DOTA 2

[Jeb-sama]

I played heavily since late 2011 until 2013. Quit because it was a huge time sink, but I still loved the game. Blows my mind that this was 7 FUCKING YEARS AGO. This info will be dated as fuck


>Favourite position/role.
support was what I was good at
>Favourite hero.
probably clockwork for those big dick hook plays
>You do soloQ or you have a 5 man stack?
solo. I could never get my old league friends to try dota
>You go to the trench often?
was trench MMR related or something to do with the abandoned game penalty? dotabuff says like 90% of my games took place in high skill, with the rest in v high skill
>Favourite pro team.
navi because they were the only western team worth shit back then
>Favourite pro player/streamer.
always liked puppey even though he was a raging bitch sometimes
>Who is the most balanced hero in the game?
always thought a lot of them were balanced. I don't remember anyone ever saying puck/veno/sand king were ever too strong or weak
>Fav strategies.
win

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

I played heavily since late 2011 until 2013. Quit because it was a huge time sink, but I still loved the game. Blows my mind that this was 7 FUCKING YEARS AGO. This info will be dated as fuck


>Favourite position/role.
support was what I was good at
>Favourite hero.
probably clockwork for those big dick hook plays
>You do soloQ or you have a 5 man stack?
solo. I could never get my old league friends to try dota
>You go to the trench often?
was trench MMR related or something to do with the abandoned game penalty? dotabuff says like 90% of my games took place in high skill, with the rest in v high skill
>Favourite pro team.
navi because they were the only western team worth shit back then
>Favourite pro player/streamer.
always liked puppey even though he was a raging bitch sometimes
>Who is the most balanced hero in the game?
always thought a lot of them were balanced. I don't remember anyone ever saying puck/veno/sand king were ever too strong or weak
>Fav strategies.
win

Damn, i still have a lot of nostalgia for old Dota before they nuked Bonerking and Bananamancer. Also, kinda surprising how many support players i have found in the farms. I guess we are not autistic enough for intensive farming.

Speaking about old meta and the times when i started (Around 2012) really bring up a lot of nostalgia when i sucked hard and i met my bud that eventually helped me become a fairly decent player. Too bad my other friends that played League didn't even want to touch Dota due to the time investment require to learn the game. I have so many good memories of those early days and now Dota has changed so fucking much...

And the Trench is Low Priority, the punishment you get for abandoning games of getting reported too much. They lump you with the russians and brazilians. And teh most balanced hero is Faceless Void.

 

[Tism the Return]

Also is admirallbuldog /our guy/?

 

[Fek]

Someone finally made a DotA thread, eh? Here's to the sperging this will no doubt generate.

..Incidentally:

Favourite position/role.

Whatever needs to be done.

Favourite hero.

From position 1-5:
Spectre, TA, Timbersaw, Pudge, CM
Obviously a couple of these can shift positions depending on the game.

You do soloQ or you have a 5 man stack?

3-5 stack regardless of ranked/unranked/arcade

You go to the trench often?

I've never personally been in low priority. If you're having trouble with it, I'd suggest the following:

1.) Ignore anyone who even remotely makes you suspicious immediately so you can focus on what you're doing. Your play should come before anyone else, because it's the only thing you have control over. Just make a mental note that they'll probably be useless and plan around it.
2.) When the need arises, use more creative insults that aren't widely used so the lessers from shithole countries (and sometimes the inbreds from the civilized world) either can't understand you or aren't mentally primed to go into outrage mode over it. You can even be funny while verbally lashing a deserving member of your team.
3.) Make sure you utilize commends to encourage others to commend you back. It helps keep your behavior score up.

Favourite pro team.

I bleed blue.

Favourite pro player/streamer.

Merlini (prior to "retiring" from the scene) showcased very impressive farming efficiency techniques from which I drew inspiration.
Artour (when he can be bothered to stream) displays an insane amount of map awareness and deep decision making that I also learned an awful lot from watching.

It's been years since I've really had the time to bother watching someone else play a video game (outside of tournaments), though.

Who is the most balanced hero in the game?

Looking over the (very) long term, I would argue heroes that never see terribly drastic changes (or that can be nerfed over and over and over and still be useful) are (and will likely remain) the more balanced of the bunch. Batrider and Dark Seer come to mind immediately as examples.

Fav strategies.

Winning the game in an efficient manner with as little bitching and moaning from overgrown children as humanly possible.

 

[The Reaper]

Damn, i still have a lot of nostalgia for old Dota before they nuked Bonerking and Bananamancer. Also, kinda surprising how many support players i have found in the farms. I guess we are not autistic enough for intensive farming.

It’s not that I’m not autistic enough to farm, it’s more along the lines that I can make things happen with fewer items. My one friend finds working with fewer items to be difficult, so he typically plays carry.

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

It’s not that I’m not autistic enough to farm, it’s more along the lines that I can make things happen with fewer items. My one friend finds working with fewer items to be difficult, so he typically plays carry.

For me it's the feeling of being capable of making the team work like a well oiled machine, even if i have to die in the fight to set up the win, it's worth it. Plus, i have very good map awareness and i tend to roam a lot in early game, but i need to get better with a hero that i have a huge gripe with: Earth Spirit. Still, my favourite hero to roam is Shadow Shaman: hits hard with his right click, very good disables early game and a strong nuke to follow up.

From position 1-5:
Spectre, TA, Timbersaw, Pudge, CM
Obviously a couple of these can shift positions depending on the game.

I also got my position favs, although i don't play carry much. From 1-5: Lotto Knight (i get insanely lucky with the crits), Tinker, Magnus, Windrunner and CM.
Also, how did ya met your stack? I met mine doing practise on bots.

 

[Fek]

It’s not that I’m not autistic enough to farm, it’s more along the lines that I can make things happen with fewer items. My one friend finds working with fewer items to be difficult, so he typically plays carry.

That's a very nice way of saying "My one friend doesn't know what positioning or mana efficiency is, so he typically plays carry."

I might just be projecting how my friends are, though. Maybe..just a little.
>Nukes the high/full hp enemy laner for no reason.
>Can't press all his buttons to actually kill them when opportunity knocks.

