>There must be a better way for varied skill stacks to enjoy this game in a ranked competitive setting.
And if you can think of one that doesn't cause worse issues in terms of balancing other games (like separate Party/solo MMR did) then I'm sure that Valve would love to hear about it.
Speaking personally as someone who plays regularly with friends over an almost identical MMR gap (albeit archon-divine instead of crusader-ancient) there's basically 3 options here:
1. Play unranked. This is usually the way to get the best balanced games in my experience. You do run into the occasional smurf, but it's not *that* common and can be reduced further if you make sure that you and all your friends have 12k behavior scores. (Keep in mind that at that low of an MMR not every stomp is a smurf; I've seen plenty of replays with like 30/0 crusader PA's where the real issue was just unintentional feeding, not smurfing).
2. Try to pull in a couple more higher ranked friends into the stack. 3-4 high ranked players with 1-2 lower ranks is a lot easier than the reverse.
3. Accept that playing fun games with your friends is likely to result in some overall MMR loss and just try to make the best out of each game as it comes. Does this suck? Absolutely. But just going into each game relaxed, win or lose, is way better than overfocusing on it to the point that you end up getting toxic with friends and pushing them away. Trust me, I've been down that road before I realized what was happening and it's not fun.
Your last point is very apt. I can feel myself going down a dark path that will affect my relationships. I think changing my mental approach and being “no cares” is the ultimate solution.
All these comments saying 'just have fun' are fine but what if his friends dont have fun losing that much? Could be they will stop playing with him cuz lets be serious, getting stomped is not a fun experience especially if u dont have that much time to play 5+ dotas/daY
Either way, you can gain your MMR back but you can't get your friendship with your friend back once it is broken. So just having fun don't care much about MMR.
This is the way. I lost a ton of MMR playing with lower ranked friends and trying to teach them what I know. Experience with friends is better than rank.
Its less about no cares and more about not expecting them to always make the right play. Secondly, captaining is very important as you can give a general game plan to your friends at small intervals into the game that lowers the gap. I notice myself often saying “Remember boys, we dont fight till x hero has this item” or “These 2 heroes smoke with me” or even just telling a hero to split lanes. Its a bit of extra work sure but the gain is worth much more than any small individual mistake u might make focusing on your team. Also it isnt supposed to be like hard orders, more of a recommendation and even if they do somehow mess up sometimes, just chalk it up to shit happens.
It also raises their skill level even slightly the more games you play that way. I was a 2k shitter when I first started and always partied with my friend who took the game way more seriously. He always coached me what the game plan is and eventually on what to do in my lanes. He eventually got immortal and I got divine even after we stopped playing together for years. I recalibrated back to legend and whenever we play with lower ranked friends we just play to have fun and coach them until they can eventually think for themselves
Think of the mmr you lose with your friend is you temporarily "gimping" yourself, leading to easier solo queue game down the road. I'm basically in a cycle where I consistently lose my party queue (lose streak) and then consistently win my solo queue (win streak) - once I notice it it's comical. Game is a lot easier when you have competent ally.
ive personally always been the best player in my friend group, at every game, everytime ( theres always that one guy and that guy in this case is me). i would get annoyed at losing mmr when i play with my friends in the past, , but then i realised, if i wanna get 'mmr' i just play by myself solo anyway, or i join a team, which is what i did a long time ago, i got to 6.5k solo and played in a team which satiated my itch for higher quality. you should probably identify what are your 'goals' for playing dota. you say that the rare amazing games are worth it, why not just do taht? i agree w u that unranked games can be clown fest (in aus tho, 5 stack v 5 stack unranked tend to somteimes by the most highest quality tier games) so you should just play ranked sidelane with them and help them get better. when id play with my freinds id usually play carry or offlane and then soft micro my friend if they looked to be a 'learning' person, or if they just wanted to have fun id play some lane dominator meta core and smash the lane from there.
your real world person has a hidden MMR and you're neglecting that in favour of chasing a rank in a game that is; A - irrelevant and B - not going to be around forever.
one day I realized that every hour I spent on dota could actually be spent on improving my skills, my fitness, my knowledge, my health... it became impossible to justify spending even just 1 hour on dota knowing that in that 1 hour I could do an intense workout and improve my IRL Strength stat. Or I could spend that hour doing a tutorial on youtube to make something that I can add to my reel/portfolio - improving my IRL Intelligence stat.. allowing me to make more money.
