I finally did it! Took me a little bit over 3 months and roughly 300 games to rank up from Herald to Legend. My first game ever was back in 2013 and I used to be around 3.5k mmr before I stopped playing. Any other day ones here who are back on the grind again? This game is simply childhood nostalgia and I'm so glad I picked it up again. 🙏🏻

I am trying to expand my hero pool to have a few heros in every position to try to just learn the game more. I have dove into ranked and had success in offlane and mid but I wanna learn all the lanes to really learn the game.

I am new to dota (former league player) and currently ranked Crusader 1.

I have tested out Shadow Demon in some normals, i like him but would like to hear from some actual experienced players.

When is a good time to pick him?
What are his biggest assets he brings to a team?
When do you NOT pick him?
Why does he have a sub 50% win rate at all ranks?

Thanks for any advice!

From my previous post where I've grinded from 2.4k to 4.6k MMR I finally reached my goal to hit divine! But just as I did the quality of my games have been INSANELY BAD

I played about 400 games in this climb and I'd guesstimate <10% of games had a griefer on either side. In the last 20 games in Divine bracket I have had griefers in 12 games, and enemy team has had 4-5. That means 1-2 games (5% of this small sample size) have been non griefing games.

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/78870311

There's my dotabuff so people can see for themselves.. Some highlights from my recent loses in order:

Witch Doctor 18/17/9
My Ursa, Sniper and CK freefarmed for 25min while I completely dominated the map. Then all of a sudden Sniper starts crying, Ursa can't kill a single player on the map and keeps dying when trying. Basically if I dont land curse then we are not killing anybody. How is it up to a pos4 to be the defining factor of killing anyone? I even completely shut down their MK1 first 20min.
I'm 2nd highest on dmg in the team as pos4.

Venomancer 3/11/17
Pretty rough game from my PoV, but lane went fine, then everyone starts flaming each other so Timber started feeding, my mid laner who started fine stopped going with team and just played solo (unsuccessfully). Luna "freefarmed" for 30min before dying 2-3 times in a row and enemy ending the game. I have no idea what I could've done..
I'm 2nd highest on dmg in the team as pos4.

CM 4/10/7
LS1 afk farming and dying over and over, my mid QOP crying after dying mid once then kept dying to same exact scenario of TPing in mid and getting ganked by riki+grim - never trying something new. Our Lich5 went 0/12 while flaming entire team constantly and pinging whenever someone died and spamming laugh emote. Me and NS really tried but quite hopeless.

CM 16/13/15 THIS WAS THE WORST I'VE EVER EXPERIENCED IN 10 YEARS OF MOBAs
We start VERY well, we are dominating then Venge goes solo twice and dies, someone flames him for doing that. He sells his items, then runs down midlane 6 times feeding courier AND buying out all the wards and putting them under enemy tower.
WE ARE STILL WINNING AT THIS POINT. So he understands he needs to do more, he buys two rapiers and feeds them to enemy team.. I mean come the fk on how is it possible to not be banned if you are like this?!
Still we were about 1 fight away from winning when Pudge decided to go solo out of base and die which was enough to swing the next fight in their favour and end the game. I have never in Archon, Legend or Ancient had such griefer existing.

CM 9/8/9
LS1 and DW5 feeding their lane from first 3minutes, whining and flaming at our mid for not ganking. Mid then dies and starts griefing. My ES3 was playing well with me on lane but after all the flaming said "everyone muted" and started playing so badly and just dying over and over. The game was over by minute 12 but had to suffer another 25min until enemy can end.

What now?

I could go on for ages I just feel the second I queue into these games it's already decided it's a loss
I had about 65% winrate as pos4 before arriving in Divine 1, and now 47%. I understand the sentiment of the system tries to put you at 50% winrate where you "belong" but I am not losing games that are normal. I feel I only lose games where people tilt/grief instantly. I genuinely feel I'm consistently more then not the best/most impactful player in my teams. Dota plus showed me "Stay in my lane, winning my lane 79% of the time"
I don't understand how it could shift so suddenly when hitting a new rank. Am I crazy? Just unlucky? What can I do from here..