I also got my position favs, although i don't play carry much. From 1-5: Lotto Knight (i get insanely lucky with the crits), Tinker, Magnus, Windrunner and CM.

Chaos Knight has lost nearly all of his RNG elements over the course of somewhat recent patching. It's actually quite sad and further nods towards a very large problem that's been fucking the game for the last year or more: Listening to Reddit and making the game easier/casual-friendly. Not a topic I have the time/effort to detail right now, though.

Also, how did ya met your stack? I met mine doing practise on bots.

I've known members of my online gaming crew between 3 and..<counts>..17 years. None of them were met through DotA and still play it currently.

 

[The Reaper]

That's a very nice way of saying "My one friend doesn't know what positioning or mana efficiency is, so he typically plays carry."

No he just operates better with more items. Mana efficiency could be a little better early, but he can do work with six items. I think it’s more a comfort thing where success is far more visible than success from a support perspective. I bleed for my team so they can reap the benefits, but that’s harder to see post-game.

 

[ANF]

Chaos Knight has lost nearly all of his RNG elements over the course of somewhat recent patching. It's actually quite sad and further nods towards a very large problem that's been fucking the game for the last year or more: Listening to Reddit and making the game easier/casual-friendly. Not a topic I have the time/effort to detail right now, though.

They've never listened to reddit, the game always was and likely always will be balanced around the pro scene. Which is a very large problem for the game nonetheless.

 

[Tism the Return]

Best/worst game modes?

 

[Secret Asshole]

I have to confess: I have played DotA 2 for over a decade. From when it was a Warcraft 3 mod, to when it was a Valve Beta as my first Dota 2 game was in 2012. So I've got literally thousands of hours in it. I've also learned curse words for every country. I've also played LoL. LoL is far, far worse because its populated by way more children who are too scared of DotA 2. Also LoL's meta hasn't changed in years.

• Favourite position/role.
  • Support. Fuck items.
• Favourite hero
  • Crystal Maiden
• You do soloQ or you have a 5 man stack?
  • DotA 2 is a game I play with my family and friends, so my stacks range from 3-5
• You go to the trench often?
  • Haha, no.
• Favourite pro team.
  • Changes WAY too much
• Favourite pro player/streamer.
  • SingSing is the most entertaining I've seen. He'll do hilarious shit. There was a game he played Silencer and his only goal was to reduce this poor Troll Warlord's intelligence to 0. It was hysterical.
• Who is the most balanced hero in the game?
  • In terms of balance, I'm going with versatility. Earthshaker is the most balanced. He can be played mid, carry, offlane and support. He's one of the most varied roles right now in DotA 2. That's what I considered hero balance, not locked to one role and can adapt to different needs and situations.
• Fav strategies.
  • Lockdown, lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. Get that Lockdown son and nobody is a problem.

They've never listened to reddit, the game always was and likely always will be balanced around the pro scene. Which is a very large problem for the game nonetheless.

Yes. This is a problem for DotA 2 because it constantly increases the skill ceiling. Its also changed around so it doesn't get stale. If you take a year-long break from DotA, you'll basically have to re-learn heroes and mechanics. Its skill ceiling is already incredibly high, this just makes it worse. You have to keep this in mind, because a lot of fucks will try pro strats that have incredibly high skill ceilings and will fail miserably at them.

Best/worst game modes?

Best:

• All-Pick - Old Classic
• Turbo - Fuck Around Mode and a nice change of pace sometimes when you just don't want to deal with bullshit. Getting a 2 or 3 minute midas is hilarious and good and will piss everyone off.
• Captain's Mode - Only if you have a 5 stack
• Random Draft - Make a good team from a nice amount of randoms

Middle:

• Ability Draft - Just for the lols.
• Limited Hero - Only for newbs, a measure so Valve doesn't inflict that pain upon us.

Worst:

• Single Draft - RNG DotA. You win or lose based on the heroes you get. Not worth playing.
• All Random - You're trusting that most people in the game know all the heroes. Fuck no.
• All Random Deathmatch - No. Play a custom game fag.

Former Worst:

• Least Played Hero - Basically I called it 'DotA - Incompetent Mode'. Everyone is going to be running around wondering how to get use to these heroes they genuinely hated. Funnily enough, it was the least played mode so it got removed. Really makes you think.

 

[OmnipotentStupidity]

Dota 2 has received a Matchmaking Update, bringing a massive overhaul to the queuing system and MMR calculations.

Matchmaking Update | Dota 2

blog.dota2.com

Spoiler: Incredibly Long Blog Post

A comprehensive matchmaking system is an important factor in being able to enjoy playing Dota, regardless of which hero or role you prefer. Today’s update includes some engineering changes to the core matchmaking system to allow for bigger changes and better analytical capabilities. Over the next year, we’ll be spending more time focusing on various aspects of matchmaking such as intra-team balance, player conduct, new player experience, abusive behaviors, account buying, friend and teamplay aspects, high mmr matchmaking dynamics, and other issues in an effort to make the overall experience of playing Dota more fun for players of all levels. In this blog post we decided to drill deeper into the changes in today’s update and explain our thoughts.

Matchmaking involves various tradeoffs and our goal is to find the best balance between all the different factors. In order to help make progress on finding the right set of tradeoffs, today’s update includes a couple different experimental changes that will last until the end of the season. Close to the end of the season we’ll do a direct call for feedback on how the changes have worked out and use that feedback, along with data we are gathering in the meantime, to help inform the direction for the next season. We’ll also be working towards other features, such as better detection of smurfing and other abusive behaviors as the year progresses.

The first of these experiments is removing the concept of separate Solo and Party MMRs. We expect this to be the most controversial component in today’s update, as we’ve heard fair criticisms of it in the past. We can’t say that we are fully confident that this will end up being a good change either, so we’ll want to wait until the end of the season when we gather feedback and data on how it has played out after players have had a chance to absorb it. There are two major aspects with this change: 1) the teamplay and social aspect and 2) the value and correctness of the MMR value.

For the teamplay aspect: We think it is really crucial for you to not have a disincentive to play with your friends. The game currently overly emphasizes playing solo and establishes a strong social reward mechanism for this, which causes many players to prefer playing alone than with friends. We believe that bias has over time caused more negativity and unhappiness when playing Dota. Furthermore, Dota is a very teamplay heavy game and we want to consider that aspect a bit more strongly in the hierarchy of matchmaking values. We’ve considered other approaches to the friend and teamplay incentives, but they tended to do a poor job at making it feel actually rewarding to play with friends and only papered over the issue.

