win. Usually there are 1-2 people who tryhard. Games are even just because there is/are 1/2 people on the enemy team who are carrying as well. You have to lead your team to victory. You are the captain kf the S.S. Dumbfuck.
5/6 or whatever number. I see you like playing SB but this advice is good for every ganking hero. Indentify the feeder. There will usually be a guy with a squishy hero, or a guy who has no idea what he is doing ( at your mmr, probably the hole enemy team count for that) or both. Target these fuckers. Dont let them breath.

Also just keep watching games, watch your own replays and see what you could've done better, practice last hitting in lobby games etc.

(From a 3k perspective - lol)

Start by building your hero pool. You will have a better understanding of the game in general and the strengths/weaknesses of different heroes.

Spirit Break seems to be the one hero you can do some-what well with, keep playing him as a go-to hero. As mentioned above, yeah.. Razor's not even that strong. I'd recommend trying some slightly more cancerous shit like Spectre, Gyro, and Bloodcycka. You seem to be farming a bit more than others at your level, these heroes will make better use of that farm.. other than that idk just die less or git gud as they say

At sub 1k levels I find carries that excel at taking advantage of lower skilled players bad positioning/ lack of map awareness/ lack of vision becuase supports don't know what their doing do very well

So Heros like slark or Riki for instance who can escape easily through invis or just recovering health when you kill some one who came up farther then they should have

I would suggest perhaps mid heroes such as viper or shadow fiend or perhaps wind ranger in my opinion all.

People tend to underestimate the damage these heroes tend to do especially in the early game

For people who lack map awareness, find the console command that can scale up hero icons on your minimap, 1000~1200 would do!

Feel free to add me on steam as well

Might watch a game or two and see if there's some pointers I can throw out ;)

Add me too please

I will try not to put some sarcastic and meaningless comments, and will attempt to minimize the effects of Dunning-Kruger effect for me to appropriately visualize what you are going through.

Looking at your hero pool, seems like you will only play Razor and Spirit Breaker. You will do well with Spirit Breaker trust me, and please give up Razor. He is not one of the heroes that will bring much impact when it is late game. Surely his pushing capability is good and can be a Mekansm carrier but there are better candidates for that, like Shadow Fiend and Nature's Prophet.

Speaking about your itemization, I don't see why you had 0 healing done while having Mekansm. Perhaps you weren't even aware of your items most of the time, and won't use the active ones like BKB and Phase Boots.

He is not the best damage dealer in the game too. His range and attack animation are somewhat bad compared to other true DPS heroes, and what makes him capable of doing it was his drain. You did well by investing in some mobility items, but you can only chase while maintaining the drain so long before their teammates come to the rescue.

And you will have to adjust your attitude a little bit. Long paragraph incoming, so brace yourself.

"...Because this game is supposed to be a team game, I feel it's ruined and given a bad name because of all the annoying little twats that play."

Before determining that this game is a team game, ask yourself: do you have a team? You might answer yes because you have 4 teammates all the time. But it is more often a no, because your team are strangers to each other. Not those kind of teams you find in TI5 who have the similar vision, and play together for some duration before competing in tournaments. They work hard because they knew their teammates are going to give their best as well, no matter how the games actually go. However, are you going to do the same in solo ranked matches? You might say yes, but that will leave you heartbroken sooner or later. Remember: trying not to become a twat doesn't make the other twats stop being one. You will find someone who is perhaps having the best potential to bring the largest impact in the game, but does not cooperate well with you, or your entire team. You knew that even if you work around him, he is not going to listen to your advice to back off. Then he died, bought back, died again. So did you, just to make sure he was alive and had support from you. The game is then lost.

I know you might not see the bigger picture here, questioning hey at least I'm helping him out, he is my teammate after all. However if you don't know when NOT to help an idiot, perhaps that's your fatal error you wish you didn't make. That applies to your hero picks, itemization and commitment in teamfight as well. Sometimes it doesn't even matter if you go for the stupid Riki + Dagon build, because nobody knows what they are doing in that bracket. If someone flames you, mute that person. Whether to unmute him after the game or not is up to you.