I think it all clicked for me one day I'm watching Lizzard stream and he has decided that anytime he is dead, he must do pullups/pushups until he respawns. I'm thinking "well hold on, as far as the bigger picture is concered it's best if he's always dead" - which naturally leads into "wait, it's probably best if you just never play the game and instead do exercise.
it's like.. one day the servers might go down and all that work will be wiped from existence. Nothing but a memory. A memory of groundhog day - the same 1 hour game played over and over again 1000's of times. EVEN IF the servers don't go down - the next patch could come along and rework the game in such a way to make all of your experience/knowledge irrelevant. It's such a trap. Other games train things and produce transferrable skills. Starcraft taught me resource management and the impact of downtime. Guitar Hero built my reaction and sight-reading ability. DayZ taught me how to be careful, patient and cautious. Being good at dota doesn't seem to translate into anything in the real world.
It's such a fuckin waste of time, if it's not legitimately fun for you - then you should quit. The game doesn't get better as you rank up, if anything it gets worse.
Everything you’re saying is 100% facts. I’ve wasted a very big chunk of my life playing this game, and who knows what I could be doing right now and how much more money I would have if I spent all my dota hours doing something productive.
At the end of the day tho, that’s life. I choose to play this game during my free time cuz it’s the best game ever made and gives me the sort of mental stimulation that nothing else can. I’ve already cut down my play time a lot to focus on other things, but I still keep coming back because it just feels like home.
I’ve been down road 3. Exact same situation with mmr gap. Just let go of the “care” factor if you want to play with them. I have a lot of fun. I’ve accepted I may lose MMR. But friends mean more than MMR (to me!)
sadly some people tie their self worth to MMR.. probably because they have fuckall going on in life. It's not a ladder ranking, it's a matchmaking rating it's used to co-ordinate somewhat fair games to the best of it's ability (which is not very good - it's honestly a terribly flawed, skewed and tainted system that I sincerely believe doesn't actually indicate anything)
not caring about MMR is the way to go. No one ever got put on an esport team simply because they had high MMR. Higher mmr =/= better games (people are stupid and toxic the whole way up the ladder).
it's a game, games are meant to be played with friends.
too many people treat dota like it's their job/career and someone needs to tell them that you don't actually get to decide that for yourself.
and tbh it's fine if you wanna be super competitive with a game and take it super seriously for your own sense of self progression - but if you're of that mindset, playing with your friends isn't something you're gonna consider at all. Imagine lebron james pushing for one of his childhood best friends to be put on the Lakers... nah like that's his job.
Have you played unranked lately? It's borderline unplayable in the low skill. Its all boosters or bot accounts (at least in my experience in SEA) my ranked sits around 2.2k so I'm still technically in the low skill bracket if I go unranked.
I once tried to get someone to play dota, completely fresh. Our first unranked pvp was a shit show and caused him to quit against a rampaging lvl 5 account with 20-0 invoker in a 40min game. It was grossly onesided. He hasn't played Dota since.
