General DiscussionNeed some advice on how to get better!

just play alot

play with good players against good players if possible

#1. Watch your own replays.

position 5 does not exist in pub games. Once you understand that you will get so much better at pub support

Also. The meta doesn't seem to be about babysitting carries anymore until they are farmed and more on rotating around and ganking. How do I get the people I play with to not freak out when I'm not 4 steps from them. I quite often get yelled at even pulling.

And heaven forbid I try to place defensive wards when we are losing. I get bitched at for that a lot.

Keep it coming!

I'll do a breakdown I'm glad you at least tried a variety of heros:

1. Stop playing QOP in pub matches. Please practice mid vs unfair bots for the first 10 minutes, disconnect, then try again. Rinse and repeat until you can beat unfair bots. Thats what I did to practice pudge before attempting doing it in pubs. Make sure you are getting at LEAST 50% of the last hits and attempt ganks for the other bots. Same as Storm Spirit, your win rate is below 40% on these.

2. Yes do not do hard supports like Io/Chen if you are rolling solo. Tough to coordinate.

3. I don't think ALL of your support heros are bad. Best one is lich: http://dotabuff.com/players/4467960/heroes If you are forced to play support, then pick lich for now.

Game breakdown:

http://dotabuff.com/matches/567319783 Batrider game:

You looked like you were forced to play a support role. You got blink great, but didn't get the chance to grab force staff. If it were me, I would run force staff first, then blink. You can blink in then slowly drag them out but without force staff getting you out of the fray, its tough.

http://dotabuff.com/matches/567355703 Earthshaker game:

Made minimal impact I see that your GPM/XPM was the lowest. Rubick had more GPM/XPM than you, he had 20 denies, you had 0. If you are supporting a carry, you are supposed to be harassing the enemy heros early game to keep them out of lane OR hiding to throw down a fissure to block them so your hero can make a killing blow. This apparently was not happening. Just because you are support doesn't mean do not ever last hit. Look to those last hits your hero cannot grab in time. Stay in XP absorb range because when you are a nuker like ES you need lvls more than anything.

http://dotabuff.com/matches/567394025 Slardar game.

Blink first is good. Armlet 2nd is bad. You need BKB first but tried to do it as your 3rd core item. Either that or I would of done a Vanguard 2nd. At a minimal a stout shield would of helped. You are a melee that gets up close and dirty and they had a good balance of physical and magic dmg/lock down. Look to see what the other team has for silence/stuns or just raw phys. dmg and base your item builds after that. For instance, I had a stupid horrible game and I built my sven completely wrong. I didn't go BKB until the game was too late recently. Dont make the same mistake! :)

http://dotabuff.com/matches/567429820 Veno game.

Really the team did horrible overall. I can't really give an opinion over this. Everyone had horrible GPM/XPM rubick sold all his items..... You guys averaged 2 deaths per minute. That is a shitty game sorry dude.

http://dotabuff.com/matches/568551771 puck game

I mean.... you had good xpm/gpm item builds etc out of this. Assists were high but...... really this would come down to you had 4 viable mid heros. 3 of them can be tower pushers (putting in sniper due to range and Q Shrapnel.)

You had to take that game very early. You let it last past 1:05. Everyone had to be on the same page as to "crush towers" early and take a racks before 25 minutes 30 tops. After that, they had such good late game! Heres the tough thing when you have tower crusher line up. The rest of your team must play VERY passive early/mid game and fake push other lanes while your tower crusher guys go opposite lanes and break them down. I have had a VERY tough time playing as a tower crusher in this tier bracket, due to the fact that I cannot get my teammates to stay back! Play passive!

Above all ALL PICK is crap Therron sad to say at this bracket (and higher.) If you want a thought provoking game with tactics in mind, CD or CM is what you need. Communication is there 80~85% of the time, less people that do not speak english in those modes and more cooperation. Just another suggestion if you want a better game.