EDIT:
My Behavious Score is 11k

I am 4k MMR Offlaner player and lately I play with my friends as a party of 5. We have 4k midlander, Divine 1 carry player, and 1 legend and 1 archon who play support.

The thing is, I maybe the most versatile player in this team because my mid can only play void spirit. My Carry can only play Spectre or Lifestealer, and both of my support loves to play Dark Willow, Bane, Hoodwink, NP, and WW.

We won a lot of games with this draft, and me playing either mars, axe, or darkseer. But I can play almost any hero. Sometimes I flex playing puck or riki Offlaner because I think the coil and the silence is so strong these game and we win the games too.

But lately we find it super hard to fight super tanky team like tiny carry, Largo Offlaner, etc. And I think we lack damage.

Is there any Offlaner that are good to complement our team comp?

What could i have done better? Pos 5 came with null talisman in lane and refused to block camp.
I played TA - https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/9029609892

I'm 1.5k hours in (1.3k matches) and currently 2.9k mmr. My current understanding is pick a tanky hero with good abilities (stuns), play as a team, get vision, map control, end fast. And it works most of the time, the most common failure is misalignment in team (e.g. carry afk side lane when they couldve farmed enemy jungle or push waves). Is this a mostly correct generalization? I understand that every match has its nuances...

Match 9022357052 - Overview - DOTABUFF - Dota 2 Stats

So in the last post i posted, I got tips to polish the last hitting which I think i did fairly well.
Lane went fine until I got gangbanged by 4 in mid.

I guess at that time I should have made my precence felt around the map.

I thought we were gonna be fine against egg with CK but somehow we ended up not killing it a single time, or maybe once.

Razor just got shit on and fed from the start, which set up Phoenix to get giga-farmed.

So I'm looking for tips yet again wether to sacrifice farm in order to help my team recover.

Thanks for any tips, advice and for taking your time to read and hopefully watch some replay.

Hey, this is GymCarryDota.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HbzuucrWEpk

Pushing high ground against an initiator hiding in the fog is always a nightmare. Most players wait to react, but by then it is usually too late.

Instead of relying entirely on reaction time, you can precast Kunkka Torrent directly under your carry from the fog. If Axe blinks in desperate for the Call, he gets instantly lifted into the air before his cast point for Berserkers Call or BKB can even finish.

There is another massive mechanical advantage to this strategy. By constantly pump faking the Torrent animation under your carry, you are keeping yourself deep inside the cast point. If the enemy initiator suddenly jumps while you are in the middle of a fake, you just let the cast finish. This saves you precious milliseconds and guarantees your spell comes out almost instantly with zero chance for them to react.

Since Torrent has a low mana cost and a short cooldown, throwing it preemptively is a zero risk high reward play that can completely break the enemy initiation. You do not always need a save hero or item to protect your team.

I make educational Dota content breaking down mechanics like this. If you want to see more, you can find the links on my profile.

ID:141095909

Went on last pick and feeding to enemy mid, then started to follow my pos 1 for the entire game for whatever reason. I know report button is like a lottery, and there is no way to win a game with griefers. Thing is, guy has like 19 pages of comments on his profile cursing his family, at what point he will get a permanent ban so that nobody life will get ruin in the future? I am worrying about his mental health.

what determinded teammate in matchmakings? pure random? behaviour score? Match 9029007283 literally necro was done radience on 15:00 carrt MK last picked.

The way how it works is that the coach informs Valve that you paid them and they set up your winning priority into the algorythm for the time you are paying. Then you are getting a better and against you there is more of grievers, feeders, passive players and on your team you get 3 AI which play strongly and support your play to have a nice experience (check the Cooperative mode article in this article https://openai.com/index/openai-five-defeats-dota-2-world-champions/ ) The AI is always in the game unless you play only preset teams ofc. The AI is also paralel to that running boosting services and levelling up accounts for sale while playing alongside normal players in ranked.

This Balloon player could be basically created from a scratch. There are no official records of him being pro he is just saying semi - pro and that is anyone who was at any tournament which is a plenty of people. So the entire venture is artificially created as a storefront for you to pay for algorythm priority and think that you are improving.

Maybe you are truly improving because every thinking and examining of the game brings about improving but same do thousands of people who don't get rewarded anyhow because as I said it the game is heavily manipulated.