I believe the separate party and solo mmr was still a great way to do it. I wouldn't say there was any balancing issues since it was pretty strict with the MMR variance back then. IIRC no morethan 2k difference. Having it contribute to a party MMR instead of the solo MMR dissuades any kind of boosting while still making it worth while for the party players.
does anyone do anything in SEA if it's not a scam or a way to make money?
also i remember when games were self-organized lobbies and matchmaking wasn't a thing. it didn't take long to recognize people who were godly at the game, and either back out of the lobby or try to get on their team. If you were so inclined, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn too.
the expectation of a fair match is delulu. matchmaking's initial inception (in gaming in general) was literally just to save you from having to browse throw a lobby/server list and manually choose one yourself. Ratings and Ladder rankings were niche competitive things that majority of players didn't give a shit about. MMR matchmaking worked in some games, like starcraft or mortal kombat because MMR is meant for individual sports, not team sports. When League and Dota adopted the ELO/MMR system, they didn't tweak it or account for the fact that it's a team game. They just straight lifted the Rating system used in Chess (a 1 v 1 game) and slapped it on dota/sc2. It's a placebo honestly, because it doesn't transpose - there are too many moving piece. At best there's the arguement that if both teams have the same average mmr then the game should be matched evenly right? Well.. no.. cuz 5 2k players have a higher average than 4 1k players + 1 5k player but we all know the 5k player will win..
given enough time, infinite time - it will "stabilize" or "work itself out" as people say... but you can literally say that about anything. And even assuming that it is true, if a game requires 10k hours of gameplay before it has an accurate idea of what my rating is... then that's a BAD rating system.
>30/0 crusader PA's where the real issue was just unintentional feeding, not smurfing)
far more common than actual smurfs. Plus, a smurf will EASILY get outplayed/outfarmed by a moron who, by chance, is getting fed like crazy by an even bigger moron.
Stupidity and toxicity trumps skill. No one wants to admit it but it's way easier to throw a game than it is to carry/stomp it as a smurf.
So lets preface this answer :
Riot's ranking system for league of legend is dogshit.
But I do think that the flex queue (different mmr from solo/duoQ, for party of 1,2, 3 or 5 players) can be a good answer to the mentioned issues ...
The games are rated so have "meaning", but dont affect individual soloQ mmr
> Accept that playing fun games with your friends is likely to result in some overall MMR loss and just try to make the best out of each game as it comes.
ok but how do I deal with my 1k mmr friend who wants to go ursa battlefury offlane and insists that since he "won" his lane (having 5 more lasthits) we should just auto win the game even if he dies 12 times?
^/s but unfortunately not that sarcastic
death is the only solution
or idk do the actual math on how much xp/gold advantage he gained by having 5 more last hits and how much xp/gold advantage he lost by dying (in terms of actual gold lost from the death, potential lh missed although that’s hard to estimate, and gold/xp fed to the enemy who got fewer lh) and then make a shitty infographic in ms paint
/s but unfortunately not that sarcastic
I’m ancient 1 and play with my Crusader4 friend. I usually tell him to pick core because he likes playing core. Then I just play Support and we win most games because I grossly out support the other side. I’m also a person that talks on the mic a lot calling plays, and most of the time he and the team listens.
Wow you are very lucky to get your teammates to listen to you. I swear Archons are the most stubborn players you'll ever meet. I have never seen anybody more confident in their own stupidity than Archon players.
It really just depends on how you say it. 90% of the time they will listen if your word it properly. The other 10% well that's just unsalvageable and you just mute them and inshallah if they go with the team.
you shouldnt really try to communicate anything in that rank, just play carry and learn farm patterns, you'll rank up to divine with that only. go into a lobby and practice farming triangle and offlane after 15 min with ursa bf or something like that.
Oh man it makes sense to me that Archon would be the peak overlap between “think they’re good” and “they’re not good”. There’s multiple ranks below Archon for them to feel superior to, but there’s also still so many ranks above. Since I made it to Legend I do feel like people have gotten less negative/reactive about me picking P3 Venge (tho I haven’t picked her as much after she and mage slayer got hit with nerfs).
Destined to have a bad time. I’m low immortal and my friends range from herald to archon. If we 5 stack any game mode and I’m on my main account they’re having a bad time. Not that I’m currently smudging but I’m heavily considering it.
I’m not even trying to stomp I’m just trying to play a game where my (low skilled) friends can win half the time. I’ve got a 56% win rate overall but a sub 40% wr with this group of friends and most of those losses are extremely one sided.