For the correctness of the MMR aspect: We recognize that there is a tradeoff here on the mmr data quality if the match has solo mmr numbers with party mmr numbers, however we feel that the impact of that data noise is much smaller than even we initially considered it to be early on and generally with how it is discussed online. Most of the issues related to this we think we can solve with better algorithms. Another common case is playing with a friend who has a higher mmr than you, expecting that it will cause your mmr to go higher. While that has been at least partly true in previous matchmaking system iterations, our most recent version does a fairly good job of addressing this. We have enough data to form matches that cause you to have an even chance to win by carefully choosing the opponents that have a similar makeup. At a base level, we think mathematically we are able to have high confidence that playing with a friend will not have a material effect on your average mmr value with a properly balanced matchmaker. We’ve done some testing to make sure this is true in advance of this update, however we know it’s likely there is more work to be done here and we’ll continue working on this aspect in the background during this experimental period.

Through our investigation into the topic of matchmaking volatility and how parties affect the game, we’ve noticed something that fans likely already know: players have very different comfort levels when playing core roles versus support roles. Some players perform really poorly when they play a role they are not used to, and in turn introduce a lot of volatility in the system for everyone by causing your MMR number to drift away from your actual skill level as well as causing imbalanced games.

So because of that, and because of our abiding love of having multiple MMR numbers, we are adding a new concept of Core and Support MMR numbers. In order to achieve this, we need to know what role you want to play in advance of the match being formed. So for this experimental update, we are moving the Ranked Roles feature to the base Ranked matchmaking and expanding on its capabilities. Now when you matchmake, you will have the option of selecting roles from position 1 through 5 (Safe Lane Core through Hard Support), including multiple selections. So if you like playing Mid or Offlane, you can select those two, or if you like playing Hard Support and Mid, you’ll be able to do that as well. You will be matched based on either your Core or Support MMR.

Each MMR type will also have its own leaderboard, and for the purposes of this short experimental period the existing rank will be applied as the initial rank for both Core and Support. If we end up keeping this feature in the future, there will be a separate calibration phase for each one.

These experimental changes will remain active for the rest of this season for you to try out. Sometime after The International concludes, we’ll issue a call for community feedback to help guide the next steps in our efforts to increase matchmaking quality for everyone. We hope to have your support and patience through this experiment as well as subsequent changes towards the path of making a better overall matchmaking system.

While we were initially going to release this change as part of the Summer Scrub update, the amount of significant underlying code changes required for this update introduces a lot of potential instability. So we are splitting the Summer Scrub update into two parts, this first part for a matchmaking rework, and the second part soon after for bug fixes and a few quality of life additions. We are expecting that we’ll have a lot of matchmaking related bugs to work through today, so please let us know if you run into any issues and make sure to include the matchid in your reports.

 

[The Reaper]

Dota 2 has received a Matchmaking Update, bringing a massive overhaul to the queuing system and MMR calculations.

Matchmaking Update | Dota 2

blog.dota2.com

Spoiler: Incredibly Long Blog Post

A comprehensive matchmaking system is an important factor in being able to enjoy playing Dota, regardless of which hero or role you prefer. Today’s update includes some engineering changes to the core matchmaking system to allow for bigger changes and better analytical capabilities. Over the next year, we’ll be spending more time focusing on various aspects of matchmaking such as intra-team balance, player conduct, new player experience, abusive behaviors, account buying, friend and teamplay aspects, high mmr matchmaking dynamics, and other issues in an effort to make the overall experience of playing Dota more fun for players of all levels. In this blog post we decided to drill deeper into the changes in today’s update and explain our thoughts.

Matchmaking involves various tradeoffs and our goal is to find the best balance between all the different factors. In order to help make progress on finding the right set of tradeoffs, today’s update includes a couple different experimental changes that will last until the end of the season. Close to the end of the season we’ll do a direct call for feedback on how the changes have worked out and use that feedback, along with data we are gathering in the meantime, to help inform the direction for the next season. We’ll also be working towards other features, such as better detection of smurfing and other abusive behaviors as the year progresses.

The first of these experiments is removing the concept of separate Solo and Party MMRs. We expect this to be the most controversial component in today’s update, as we’ve heard fair criticisms of it in the past. We can’t say that we are fully confident that this will end up being a good change either, so we’ll want to wait until the end of the season when we gather feedback and data on how it has played out after players have had a chance to absorb it. There are two major aspects with this change: 1) the teamplay and social aspect and 2) the value and correctness of the MMR value.

For the teamplay aspect: We think it is really crucial for you to not have a disincentive to play with your friends. The game currently overly emphasizes playing solo and establishes a strong social reward mechanism for this, which causes many players to prefer playing alone than with friends. We believe that bias has over time caused more negativity and unhappiness when playing Dota. Furthermore, Dota is a very teamplay heavy game and we want to consider that aspect a bit more strongly in the hierarchy of matchmaking values. We’ve considered other approaches to the friend and teamplay incentives, but they tended to do a poor job at making it feel actually rewarding to play with friends and only papered over the issue.

For the correctness of the MMR aspect: We recognize that there is a tradeoff here on the mmr data quality if the match has solo mmr numbers with party mmr numbers, however we feel that the impact of that data noise is much smaller than even we initially considered it to be early on and generally with how it is discussed online. Most of the issues related to this we think we can solve with better algorithms. Another common case is playing with a friend who has a higher mmr than you, expecting that it will cause your mmr to go higher. While that has been at least partly true in previous matchmaking system iterations, our most recent version does a fairly good job of addressing this. We have enough data to form matches that cause you to have an even chance to win by carefully choosing the opponents that have a similar makeup. At a base level, we think mathematically we are able to have high confidence that playing with a friend will not have a material effect on your average mmr value with a properly balanced matchmaker. We’ve done some testing to make sure this is true in advance of this update, however we know it’s likely there is more work to be done here and we’ll continue working on this aspect in the background during this experimental period.