Perhaps I have been talking too much about some high level things you didn't even know exist. Particularly on your commitment towards this game as a team game. If you simply don't understand what the hell have I been talking about, remember this then: don't help the idiots. Don't bother them.

OK now back to the part about you. Just you, not your team. 377 gold per minute on Razor is not the best for someone who is winning the game should have. You can really try to improve your last hitting. Go for some training in the training mission, it is hard there. Once you get the timing right for one hero, try another. Ranged heroes while being at the safe side most of the time, will have difficulty landing the projectile at the right time from different distances, with different projectile speed. Melee heroes will be a lot easier in getting last hits, however suffer greatly against some ranged harassers like Viper or Drow Ranger who can jeopardize your survival in the lane. There will be times when you were 50 gold away from an item and died, then had to earn more before getting it. That's when 1 last hit matters.

Thanks a lot guys, superb advice here.

I can make sense of everything said and thank you for the time taken to reply with helpful answers.

It's time to move on from razor and learn some new heroes then.

I added you guys on steam who asked me to add.
Hopefully get some more pointers as I go along, from you guys that decide to watch me.

I'm going to try SF, Spectre, Gyro and NP.

Thanks for the various pointers and tips also, will be reading back over this to help me along.

Thanks guys :)

Also where can i get a "proper" coach?

Thanks Mek, appreciated. Hopefully you can help me when you're sorted!

tried out SF in lobby game and I'm in love :)

I missed out playing him because the extra slots looked too daunting for me to master, only to realise its the same ability but different ranges for raze lol and then 2 passives.

I was under the impression he had loads of different abilities then that made me assume it would be too complicated to play SF as a noob.
How wrong was I! Only thing I didn't like was his animation for last hitting early on.

Now to try Gyro next.

he has nice animation its just he has ~40 base damage

you're far from decent, focus on that first

I see, any advice on what to buy as a starting item for helping with lh with SF?

I'm aware im far from decent, though that will improve when my attitude at this level changes.

Time to forget about teammates and focus on me!

quelling blade

/stat items if not melee hero

will help me farm jungle too then, thanks for that!

Play support. I know, I know you're probably thinking "oh great, another one", but read on.

Don't play so passive-aggressive with supports (or any hero in this regard) there's a HUGE difference between LOOKING for a kill opportunity and CREATING a kill opportunity. Get a hero with a stun and is not so dependent on cores. Venge works great in your current MMR as there is bound to be lots of positioning mistakes you can punish with a stun or swap, or both.

P.S. I like your spirit. I calibrated at 1341 MMR at Level 13. I'm now 2100+ MMR after 5 months with a bit of practice.

**EDIT** Don't play SF too much as he is very reliant on supports imo. All he brings to the table is damage, a lot of it, but nothing more.

Diversify your hero pool too, razor won't fit every line up.

not sure if that's been said already, but the easiest way to win in scrub bracket is to farm faster than the enemy. No more, just that would boost your winrate to over 50%.

Learn lasthitting, learn farming Patterns (when to go into the jungle and back to lane and what not). Your avarage lasthit at 10min is quite bad despite playing Razor (a definitive core) alot, you rarely reach more than 50lh/10min. Especially with carry like gyro or sf who can 1v5 it's important to always have a steady lead to your enemy and to grow that lead expansionally once you're able to fight (read when you have your main items)

not neccesary with new comeback mechanics u can easily win if ur losign and then punishing people for everextending

so heroes liek bloodcyka would be perfect for carry or safelane

invis heroes

ur #1 item should be silver edge on 90% of the heroes in 90% of the games

you know what i'd suggest?
not even playing ranked yet
i don't know what's your battle points level, but if you play ranked at low levels you are asking to be sent into sub 1k trench
i mean i'm battle level 57, i calibrated at around 3k mmr and some of the people i meet there don't even have a grip at what's happening, and I myself feel like im not exactly any more in control than they are.
Games like Dota are meant to be won with huge experience in playing, and i think this is it, just play more pubs, try out some strats, play for a long time, and you will find yourself improving.

Thanks everyone, so much useful advice to take in here.