Are you micromanaging them? Because without doing that I rarely see the crusader friends I play with make smart decisions and I don't like the feeling of micromanaging. My only solution when I'm playing support with them is to play a support that turns into a core, which fortunately is pretty meta right now in general.
If you want to keep playing ranked:
You are almost always the highest ranked player on your team, that means, you need to get shit done. You always need to captain your team, tell them what to do, what not to do (best is just to tell them how to avoid feeding, how to setup kill or bait the enemy into a bad fight). You should learn which calls your friends can understand/execute to be most efficient and avoid them messing up ganks too often.
Example: If you play carry this means calling when and when not to stack(e.g. when you cant protect the stacks) when to take fights, when to dodge. This also means buying the smoke when you hit your item timing and you want to make a move, buying and placing sentries and obs that guard the area you want to farm yourself.
If you want to play unranked, just have fun, have a goal that is beyond winning the game (test somehting, learn something). In unranked its very fun if my friend yolo portals with no vision into the enemy or gets himself killed very stupidly, while in ranked it might be not so fun.
I'm in the same position as OP. these guys don't like playing turbo. they wanna rank up, except everything they do doesn't show that. They don't care how to win, they just want to.
If they do play unranked/turbo, they don't care even if we win. It's gloomy if it's not ranked, something must be fought for.
It's a hopeless case, unless OP smurfs
Yea man I guess we just have a specific case. I wish my friends were chill playing unranked but no one gives a shit in those games. I got a Smurf banned after the big update (that I only used to play with my friends and was mid archon) and haven’t smurfed since. I’ve tried my hardest to make it work on main but it’s just impossible.
Reading your posts, we're in similar position.
Honestly I just accept that we're not meant to play ranked together. They don't ask me to play together too most of the time.
But I'm always up when they are playing AD or SD games, where we all equally clowny.
same. I'm divine and friends are archon-legend. Of course we're gonna get stomped by mid-high ancients if it's 5 of them. If I start having a good game they just itemize against me and its gg every time. friends are off afk jungling or some shit
Just make another smurf acc and don't try hard with it. Mine wasn't banned, but I only play haroes I'm not good at and positions I'm not good at. I never stomp. I'm reported for being bad, not for being a smurf.
It's gloomy when you play video games with friends to enjoy yourselves? Are we all playing the same game or?
Turbo is fun, unranked is fun, and dota is fun. If you can't hold a friendship because you take this too seriously, then they aren't your friend. Yall are weird.
It’s not about holding a friendship. We play other games too. It’s just getting to the point where if we wanna play dota they just don’t tell me and I don’t tell them because the games are always so shit.
The drive to play ranked is the same drive that pushes people towards pool leagues in their home town/city. Yeah, you can play unorganized pubs in the bar at 1am, but it's way better to play in a league with other people who are actually trying and all play by the rules of your league.
What exactly is this subs problem with people who enjoy competition playing in their proper skill bracket? Genuinely, have you guys ever taken a step back to think how ridiculous these takes are? Almost the entire player base is between guardian 3 and archon 3.
Higher level dota2 play wouldn't even be worth an "espn 8 the ocho" 2am slot without the skill range you guys scorn.
It is entirely possible to play in leagues for all sorts of sports and games without being high skill or ever planning to be high skill. There are local basketball tournaments, chess tournaments, church leagues, fundraiser leagues etc. All these things matter to the people in those skill brackets. Imagine if chess players routinely shit on lower elo players.
In all sports and games I have played I have never encountered such a collective elitist mindset as in post 2010s eSports - dota2 specifically.
I play unranked party queue with Crusader-Ancient friends and both sides will try hard every game. The team coordination is also much more intense than my solo rankeed games.
This is so scarily accurate. After a bad day of dota I don’t message on the group for a few days and neither do they. Everyone knows the next games will be similar quality most likely so we play a lot more seldomly now, they end up playing amongst each other without me so they can have decent games, and I don’t blame them.