Through our investigation into the topic of matchmaking volatility and how parties affect the game, we’ve noticed something that fans likely already know: players have very different comfort levels when playing core roles versus support roles. Some players perform really poorly when they play a role they are not used to, and in turn introduce a lot of volatility in the system for everyone by causing your MMR number to drift away from your actual skill level as well as causing imbalanced games.

So because of that, and because of our abiding love of having multiple MMR numbers, we are adding a new concept of Core and Support MMR numbers. In order to achieve this, we need to know what role you want to play in advance of the match being formed. So for this experimental update, we are moving the Ranked Roles feature to the base Ranked matchmaking and expanding on its capabilities. Now when you matchmake, you will have the option of selecting roles from position 1 through 5 (Safe Lane Core through Hard Support), including multiple selections. So if you like playing Mid or Offlane, you can select those two, or if you like playing Hard Support and Mid, you’ll be able to do that as well. You will be matched based on either your Core or Support MMR.

Each MMR type will also have its own leaderboard, and for the purposes of this short experimental period the existing rank will be applied as the initial rank for both Core and Support. If we end up keeping this feature in the future, there will be a separate calibration phase for each one.

These experimental changes will remain active for the rest of this season for you to try out. Sometime after The International concludes, we’ll issue a call for community feedback to help guide the next steps in our efforts to increase matchmaking quality for everyone. We hope to have your support and patience through this experiment as well as subsequent changes towards the path of making a better overall matchmaking system.

While we were initially going to release this change as part of the Summer Scrub update, the amount of significant underlying code changes required for this update introduces a lot of potential instability. So we are splitting the Summer Scrub update into two parts, this first part for a matchmaking rework, and the second part soon after for bug fixes and a few quality of life additions. We are expecting that we’ll have a lot of matchmaking related bugs to work through today, so please let us know if you run into any issues and make sure to include the matchid in your reports.

Oh boy watch out, future 6k support mmr coming through.

I'm interested to see how this works. I find it interesting that they say playing partied was found to be a deterrent, as it was something I wasn't really noticing. Now looking back I kind of see it, as I was losing a majority of my partied games due to the two-three stack on my own team. It became less about the five man, and more about the 2 v 3 or 3 v 2 on our team.

I don't know if this patch fixes my issue, but it will likely incentivize me to play support more and avoid the carry.

Also do any Kiwis watch the Bot TI stuff from Beyond the Summit? I find it humorous and they finished that up last week.

 

[Tism the Return]

Oh boy watch out, future 6k support mmr coming through.

I'm interested to see how this works. I find it interesting that they say playing partied was found to be a deterrent, as it was something I wasn't really noticing. Now looking back I kind of see it, as I was losing a majority of my partied games due to the two-three stack on my own team. It became less about the five man, and more about the 2 v 3 or 3 v 2 on our team.

I don't know if this patch fixes my issue, but it will likely incentivize me to play support more and avoid the carry.

Also do any Kiwis watch the Bot TI stuff from Beyond the Summit? I find it humorous and they finished that up last week.

You know how that works? Let me tell you. Some rando gets randomly assigned XYZ role despite being in the queue for something else. He rages and first picks Sniper/Anti-Mage/Legion Commander/some greedy position 1 shit. That's role queueing in a nutshell and it's happened in more or less every MOBA that implements it. The stack vs stack part of the update is the most entertaining since it has potential to be fucking awful in ways never seen before or enable what's essentially public scrims at high range Dotes which would be pretty fun.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Dota 2 has received a Matchmaking Update, bringing a massive overhaul to the queuing system and MMR calculations.

Matchmaking Update | Dota 2

blog.dota2.com

Spoiler: Incredibly Long Blog Post

A comprehensive matchmaking system is an important factor in being able to enjoy playing Dota, regardless of which hero or role you prefer. Today’s update includes some engineering changes to the core matchmaking system to allow for bigger changes and better analytical capabilities. Over the next year, we’ll be spending more time focusing on various aspects of matchmaking such as intra-team balance, player conduct, new player experience, abusive behaviors, account buying, friend and teamplay aspects, high mmr matchmaking dynamics, and other issues in an effort to make the overall experience of playing Dota more fun for players of all levels. In this blog post we decided to drill deeper into the changes in today’s update and explain our thoughts.

Matchmaking involves various tradeoffs and our goal is to find the best balance between all the different factors. In order to help make progress on finding the right set of tradeoffs, today’s update includes a couple different experimental changes that will last until the end of the season. Close to the end of the season we’ll do a direct call for feedback on how the changes have worked out and use that feedback, along with data we are gathering in the meantime, to help inform the direction for the next season. We’ll also be working towards other features, such as better detection of smurfing and other abusive behaviors as the year progresses.

The first of these experiments is removing the concept of separate Solo and Party MMRs. We expect this to be the most controversial component in today’s update, as we’ve heard fair criticisms of it in the past. We can’t say that we are fully confident that this will end up being a good change either, so we’ll want to wait until the end of the season when we gather feedback and data on how it has played out after players have had a chance to absorb it. There are two major aspects with this change: 1) the teamplay and social aspect and 2) the value and correctness of the MMR value.

For the teamplay aspect: We think it is really crucial for you to not have a disincentive to play with your friends. The game currently overly emphasizes playing solo and establishes a strong social reward mechanism for this, which causes many players to prefer playing alone than with friends. We believe that bias has over time caused more negativity and unhappiness when playing Dota. Furthermore, Dota is a very teamplay heavy game and we want to consider that aspect a bit more strongly in the hierarchy of matchmaking values. We’ve considered other approaches to the friend and teamplay incentives, but they tended to do a poor job at making it feel actually rewarding to play with friends and only papered over the issue.

For the correctness of the MMR aspect: We recognize that there is a tradeoff here on the mmr data quality if the match has solo mmr numbers with party mmr numbers, however we feel that the impact of that data noise is much smaller than even we initially considered it to be early on and generally with how it is discussed online. Most of the issues related to this we think we can solve with better algorithms. Another common case is playing with a friend who has a higher mmr than you, expecting that it will cause your mmr to go higher. While that has been at least partly true in previous matchmaking system iterations, our most recent version does a fairly good job of addressing this. We have enough data to form matches that cause you to have an even chance to win by carefully choosing the opponents that have a similar makeup. At a base level, we think mathematically we are able to have high confidence that playing with a friend will not have a material effect on your average mmr value with a properly balanced matchmaker. We’ve done some testing to make sure this is true in advance of this update, however we know it’s likely there is more work to be done here and we’ll continue working on this aspect in the background during this experimental period.