Vengeful spirit i shall try aswell then, played blood a few times and never really got to grips with this style.
Will give him another try though.

So spectre, gyro, venge and blood along with sf I shall try to get to the same level of comfort i have playing razor.

Maybe playing pubs for a while till i get a grip of them and improve on my lh before 10 min mark.

Thanks again everyone, such great help and insight!

dont play spectre

he has low laning presence and needs heavy supporting to do anything plus its very bad to play from behind with spectre due no flash farm ability and poor teamfight contributions without items

vengefull spirit is okayish as support but winterwywern/lion is so much more rewarding at all stages of the game
gyro is fine but not that good either cuz of poor mobility

sf is only good if u play on radiant and enemy team has weak ganking potential

ur better off playing mobile heroes making enemies chase all over the map that way u win ur team space to get farmed up

try antimage(master carry hero with weak laning phase insane mobility and very good stat growth/ability to flash farm )
phantom lancer (can fight early good at all stages of the game mediocore laning)
weaver (extremely squishy but good mobility and solo pickoff potential + got invisibility which is advantage at low lvl games)
slark (extremely moobile , can flash farm with dark pact , can dispell debuffs , got invis , fast regen of health scales well the longer teamfights goes)

drow ranger (extremely simple to play gives damage to ur team mates has insanely high damage with close to no items )
clinkz (squishy range hero with invisibility that deals tons of damage again invisibility is what ur looking for )
wraith king (tanky carry with poor mobility (fixed with blink dagger) stun and lifesteal aura so hes quite independant as carry)
bloodseeker (well imba of this meta 1000+ movement speed in teamfights with insane damage boosts from low hp heroes)

any other hero is not worth bothering until u get better grip of farming positioning and overall game knowledge

Thanks for that vaga, very much appreciated. Will try out those heroes you have mentioned.

My advice for 400 MMR:
Lycan - buy Vlads => Boots of Travel => Necronomicon => Heart. Let your teammates fight and die as much as they want, just split push and win the game.
Death Prophet - if you have to go mid. Midas => Octarine Core => Radiance. Try to take at least one tower every time you use your ult and you'll win.
Lich - best choice if you feel like playing support.

400mmr? pick riki win game

^ This

I agree with the Wicked Sikh guy. You don't need to be playing ranked. You'll find that you're not going to get better overnight, and it's gonna be a long and frustrating journey from super scrub mmr to glorious 2k or whatever your goal is.

Maybe just enjoy your games, get the xp under your belt. If you continue to play with determination to win and improve like this the time will come to play ranked again. Perhaps just make a new account when the time comes.

I hope you git gud man, i'll be checking your profile from time to time for updates on your progress.

5.2k here

I saw someone saying that picking a hero that u are comfortable and consistent every single game is the best way to climb mmr

that is true and I've applied it myself

But tbh if u want to be better, never set urself with a certain hero or role, because you will never get the overall essential mechanic of the game

for example, to be a good support player, u have to be a good mid/carry player as well, why? because u will know what a good carry player will expect from their support player.
it applies vice versa.

to be a mid player you will need to be able to play carry, so you will know what your carry player will expect from the mid player (things such as mid game control to create space, early ganks, etc.)

that's why im telling you, the best way to learn dota at the beginning is to pick what your team need, not what you want.

Most dota scrubs will pick carry, it's okay, you can learn to support first, along the way as you're become better in supporting, you will find 1-2 games everytime u play where you will be forced to play other roles (ur picking last and ur team doesn't have a mid).

Remember when zai plays supp in EG and switches to offlane in Secret? Or arteezy who can play mid as well as carry. Even dendi plays support in pub if you watch his stream. Never chain yourself with a single hero or role, it will destroy your overall understanding of the game, because once again it is a playing as a team game, not a carrying a team game.

Not a carrying a team game, which doesn't really apply to the normal skill bracket.

@gucci
"to be a good support player, u have to be a good mid/carry player as well, why? because u will know what a good carry player will expect from their support player"

I don't see logic here, can you explain, please? Because I played few games as carry and haven't learnt a thing to be a better support... Is it just me?