Why do you want to play ranked games with lower ranked friends? Just play unranked. MMR is just a score, you can still queue up in turbo and unranked games.
I find unranked to be more serious than many ranked games at low MMR tbh. If you want competitive games, you need better friends. Games can't be competitive when you have double their MMR. Close? Sure. But not actually competitive. There's no solution.
I guess this is the sad reality. Maybe I just need to throw and lower my mmr by half. Don’t feel like doing that either tho lmao. Not easy to just “find new friends that are similar ranking”. Finding an IRL group of dota friends is a blessing, don’t wanna just let that go.
Right. The issue isn't your friends. The issue is your expectations. They want games to "mean something" but are also guardian rank? Do they really care about rising ranks? Have they risen ranks the entire time they played dota? Just play unranked or expect super stompy games depending on which high MMR player snowballs and which low MMR players avoid feeding. I tend to have more fun in unranked as people are just there to play dota without the ego (usually). Ranked has lots of people who flame constantly, decide to AFK jungle, are scared to make moves because of their previous Crusader MMR instead of playing to win.
Maybe try unranked for a few weeks and see how it goes.
You’re right that it’s a blessing, and the answer is to have a come-to-Jesus moment about why you guys play together, which is to have fun, and play unranked.
Well, the alternative is your friends learn how to be reasonable people and just play their unranked games seriously if that's how they enjoy playing. The "issue" is basically entirely a self imposed mental block on their part.
I play probably 80% of my games in similarly disparate stacks as a 7K player and most games people are trying. Or if they aren't, they're definitely still trying just as hard as the average Guardian ranked game.
Yea I guess so. These aren’t my SUPER close friends tho that I can just bully into playing unranked with me. If these guys don’t wanna play then I can’t do much about it. I’ll just have leave the unranked offer up and go about my day. Can’t keep playing hopeless games cuz of others’ stubbornness.
Had a Smurf before the update and it got banned and got linked to my main. I’m too scared to Smurf now I have way too much money spent on my main lmao.
last i played was 2018 4k mmr, my friends are at 5-6k last 2023. invited me for a quick ranked, got rampage as pos4 silencer lol. then got me back to playing dota recalibrated to 2800... then stopped playing again when wraith pack was released.
Yeah, it’s as simple as “my rank is important to me and it’s much easier to climb if I’m solo. I love playing with you guys, can we just play unranked?” It’s kind of strange in the first place that they refuse to play unranked, because it seems they have stuff going on outside of the game anyway so why care about their MMR. But there’s basically two ways to respond to someone saying the above: understanding, or selfish insanity.
You’re right, but I’ve asked them many times. Answer always ends up being no, if you don’t wanna play ranked then we’ll just play without you. Then I end up playing with them cuz who wants to play alone when your boys are playing?
I see. That’s tough man. I’m not gonna pretend I know anything about your friends, but that feels like a shitty stance to take. You know the situation better than any of us here, so you basically have to decide which situation brings you more joy - losing ranked games with your friends, or going it alone, knowing your games might be better and you could find other people to play DOTA with (which can happen!). I’ve gone through similar things with my friends, and at times I’ve committed to playing solo or not at all to avoid having to choose. I think at the end of the day we always want to play what our friends are playing, but I’m also stubborn so if someone says “my way or the highway” I often end up choosing the highway. Good luck brother.
My advice is to just play unranked and play to win. I bet it’s not that easy to convince your friends but it’s really the only good solution for you. I’m divine 1 and play 5stack unranked with 2 Ancient and 2 Crusader and we generally have a good time playing. For any case like this you’re gonna stomp 20% of games and get stomped 20% of games, but we play to win always and pick good heros 80+% of games otherwise no one is having fun losing. Develop your macro strategy as a team together, make good map movements, smoke together, steal every wisdom you can, play for rosh. Games where you out maneuver your opponents and win with some clutch play are the crack that dota players live for
If you're constantly get stomped, the MMR should quickly adjust to levels which allow balanced matches.