Through our investigation into the topic of matchmaking volatility and how parties affect the game, we’ve noticed something that fans likely already know: players have very different comfort levels when playing core roles versus support roles. Some players perform really poorly when they play a role they are not used to, and in turn introduce a lot of volatility in the system for everyone by causing your MMR number to drift away from your actual skill level as well as causing imbalanced games.

So because of that, and because of our abiding love of having multiple MMR numbers, we are adding a new concept of Core and Support MMR numbers. In order to achieve this, we need to know what role you want to play in advance of the match being formed. So for this experimental update, we are moving the Ranked Roles feature to the base Ranked matchmaking and expanding on its capabilities. Now when you matchmake, you will have the option of selecting roles from position 1 through 5 (Safe Lane Core through Hard Support), including multiple selections. So if you like playing Mid or Offlane, you can select those two, or if you like playing Hard Support and Mid, you’ll be able to do that as well. You will be matched based on either your Core or Support MMR.

Each MMR type will also have its own leaderboard, and for the purposes of this short experimental period the existing rank will be applied as the initial rank for both Core and Support. If we end up keeping this feature in the future, there will be a separate calibration phase for each one.

These experimental changes will remain active for the rest of this season for you to try out. Sometime after The International concludes, we’ll issue a call for community feedback to help guide the next steps in our efforts to increase matchmaking quality for everyone. We hope to have your support and patience through this experiment as well as subsequent changes towards the path of making a better overall matchmaking system.

While we were initially going to release this change as part of the Summer Scrub update, the amount of significant underlying code changes required for this update introduces a lot of potential instability. So we are splitting the Summer Scrub update into two parts, this first part for a matchmaking rework, and the second part soon after for bug fixes and a few quality of life additions. We are expecting that we’ll have a lot of matchmaking related bugs to work through today, so please let us know if you run into any issues and make sure to include the matchid in your reports.

The thing that I find funny about this is that Riot Games did pretty much the exact same things with League of Legends (MMR/rank based on role, and dynamic queue), but those changes were hated so much by the community that Riot got rid of them. I do wonder how the DOTA community will feel about this in the end, as they do tend to pride themselves for "not being like other lowest common denominator games like LoL".

 

[OmnipotentStupidity]

Dota 2 has finally released the Summer Scrub Update: a community-made list of QOL changes asked for by Valve to implement, which have all now been added into the game.

Dota 2 - Summer Scrub

www.dota2.com

Spoiler: Holy Shit There's a Lot of Good Stuff in These Patch Notes

GENERAL

• Added customizable hero grid
• Reduced the number of frame hitches in the game (especially in teamfights)
• Some general performance improvements
• Reduced input latency (the game now sends the commands to the server more quickly)
• Reduced camera movement latency
• Reworked the item organization in the shop (includes an option to use the old vertical alignment)
• Queued commands will now show up in the HUD
• Issued a ban wave for players found exploiting matchmaking, botting or transferring accounts
• Added a toggle near the stash to instruct the courier to pick your items the next time it is doing a run (without changing its orders)
• Using the Deliver Items hotkey on the courier will cause the courier to send any items it has to the next player if the courier no longer has any items that belong to you
• Added Talent tree to the in-game and post game scoreboard
• Added a tooltip to non-heroes' level indicator that shows Gold and XP Bounties
• Added alt-click alerts for which talent tree choices have been learned on a hero
• Hovering over a hero's level indicator will now show the XP range
• Added a hero icon next to the in-world health bar
• Added custom water effects while Morphling is morphed into another hero
• Added a custom overhead effect for when heroes are deniable
• Updated Troll Warlord's Battle Trance visual effect
• Fixed Dashboard player profiles not loading for players sometimes
• Fixed a disconnected last pick player not causing the game to be safe to leave
• Increased the maximum number of player reports from 3 to 5
• Increased the number of reports high behavior score players get
• Added new overhead visual effects for Break and Mute debuffs
• Hovering over a unit's portrait now displays a range finder for their current vision range
• Alt-clicking the clock to print the time now also prints whether bounty and/or power runes are spawning soon
• Scan can now be alt-clicked to inform team of its cooldown state. A ctrl-click will advise the team not to use it yet.
• Fixed a large number of outdated or inaccurate tooltips
• Added a special tooltip presentation for Aghanim's Scepter upgrades
• Added hero icons above Tusk's Snowball
• Added hero icons above Phoenix's Supernova with Scepter
• Steam nicknames are now displayed as player names within a match
• Chat no longer scrolls incorrectly when clicking a "Join Party" link
• Ability ranges are now shown when hovering over enemy hero abilities (shows the values for the max level ranges)
• Added an overhead silence visual for Viper's Level 25 Nethertoxin
• Added an option to bring Dota 2 to front for Ready Checks
• Health bars for opponents are now red when you select an opponents unit
• Added a buff to Spirit Breaker while charging that indicates the target of Charge of Darkness, which can be alt-clicked to broadcast this information to your team.
• Pinging Runes now indicates in the text their location ( top or bottom ) in addition to their team in the case of a Bounty Rune (Dire/Radiant)
• Fixed single target sounds playing too loudly when converted to multi-target by AoE talents. (Press the Attack, Shadow Word, Hex, etc.)
• Added Leashed overhead text
• Fixed pinging an enemy empty bottle saying it had a Double Damage rune.
• Fixed pings on large targets sometimes being difficult to see.
• Fixed buyback stinger sound not playing for the Terrorblade player when he has the Arcana
• Fixed Morphling looking bald when he morphs into Kid Invoker
• Fixed missing overhead tipping particles for TI9 Battle Pass tips
• Fixed Sven Warcry not having a radius on hover
• Fixed Necrophos Heartstopper Aura range finder display being affected by cast range bonuses
• Fixed Devour's buff being considered a debuff
• Added AoE indicator for Aghanims Slark Shadow Dance
• Fixed in-game rank profiles failing to load frequently
• Hero Demo: Added "Level Enemy To Max" button
• Hero Demo: There is no longer a 24 item limit (old behavior resulted in "Item Is Not Allowed For This Hero" message)
• Fixed some cases where the cast range range-finder wouldn't match the actual cast range (i.e. Lion's Earth Spike with talent)
• Item tooltip damage values now show their modified spell amp values if alt is pressed.
• Added a visual effect on self solar crest use
• Fixed killfeed message for shared bounties incorrectly stating that the entire bounty gold was rewarded to each hero
• The Damage Taken and Dota Plus sidebars no longer clip into unit portraits for Meepo/Lone Druid.
• Fixed Timewalk having an AoE slow particle effect (since the ability no longer slows)
• Fixed post game progress sometimes appearing when viewing a previous match details
• Fixed Invoker's Cataclysms displaying high above ground if created when enemies were up in the air
• Fixed incomplete error messages for Divine Favor's targeting rules
• Fixed Death Prophet and Winter Wyvern starting to fly visually when Dueled/Taunted
• Fixed the range indicator for Phantom Assassin's Blur.
• Fixed Disruptor's Glimpse displaying high above ground if the victim was up in the air when it was at the position it's being returned to
• Fixed many in-game hero and announcer subtitles not matching the audio
• Fixed the hitbox for hero inspect during pregame sometimes overlapping with other features (e.g. the Guides tab)
• Fixed Brewmaster's Storm Brewling's Cyclone sound getting stuck on in some cases (e.g. when used on Roshan)
• Orchid can be found in the shop with the "silence" keyword.
• Fixed Dragon Knight losing his Dragonform level color after being hexed
• Fixed the Party Finder click region being too large
• Added a tooltip to the Random button
• Fixed Jinada not playing its animation

