How to gain mmr using development strategies

or, how to effectively spend your time to actively improve at Dota 2.

Dota 2 is not an easy game. Let there be no misconception that it is easy to change your mindset and improve at the game. I’m an Immortal ranked player, but it’s not been an easy task to get here. Calibrating at 900 mmr when first playing ranked gave me perspective that I really wasn’t good. So, climbing through the medals, and being an immortal player now, this is my experience.

Lets get into it, then. First and foremost, you are the only constant in your games. The faster you can accept this, the faster you will get into the correct mentality- the growth mentality. There are several mental traps that lead to most people unsuccessfully playing many games a day, and getting frustrated about why they aren’t climbing.

Forced 50% winrate.

This is a myth. Valve’s matchmaking algorithm is not smart enough to place griefers with you when you’re on a win-streak. Instead, normally you’ve been on a team who gel together, or have a fewer amount of griefers than the norm. The entire point of the MMR system is to find your skill level, where all players will tend toward 50%, if skill remains stagnant.

In a nutshell, Dota’s MMR system is for 0 sum games, where rating is deducted and added equally between the winning and losing party. A good example of this is the herald, who bought his 10,000 MMR account, and proceeded to lose 20 consecutive games before getting his account banned for account-buying. Similarly, higher MMR players, when smurfing several thousand MMR below their main will go on ridiculous win-streaks and have huge KDAs, no matter their position.

Mental attitude

It’s highly important to determine what kind of a mindset you are in, before even thinking about hitting the “queue” button. If you don’t feel that the best way to spend your time at that given moment is queueing for a ranked game, go do something else. Playing 20 games a day will not promote healthy improvement- you’ll only be frustrated if you go 10–10. Similarly, even if you are in the correct mindset at the start of the game, you might end up losing, anyway, and decide to queue another. This is what I class as tilt-queueing.

I’m highly guilty of tilt-queuing, after having had a griefer in my past game, and I end up playing terribly and feel awful after the game. Maintaining a positive mental attitude is highly important, and recognizing when you’re tilted and choosing not to make your allies feel bad (not pressing your chat key) will gain you wins, rather than losses.

My current strategy for maintaining a positive mental attitude is to take a couple minutes after every game- stretch, walk around, make a cup of tea. This has sometimes even made me realize I was tilted after a win, and as such I don’t queue another.

Something else to consider is that you aren’t being overconfident when going into ranked games. Some level of confidence is healthy, however, when you go into games expecting to win 55–60%, and end up tending closer toward a 53%, you’ll feel unhappy, even with a positive winrate. A decent level of confidence is necessary when queueing, however, so the hard part is identifying the balance, and not getting emotional about the statistics of it all.

You are the only constant in your games. You may have people breaking items, or walking down mid, or writing GG in all chat at minute 5, however, statistically, as long as you aren’t the one being toxic, you have a larger % chance of the griefer being on the enemy team.

My personal experience

I used my different ranked season data here. Using seasons 2, 3 and 4, I was able to identify factors impacting my winrate.

In the above images, my winrate in Season 3 was abysmal. This is because I was playing games while tilted, queueing whenever and generally not having a growth mindset while playing. I also had no self control, and would often queue to escape reality. Queueing until a win is one of the worst things you can do to your MMR, so is thinking that you need to be on equal mmr ending the day. Often, in Season 3, I would try to end the day being equal to my starting mmr, and ended up being -120 in a day. Once you get trapped in the spiral of attempting to regain lost mmr, your mindset will consistently be worse and you’ll be easier to tilt.

Growth mindset and analysing games

This is more of an abstract concept that can be a little harder to grasp. Growth mindset is thinking about yourself relative to the game played- don’t blame the teammates, but instead start thinking about where you went wrong. Believing that you will improve from putting in effort is important- a couple bad games shouldn’t get you down.

Analysing games is not an easy task. A basic way of analysing games is watching back your replay from your perspective, and trying to track enemy movements, and pausing every couple of minutes to look at the fog of both teams. Seeing where they were and reasoning out why they were there is a good way to build map awareness. Something else you can do is look at dota2protracker and compare a replay of a top player to your own. Thinking about why they made decisions differently is a fast way to recognize flaws in your own gameplay.

Setting rules for yourself when playing ranked is important- losing two games in a row, no matter how the games feel is a great way to minimize losses per day. Of course, the number can be adjusted based on your own risk tolerance, and mindset.

• No more than 2 losses in a session
• Take a couple minutes after every game to reassess mental state
• Don’t play if mental state is unstable/tilted.

Sometimes, I’ll lose 2 games in the morning, and come back in the evening after a full reset, and go on to win games. Making sure you are fully reset before starting the next session is very important, so tilt and unhappiness doesn’t perpetuate.

Conclusion

Overall, getting better at Dota is an arduous process, with plenty of factors to consider. Mentality, rules for each session and analysing losses are really the basic way to improve. Going above and beyond would be comparing play to top players. Being able to remain in a positive mental state, even when analysing losses is integral to gaining mmr. Also, don’t get tilted from people laughing at you when you go on red days, take a break!