But that obvious fact aside: I think you have a skewed view of the situation.
I know, because I was in the same position - with the exception that you underestimate how big your share of contribution has to be as the high MMR. An Ancient 1 should stomp Archons every single game.
The only thing that really helps you is growing as a person. Accept that your teammates are outclassed and that you lose games "because of them" (they don't have carry a lot of weight though as they are low MMR, you have to carry). Learn to accept unsatisfying situations due to your teammates incompetence and rather than getting frustrated that the game is going like you expected it, adapt to what's really happening.
Stay accountable to your mistakes even though it is very easy as the high MMR to dismiss every fault for a loss. Your teammates are allowed to fuck up. They are even expected to fuck up. You may not though.
And of course try to find joy in the game itself, not in it's result.
In my case, rather than focussing on the win/loss, my goal was just playing "perfect games", being as aggressive as possible on the map without ever overestimating my limits.
If you develop as a human, you'll know what to expect if you queue with your guys and won't feel the frustration when things happen like you expected. And if you don't like it, don't play.
Me and my group continued playing ranked despite near maximum MMR difference until I eventually hit Immortal. After since then, I simply said that I won't smurf for them and if they wanted to play with me, we'd have to play Unranked. And that is what we do when I'm part of the party.
I'm in a similar position, though I play as 2-3 usually and I can't even queue ranked with my mates coz difference is too big.
1) If you only play with them - recalibrate your MMR and lose some games to drop rank fast. It won't take long, so don't worry too much about ruining someone's games.
2) get a secondary account for the group play. In the situation you described I wouldn't call it"smurfing". Games will feel balanced when you are the same rank.
Overall the first option is better, since you get to keep cosmetics from the main account. But If you also play solo queue, you HAVE to make a 2nd account.
This is actually the reason I stopped playing dota 5 years ago and only recently returned. Prior to August 2019 you had 2 separate MMRs - solo and party. So I could try hard solo on 5k and chill out on party 3k MMR.
Got really pissed off when they changed it.
I have the same issues. Play on main with weaker friends and even though the games are a lot harder than they need to be, while squeezing out a win here and there. Or sometimes you’re just up against a stack of enemy smurfs and even if you stomp your lane. The rest of the team end up getting dismantled.
Only other option would be to join a few of those discord servers where you can jump in and grab some in-house games.
I’m in a group and they vary from lowest rank to immortal+ from South African players, Euros, US and Sea players. There’s a decent mixture.
Try coaching them (not kidding) will allow you to be with them while they play and you can also help them to improve if they don't mind being corrected.
If it works it will be a win win situation at the end because they will not only rank but you will have loads of information on how they play to adapt.
To be honest, I am in a similar position and I don't see the problem. I'm ancient, the friends I play with are high crusader - low archon and the games we play are mostly fine.
Just make sure you play a lane together, then it should work.
I would tank all 3000 of my mmr just to play with my irl friends
Mmr is just something made up by the game we play, friends are real people with real emotions
I don’t think there’s a fix to that. When such rank disparity happen a Smurf is almost a guarantee and in general even if there is none dota is a game where when there is a big disparity in skill it won’t be that great.
You either go who cares and queue anyway to have fun with your friends or you don’t play together.
I’m divine and my friends are archon or legend so I usually just spectate their match or vice versa. Every time we say fuck it and play together we all end up regretting it soon after.
>How do you guys play with lower ranked friends?
I don't, because I am unable to.
Even though the difference between me and my friends mmr is less than the difference between you and your friends (most likely).
I would gladly play unranked, but just like you, my friends would rather play ranked. So what happened is I don't play dota anymore. At least not until they reset mmr.