GAMEPLAY

• Fixed Elder Titan's Natural Order and Drow Ranger's Marksmanship armor reduction incorrectly stacking
• Fixed Battle Trance losing the benefit of Troll Warlord's level 25 talent after getting Aghanim's Scepter
• Fixed Battle Trance Scepter upgrade purging debuffs instead of buffs on enemies.
• Changed Dark Seer Wall of Replica cast behavior. Now the cast target point is in the middle of the wall, instead of the end.
• Fixed some illusions that are not secret having hero health bars instead of creep health bars (Conjure Image, Vengeance Aura, Dark Portrait)
• Fixed teleport scrolls dropping at a hero's location if the courier had a full inventory and a teleport scroll was dragged to its TP slot
• Fixed Monkey King soldiers granting kill and last hit credit to the wrong player if that player swapped heroes with another player after entering the game
• Fixed interaction between Winter's Curse and Battle Trance.
• Fixed Faceless Void getting slowed by Haste Rune inside Chronosphere
• Fixed Visage Familiars being able to use Stone Form via the main hero while taunted
• Fixed Io having its movement speed set to 0 if tethered to a unit that had its movement speed limited (i.e. Pangolier in his ultimate)
• Fixed certain aoe abilities turning the caster around when self-cast while on the move (e.g. Surge with talent, Press the Attack with talent)
• Fixed Elder Titan's Scepter upgrade applying the magic immunity at the start of cast time instead of channeling time.
• Fixed a number of bugs with the Hill Troll Priest and its heal ability.
• Fixed Doom's Infernal Blade still going off if Doom's ability to cast it was lost during the attack animation (i.e. Silence).
• Right clicking on wards that are not deniable with force right click attack will now issue a move order rather than attack
• Selecting illusions now shows the gold of the player instead of 0.
• Fixed clones (Monkey King, Arc Warden, and Meepo ) created while their owning player was disconnected never being able to earn gold/xp.
• The small building in front of Radiant's T4 towers is closer, so Jakiro's Liquid Fire can spill to both T4's in Radiant base, as it already does in Dire base
• Fixed first strike of Eye of the Storm not reducing armor.
• Fixed Templar Assassin's Psionic Projection damage not increasing with levels.
• Fixed Fog of War visibility bounds for Faceless Void's Time Walk particle effect.
• Fixed Fog of War visibility bounds for Huskar's Inner Fire particle effect.
• Fixed Fog of War visibility bounds for Meepo's Poof particle effect.
• Morphling and Rubick can no longer apply Ogre Magi's Multicast passive to stolen or replicated spells.
• Fixed extra Rupture charge being consumed when combined with Soulbind
• Fixed Morphling Morph permanently copying item Multicast when Morphing to Rubick who had stolen a spell from Ogre Magi.
• Fixed the interaction of Earth Spirit's Rolling Boulder vs. Enigma's Black Hole and Faceless Void's Chronosphere.
• Fixed Rubick being able to use abilities when in Supernova
• Fixed Phantom Assassin's Blur being removed by the pedestals left behind by destroyed effigies.
• Fixed Winter's Curse kill credit logic being permanently lost when Winter's Curse is used with Soulbind
• Fixed Pangolier's scepter Shield Crash not triggering Swashbuckles when cast by Rubick
• Fixed Morphling bug where if he replicated a hero that had changed its attack capability [Lone Druid, Morphling, Terrorblade], he'd get the wrong combination of attack type + attack range
• Fixed Morphling losing Attribute Shift based on certain circumstances
• Fixed a bug where players weren't being given kill credit if their summoned units killed an enemy under the influence of Wraith King's Scepter, and that summoned unit died before the wraith died.
• Fixed Wukong's Command targeting reticle not updating properly when using Tree Dance.
• Fixed Morphling being able to cast Waveform with the mana of the hero being Morphed into when cast in quick succession
• Fixed any items (such as gems) being movable to the courier's or Lone Druid Bear's TP slot.
• Fixed Bloodrage counting as a buff if cast on enemy heroes.
• Fixed Rubick's Storm Element not getting Cinder Brew when Rubick had Aghanim's Scepter.
• Fixed Take Aim range bonus getting stuck if leveled up while the additional bonus range was active.
• Fixed Enchantress Enchant buff not properly giving control to Enchantress on creeps that had previously been Enchanted then re-dominated by another player.
• Fixed Tusk's Snowball effect disappearing if its target's model became invisible.
• Fixed Supernova not refreshing cooldowns if Phoenix was affected by Time Dilation prior to the cast
• Fixed Slardar illusions not getting river bonuses in puddles (but were getting it rivers)
• Fixed Rubick not gaining the correct amount of charges when stealing Fire Remnant with Aghanim's Scepter
• Vengeful Spirit's Vengeance Illusion is now properly selected / deselected on death and respawn.
• Fixed the "Select Hero" hotkey not allowing you to select Vengeful Spirit while having a Vengeance Illusion alive.
• Grimstroke's Soulbind: Fixed secondary channelled spells not being interrupted when the source caster is interrupted or dies
• Fixed Monkey King being unable to buy from certain shops while perched on a tree
• Fixed Pudge's Dismember continuing to channel when the target had broken out of the spell
• Fixed Earthshaker Arcana Counter and Echo Slam relic revealing invis units
• Fixed Nether Swap charges not being removed when blocked by Linken Sphere
• Fixed Ancient Apparition's Ice Blast preventing Track gold from triggering if the enemy died to shatter
• Fixed Chen's Divine Favor being able to teleport ward units (e.g. Serpent Wards) and couriers
• Fixed Wind Walk not spawning skeleton archers when used by Rubick with Aghanim's Scepter
• Fixed Soulbind being able to create an invisible additional leash on a third hero in some rare cases
• Fixed Tome of Knowledge interrupting non-channeling commands
• Fixed Treant's Living Armor being wasted if it was ground-targeted and the nearest friendly unit was a creep hero
• Fixed Scepter upgraded Illuminate has a 10s cooldown instead of 11
• Fixed Meepo giving two kill credits if an attack killed a Meepo that had Fatal Bonds shared with one of its clones
• Fixed Song of the Siren with Aghanims not affecting enemies if stolen and used by Rubick
• Fixed Brewmaster's Fire Brewling's Immolation not being disabled by break
• Fixed Grimstroke's Dark Portrait being castable on creep heroes
• Fixed Rubick disappearing after using Battle Trance inside Supernova
• Fixed Aghanim's Scepter's ambient effect being visible on Monkey King when he's in a Mischief disguise.
• Fixed Juggernaut being able to attack creep heroes while applying Blade Fury damage to them.
• Fixed extra Spirit Siphon charge being consumed when combined with Soulbind
• Fixed Abaddon's scepter Borrowed Time not working when cast by Rubick