Hope you enjoy my wall of text. I've improved over 500 mmr on both solo/team rank (lost 50 each the past 2 days making dumb decisions) You can get out of this tier just follow a bit of what I have here!

Take care,

getting better at dota 2 is extreme waste of your spinal cords and watching your own replays is waste of time too unless you play at 50% or so

^ Whats a better use of my time, feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless? Everyones lining up to do that mother teresa.

taking hard drugs, doing extreme shit ie(base jumping, climbing without ropes), traveling your country without a dime, becoming leader of local mob and so on theres literally tons of stuff that gives way better emotional kick than dota 2 or even becoming serial killer go watch any interview with serial killer and listen to emotions they describe its at least 10x more deep than stuff people go through in dota 2 and lets not forget that gaming makes people socially retarded

@ -hg- Cpt. Caveman. First thank you for your reply. I have long stopped playing QoP or Storm because I realized that they weren't heros for me. They are fun though!

As for the games:
Batrider game - I've always been curious as to go force or blink first. Blink seems to be the most popular choice so I guess thats why I always choose it after boots. Yes I was forced to play support this game, but I do feel like I lacked in terms of my own skill here. I have had some pretty good batrider games. This one just felt "off"

Earthshaker game - I agree I did a pretty bad job. We laned against TA and Silencer if I remember correctly. Void said he was good so I decided to go farm pull camp. Not the best decision and I found myself going to his aid quite often but it was always "thanks I'm good now" I farmed bad and played even worse. I can land fissures decently but hes a hero I have lots of trouble farming on because his only decent damage skill cost so much mana. One of those heros that I've decided is not for me.

Slardar game - That was one that there was absolutely nothing I could do to win. Prophet sat in base with no items most of the game and would go out to get exp just so he didn't get an abandoned and kept pinging well played on everyone. In my defense, I did have a stout but sold it to finish off the Armlet. I agree though, item progression could have been better.

Veno game - Like you said, shitty game all around. Playing 100% support veno (minus the aeq pickup later, why did I do this? no idea?!) I couldn't do anything with the carries I had. All underfarmed. Just not a good game, but this is DotA.

Puck game - Hit the nail on the head. I believe I third picked puck after a prophet and a sniper pick. Then sniper whined for mid and I've found that arguing only makes your games worse and teammates mad, so I said solo off. Tide ended up coming with me and contesting farm the whole time. I missed a couple orbs that could have gotten kills and made some other mistakes that I shouldn't have. We were crushing early game and then got dominated late. Also tried to tell everyone that we needed to finish that one fast. Death Prophet thought she was indestructible and made some stupid team fight decisions that didn't turn out so well.

Again, with any of these, I'm not trying to defend myself fully. Some were just bad play on my part and bad games on everyone's part. Just letting you know a little more than what the dotabuff match summary would tell.

Again, thanks for replying.

@Goat among peasants. I doto to relax and have fun. No reason I can't have a desire to be good at it.
@FUCK OFF FROM EU WEST. I have a people person job at a hospital and a wife with one child and one on the way. I think I'm socially ok. But thanks for the comment.

^ Those two nicknames at the botton are the same person.

I sort of figured but hey! doesn't hurt to address both right?

go unfair bots and practice bro.. get some confidence..

The key to playing support is doing NOTHING until you NEED to.

Kappa sigma frito dorrito

Watching your own replay in trench tier ain't worth it IMO. If you're already at a high level and then you watch replay of your games, then yes, it will help immensely.

What I did was watch players who are better than me and try to copy their movements. If they were a support, watch early-mid game to see what they do, see how they pull, see when to pull, see when to be aggressive and not to be aggressive. If they're a carry, see how many last hits they get at 10,20,30,40, etc and try to get as close to them as possible. If you want to practice mid, watch Arteezy.

That is all.

buy wards, play snowball heroes such as tusk, slark, juggernaut, NS. Play solid supports like shadow shaman, warlock. Oh and buy wards.

