“Play in a party”—so bad shared tips for winning in matchmaking

A little over a month ago, I promised to write a “matchmaking guide” once I broke the 8,500 MMR mark. But there won’t be a “guide”—I’ll just share my experience and explain what I’ve learned after a month of playing.

During that time, I dropped to 8k twice and was just a couple of games away from the Immortal draft. For a while, I wanted to do this on stream, but no matter what anyone says, streaming affects my gameplay. So I had to cut back on streaming a bit to prioritize my in-game performance. And that’s probably the first point of my “pseudo-guide”: eliminate all distractions from the game.

Next, I’d like to touch on tools that help make your games easier. In particular, I recommend not forgetting to ban heroes (even before the game starts) that can ruin your gameplay right from the very first minutes. For example, if you’re playing support on the soft lane, these include Enigma, Brewmaster, Largo, and other similar heroes. I also highly recommend using the dodge list from Dota Plus. This is especially useful if you play every day at roughly the same time of day. Over time, you’ll start getting matched with the same players and will begin to recognize them. Feel free to add toxic players, those who don’t fulfill their role well, or those whose hero pool is incompatible with yours to your dodge list to increase your chances of getting comfortable teammates.

The next tool is exploiting hero bans during the draft phase. If you’re not familiar with the meta at all, you’ll need to analyze your own games a bit. What should you pay attention to? Which heroes are frequently picked for the front line? Which heroes are difficult to play against from the very start? Which ones require a specific playstyle? For example, right now, in almost every game, both teams are picking Bounty Hunter, so he often gets banned. The same thing happens with Winter Wyvern, and sometimes with Dark Willow. Why is this important? These heroes have very effective gameplay, and if your team has one of them instead of your opponent, you’ll already make the game easier for yourself.

These are, perhaps, practically all the tools (with the exception of one, which I’ll discuss at the end) that you can use even before the game starts to increase your chances of winning. There are two more strategies that I haven’t really tested myself yet, but which were recommended to me by fellow players. The first is to look for games in Western Europe. The reason is that bot players often go about “their business” on the Russian server. The second is to avoid playing at night :)

All the other “tips” relate directly to the game itself. But there’s no point in listing them here: it’s impossible to cover every position, and all the nuances wouldn’t fit into a single text. Nevertheless, I highly recommend choosing heroes who don’t take long to get fully into the game, rather than those who require 25 minutes of chopping wood before you can actually play properly. And, of course, try to play around the objectives that the developers have placed all over the map—the ones they practically point out with a huge red arrow.

It’s also very important to keep your knowledge of the game up to date: look for new things, learn from other players, and keep an eye on the pro scene. Without this, you might lose interest in the game and turn into just another casual player.

And finally—the most important tool that you MUST abuse. Many people, for their own reasons, condemn it and hate the players who use it. Play in parties. Snipe in role-play matches, and join Immortal Draft with your friends. The developers have done a lot—albeit indirectly in some cases—to encourage people to play together. And believe me: when you play solo, you run the risk of facing stacks of 2–3 players more often. And that really hurts your chances of winning—no matter how well you play.