COSMETIC ITEMS

• Fixed Juggernaut Jagged Honor back item skinning and flag
• Fixed Ink Swell Status Effect and Illusion material for Grimstroke Paean of the Ink Dragon Set
• Fixed Pugna taunt (Taunt: Check this Out) not working in Perfect World client
• Fixed Axe Oglodi Big Boss Head lod0 model, also Rampant Outrage ambient FX adjustment
• Fixed Pudge’s Hook of Delicacies of Butchery Hook - model placement adjusted
• Fixed Doom animation updates
• Fixed Tusk immortal "Whisky the Stout Artifact", "Ice Shards" clipping the ground
• Fixed Legion Commander sorting improvements on immortal "Baneful Devotion" helm and arcana "Blades of Voth Domosh" weapons
• Fixed Earthshaker immortal "Bracers of the Cavern Luminar" ambient effects orientation sometimes being wrong
• Fixed Spirit Breaker immortal "Iron Surge" ambient effects
• Fixed Weaver immortal "Skittering Desolation" ambient effects
• Fixed Dark Seer immortal "Bracers of Forlorn Precipice" & "Golden Bracers of Forlorn Precipice" "Ion Shell" effects and made changes to golden version to help read
• Fixed Abaddon immortal "Mace of the Chosen" ambient effects
• Fixed Bane immortal "Slumbering Terror", "Nightmare" ability effects
• Fixed Mirana immortal "Axia of Metira", ambient effects where depth feathered is causing a visual bug
• Fixed Earthshaker arcana "Planetfall" missing the inventory icon for the second style
• Fixed Dragon Knight immortal "Kindred of the Iron Dragon", dragon tail animation
• Fixed Necrophos immortal items "Sullen Hollow" and "Golden Sullen Hollow" ambient particles
• Fixed Drow Ranger Algis Legacy Bow effect colors
• Fixed Elder Titan Shaper Relic weapon effect colors
• Fixed Alchemist Radiance Sword missing an edge outline effect
• Fixed Weaver Skittering Desolation having a missing effect
• Fixed Faceless Void Mace of Aeon ambient effects

DOTA PLUS

• Fixed Invoker Hero Persona not counting relic progress
• Fixed Chaos Knight Reality Rift relic not working
• Fixed Night Stalker Void Slow relic not working
• Fixed Brewmaster Hurl Boulder relic and challenge counting up incorrectly
• Fixed Lycan Wolves Hero Damage relic counting up incorrectly
• Fixed Dragon Knight Breathe Fire relic counting up incorrectly
• Fixed Spirit Breaker Damage after Bulldoze not working
• Fixed Debuffs Purged relic counting up incorrectly
• Replaced Naga Siren Creep Tower Damage with Illusion Tower Damage relic
• Replaced Naga Siren Meteor Hammer Leading to Kills with Mana Damage relic
• Replaced Legion Commander Stuns Leading to Kills with Press the Attack Heals relic
• Replaced Lifestealer Disjoints with Assimilate with Health Restored from Feast relic
• Replaced Bounty Hunter Jinada Hits with Jinada Gold Stolen
• Fixed Silencer Int Steal failing to count up after a certain time period
• Fixed some challenges that dealt with kills from spells not counting for spells that generated attacks( i.e. Tidehunter Anchor Smash )
• Fixed Mars Bulwark challenge incorrectly counting up instances rather than damage amount
• Fixed Bristleback Bristleback Triggered Damage challenge incorrectly counting up instances rather than damage amount
• Fixed Riki's Trick of the Trade damage challenge not counting up correctly
• Fixed Omnislash damage challenge not counting up correctly
• Naga Siren can no longer receive Kills after Meteor Hammer challenge
• Chaos Knight can no longer receive Kills while Debuffing Armor challenge
• Grimstroke can no longer receive the Halberd Duration challenge
• Grimstroke, Lina, Shadow Fiend, Bloodseeker, Queen of Pain, Storm Spirit, and Templar Assassin can no longer receive "Kills while using Nullifier" challenge.
• Medusa, Troll Warlord, Phantom Assassin, Gyrocopter, Juggernaut, and Vengeful Spirit can no longer recieve "Damage with Mask of Madness" challenge.
• Night Stalker can no longer receive Kills on Silenced Hero challenge.
• Medusa can no longer receive Deal Pure Damage challenge.
• Troll Warlord can no longer receive Bash Heroes challenge.
• Use Urn Charges as Hero challenge amount reduced from 16/24/32 to 12/18/24
• Frost Blast Kills / Assists challenge amount reduced from 20/40/60 to 10/20/30
• Undying Damage With Tombstone Level 3 value reduced from 6000 to 4500
• Frostbite Creep Kills reduced from 20/40/60 to 15/30/45
• Wraith King Kills reduced from 3/6/9 to 2/4/6 and timer increased to 10 from 5