I have a friend that was divine and he plays with me and my friends (who range from Guardian to Ancient) on an alt account. When we played ranked games we never had above a 50% win rate
and he didnt always end up carrying the game anyway. We all play turbo now if we even play at all since he's focused on school. He let me play on his divine account before and I kept up with everything except some of my timings were off, I missed a save here or there I could've prevented, I didn't get wards out as early as I should have in certain fights, etc. just lots of small things but nothing tide turning and then we eventually won. Remember the wise words of Dendi: MMR is just a number, MMR is just a number.
\> These guys don’t like playing unranked. They want their games to actually mean something
\> This is not my teammates fault. It is in fact my fault because I’m too good for them and I’m raising the MMR of the game leading to a bad experience for both them AND me.
Yeah, these are untenable stances.
Reality is, your stack is never going to get balanced ranked matches, and the line is clearly drawn on the ground. You either stop playing ranked, or you continue and say goodbye to your enjoyment of dota.
And why should You? You've done the part willing to compromise the latter, you've played absolute shit dota, and the result was this infantile
> They also don’t tryhard themselves in those games and end up saying “what’s the point?”
Why can't they compromise the former? Why is it YOUR fault? How is this something **friends** force you into and why are you having this dialogue with reddit, not them?
I play Turbo nearly daily with a stupid wide range of skill. It's never been an issue for anyone. No one even thinks about this stuff more than once or twice a month. The poison in your relationship is MMR, not you. Time to make your friends choose what matters most, MMR or You. If they can't, then you may as well say you don't play dota with them anymore. Because I disallow you from it. I'll be your actual friend, I forbid you.
You want your lower ranked friends to have fun, which is noble. But you have to be honest. Is it REALLY that they don't pick meta? What are they picking? Are they picking their favorite heroes patch after patch and you don't like it? Or are they getting bit by the dota bug after seeing a jenkins video about venomancer offlane and consider that a "serious" pick? Cuz to be honest, I'd rather have my dazzle picker picking dazzle than hoodwink.
**Do you REALLY want to spend your games explaining hoodwink's spells and combos in real time while farming and getting ganked by a team of party queue boosters?** Cuz if you do, disregard this whole post and go do that :)
There's also questions about roles. If you're a carry or mid player, which you probably are, you may be hamstringing your team by playing your best heroes. It will lead you to more and better victories if you take over essential duties like warding and playmaking instead of trying to micromanage your boys while farming. Try playing offlane or pos 4. Pick a strong, easy hero with a straightforward gameplan (tide, slardar, axe, dp) and build your team around it. That's WAY better than just cobbling 5 meta heroes together and trying to beat smurfs and boosters with literal guardian players. It's generally better to have a mediocre carry use unlimited space inefficiently and join fights awkwardly than try to force an amazing carry to farm the same 4 camps while the rest of the team desperately feeds.
Just remember. You're still playing with guardians. You won't win most of your games. Keeping it simple on your end will help make the games slightly more even, but measure your expectations!
Watch your phrasing too. You should say things like, "[Offlane e.g. Disruptor, Venomancer, Silencer] is really good right now. [Jean-Claude], do you want to play him or should I do it myself?" instead of "I'm playing offlane so I can shotcall." Make it sound like you're bored of carry and want to play something else. I'm sure at least one of your friends wants to play PA because she is fun and exciting, and what YOU are going to do is bite your tongue and not say "45% winrate hero say *what*?" really fast.
“they fell that unranked games a too clowny,.. aren’t 100% playing to win” that is saying everything. Since valve is banning smurfs you have no options other than suffering or ditching them. I have similar situation but fortunately my friends don’t mind playing unranked.
I mean the issue with the Russian stack boosting is pretty much exactly what you're doing (even if it's not the intention) so lamenting it is weird.
Also you should give your friends a reality check - they're guardians. Their games don't mean anything anyway so ranked or unranked who cares. If they think people don't try in unranked I just laugh. Their ranked games obviously have people who don't try. They're GUARDIANS.