^ u forgot the wards :)

good lord please dont give such long assed replies when you dont even know what you are talking about.. criticizing earth shaker due to the lack of denies, compared to rubick? what the fuck? so earthshaker support is meant to stay in lane and deny creeps? harass enemy with ur physical attack? .....
rubick obviously gets better xpm/gpm than es due to being ranged and getting better gpm as he can clear waves instantly with fade bolt + 1 stolen aoe spell.. xpm should generally be higher than es because es should be staying in fog.
force staff over blink dagger lmao, why dont you talk about that thrash tier power treads build.
"If it were me, I would run force staff first, then blink. You can blink in then slowly drag them out but without force staff getting you out of the fray, its tough."
so you want to force staff in first and lasso? then what gets you out of the fray?
so you want to walk into melee range and lasso/flamebreak lasso? riki blink smoke? dragon tail?
....

Hey no problem Therron its helpful when you get people that are not socially retarded as fuck off presented yet he seems to have the syndrome that he insists.

@ Zelphen

Ok you seem angry but I'll just address the batrider. Don't you blink in, lasso then force staff out? Why would you force staff into a group of enemies, then "HOPE TO GOD" you don't get hit and blink out? Doesn't blink dagger have a 3 second cooldown until you don't get hit again? I think this guy wanted suggestions on how to improve and seems you have a good batrider build going on in your matches:

P.S. I meant blink then force staff out sorry.

1. Boots of travel
2. Blink dagger
3. Force staff
4. Wand
5. Occasionally you do MoM (good idea)
6. Occasional Euls scepter on your builds.

Apparently power treads are out of the question which seems fine I didn't catch that.

Why don't you elaborate Zelphin? I'm interested in playing bat rider as well.

And yes.... ES should stay in the fog but why stay there the WHOLE time? This reduces XP absorb if hes out of range, and can't harass heros or deny creeps as much. He's not meant to be in lane the WHOLE time, yet hes not supposed to stay in the fog the WHOLE time either.... All I was pointing out was his xp/gpm was really low and trying to assist him in at a minimal get in XP absorb range. I see more often than not support heros not absorbing XP when they are heavily lvl dependant and not so much item dependant.

Yes and buy wards.

huh? you was criticizing his decision of going dagger first instead of force staff.. which is silly? given your stance of going force staff first, (" I would run force staff first, then blink.") i listed the two methods of using the force staff build, first would be forcing into them and lasso out, clearly inferior, second would be walk in and force out, impractical in that game consisting of dk and riki. i dont know about pro players but getting wand is acceptable for mid bats but pretty silly for jungle bats especially in pubs where you would be having boots blink fs tp as well as carrying other small items like wards smoke dust.
supports denying creeps in lane is pretty bad, even when you are missing from the lane it creates fear in the mid lane especially and u would probably scared the mid lane into missing more last hits than ur deny would have. and how does a melee hero harass help the safe laner? any harassment of yours would probably trigger creep agro and eventually bring the wave towards the offlane tower

@ Zelphin.

Alright what about grabbing force staff first then forcing enemy to you when turned the right way, then lassoing them early? IDK you're the bat rider pro out of anyone here. I was hoping for a good 1,2,3,4,5,6 item build progression from your next response :(

Yeah again, some denies is nice early game. I mean 0 is not good. Doesn't deny also deny 1/2 XP when you land the last hit on your own creep? I totally agree with you on it creates fear in the mid lane when the support is missing. But I feel like there has to be a balance between sitting in the fog of war, denying creeps or pulling creeps/stacking. Its not "always as a support sit in the fog of war" or "always pull creeps" or "always deny creeps" It's not a static value and is situational to the occasion.

Last statement on denying creeps, I feel it is unacceptable as ANY hero to not deny 1 single creep the whole game. Mostly a support job but either way it's needed due to gold and xp deny.

<3 Zelphin much love keep smiling.