CUSTOM GAMES

• Fixed an issue where trying to play a specific custom game and map combination could launch the wrong map
• Fixed an issue that could cause empty entries in the Arcade Open Lobbies list
• Fixed a memory leak caused by CustomNetTables
• Fixed a regression that caused SetCustomAttributeDerivedStatValue to not function
• Fixed ModifyExperienceFilter not working in the case where it would return false
• API Additions: "dota_scan_used" and "dota_glyph_used" game events are now broadcasted to the server
• API Additions: Modify Experience Filters now pass in "hero_entindex_const" key for the hero gaining the experience.
• API Additions - Global (Server): * CreateIllusions( hOwner, hHeroToCopy, hModifierKeys, nNumIllusions, nPadding, bScramblePosition, bFindClearSpace ) Note: See script_help2 for supported modifier keys
• API Additions - Global (Client): GetLocalPlayerTeam()
• API Additions - Global (Client): GetLocalPlayerID()
• API Additions - CDOTABaseGameMode: SetCustomGlyphCooldown( flCooldown )
• API Additions - CDOTABaseGameMode: GetCustomGlyphCooldown()
• API Additions - CDOTABaseGameMode: SetCustomBackpackSwapCooldown( flCooldown )
• API Additions - CDOTABaseGameMode: GetCustomBackpackSwapCooldown()
• API Additions - CDOTABaseGameMode: SetCustomBackpackCooldownPercent( flPercent )
• API Additions - CDOTABaseGameMode: GetCustomBackpackCooldownPercent()
• API Additions - CDOTA_BaseNPC: GetDisplayAttackSpeed()
• API Additions - CDOTA_BaseNPC: GetCastRangeBonus()
• API Additions - CDOTA_BaseNPC: GetCooldownReduction()
• API Additions - CDOTA_BaseNPC: SetMaxMana( nMaxMana )
• API Additions - CDOTA_BaseNPC: IsInRangeOfShop( nShopType, bPhysicallyNear )
• API Additions - C_DOTA_BaseNPC: GetCastRangeBonus()
• API Additions - C_DOTA_BaseNPC: GetCooldownReduction()
• API Additions - CDOTA_Ability_Lua: OnAbilityPinged( nPlayerID, bCtrlHeld )
• API Additions - CDOTA_Ability_Lua: ResetToggleOnRespawn()
• API Additions - CDOTABaseAbility: SetStealable( bStealable ) Note: Some abilities in the base game do not have mutable stealability.
• API Additions - C_DOTABaseAbility: C_DOTABaseAbility IsItem()
• API Additions - CDOTA_Item: SetSecondaryCharges()
• API Additions - CDOTA_Item: GetSecondaryCharges()
• API Additions - CDOTA_Item: GetItemSlot()
• API Additions - C_DOTA_Item: GetInitialCharges()
• API Additions - C_DOTA_Item: GetCurrentCharges()
• API Additions - C_DOTA_Item: GetSecondaryCharges()
• API Additions - C_DOTA_Item: GetItemSlot()
• API Additions - CDOTAPlayer: SetAssignedHeroEntity( hHero )
• API Additions - CDOTABuff: IsDebuff()
• API Additions - CDOTABuff: IsHexDebuff()
• API Additions - CDOTABuff: GetAuraOwner()
• API Additions - CDOTABuff: GetSerialNumber()
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_HP_REGEN_AMPLIFY_PERCENTAGE_SOURCE - GetModifierHPRegenAmplify_PercentageSource
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_INVISIBILITY_ATTACK_BEHAVIOR_EXCEPTION - GetModifierInvisibilityAttackBehaviorException
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_ATTACK_RANGE_BONUS_PERCENTAGE - GetModifierAttackRangeBonusPercentage
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_INVISIBILITY_ATTACK_BEHAVIOR_EXCEPTION - GetModifierInvisibilityAttackBehaviorException
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_IGNORE_MOVESPEED_LIMIT - GetModifierIgnoreMovespeedLimit
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_MOVESPEED_ABSOLUTE_MAX - GetModifierMoveSpeed_AbsoluteMax
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_MP_RESTORE_AMPLIFY_PERCENTAGE - GetModifierMPRestoreAmplify_Percentage
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_PREATTACK_BONUS_DAMAGE_TARGET - GetModifierPreAttack_BonusDamage_Target
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_PROPERTY_STATUS_RESISTANCE_CASTER GetModifierStatusResistanceCaster
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_EVENT_ON_PROCESS_CLEAVE - OnProcessCleave
• New linked properties: MODIFIER_EVENT_ON_PROJECTILE_OBSTRUCTION_HIT - OnProjectileObstructionHit

 

[Teri-Teri]

New Hero

 

[The Reaper]

New Hero

Not the new hero I was expecting, but it looks like she might be a support so that'll be nice.

I'm curious, what team does everyone think is going to win TI? I'm hoping for OG to get a back to back, just so it can be said that it's happened, and they're always one of my favorite teams to watch.

 

[Pineapple Fox]

A 2nd new hero was released! Void Spirit, the purple spirit

 

[Tealeaf]

Valve has just started banning the most toxic game ruining account boosting and cheat program using players. Ban length reaches almost 20 years (to 203.

Valve update

Enchantress likes this, sproink!