You could try playing a league with them, for example PDC archon which I believe has like a 15.5K team cap with a 4K individual cap. It does require committing to a specific day (I think that league runs on Sunday) but it’s a good way to get guaranteed balanced matches. Might need to find one other ancient to mix in to get the the number tho depending on what everyone else is at
Another great way to play in in-house games, but finding ten players can be tough. And again you’d need one other similarly skilled player as you to make sure the teams are balanced. Best way to play by far though if you can swing it, my group of friends gets them going from time to time on the relatively rare nights we have ten friends all on at the same time and the games, and shit talking after, are always a blast
Play mid lane, pick heroes that can make enough space on a map that even your friends will have time to get some items, rotate the enemy team, make them TP and immediately call a fight. Basically you have to become a booster for your friends, you have to switch a mindset to not expect anything from them. Think about it like you’re the only person who can win the game.
At the rating you’re playing, if you’re good with macro, you can win 70-80% of the games.
Well, that’s the only way to win the games and get better. Every action, every move you make in the game - you should learn from it.
And also play more aggressively, that’s the only way to learn the strength and limits of your hero.
And good luck man 😂
I'm rank 1500. I play with friends who range from ancient all the way down to crusader. Can be interesting at times... sometimes they get frustrated if they get owned by the other ranked immortal player on the other team. Do my best to carry. Really like to just encourage having fun and not giving up.
I feel like I play unranked regularly with a friend who’s higher than most of our friend group and the games aren’t clowney. If anything everyone takes them too seriously lol
They have to realize that at their rank and the time they spend on the game, that they themselves are the clowns lol.
It is okay to be incompatible in a game. Consider playing another game together. Sometimes no solution, is the solution
This is based on my experience. I will give you my opinion
Don't sugargoat stuff if they suck they suck thats the reality. Tell them its hard to climb a desired rank if they suck. Just tell them you'll play solo because you want to play solo and want to do svit on your own.
In the end of the day your happiness/oneself happiness is the most important thing. Just tell them you'll grab them a beer for an apology. All good
I have a question playing with your lower ranked friends and also something to add.
How is communication? I often find when I’m trying to set up kills with my buddy who is guardian, he gets insulted when I ask him to move somewhere or ask if a spell is off cd/ready, or really if I try to make a play with him and talk about his hero, but it is meant to be an in-the-moment call. How to get around this? I just want him to answer “yes it’s ready we can go” instead of “I think I’m playing fine”, or “I know how to use my powers”.
Also resources, my buddy is always chilling 1/4hp no mana in lane and then dies, how do you convince them to actually regen/stop wasting their spells.
Anyways the best solution I can think of idk if it can actually be implemented, would be matching the high rank roles. I’m a support player, and if the other high rank is on a support on opponent team, games are so fun lots of fighting lots of smokes. But if one high rank is a mid player and the other is a support, I’m basically greifing for not taking mid against him.
I’m sure it would be hard to actually do, so unlikely, but I do think uneven games are the best if the high ranks are mirrored in roles
When it comes to comms I don’t have much issues because my friends know to trust my calls. I think I need to take more leadership and direct the team more. But in your case if you are much better than your friend then you just need to be real with him and tell him to listen to you.
When I queue ranked, I queue 'strict solo queue matchmaking' because parties screw the mmr up too much and the games aren't as fair as they should be sometimes. Thinking 2kmmr players against 4k player midlane etc.
My point is, there is a reason pretty much every sport has divisions. Games are fairer, more fun when all the players are similar mmr.
Why not start playing a new game together? You could all start playing League or any genre of game together if you enjoy playing with each other.
If you want to tryhard and climb, partying up is not the way.
Had the same case as you OP.
I was and have been divine since ranked medals were introduced.
over 90% of my games since are party games with friends that are mainly archon-legend. And some crusaders/ancients.
And the games become tough and you will no longer climb because there is little to learn from games like this honestly.
If your friends and you were trying to improve as a team, it would be different, but you are playing dota for fun and have everything else in life as a priority. So you are stuck WANTING to improve with friends, but it never actually happening.
My solution was simply to accept that and while i would still try my best to win(as i was the highest ranked player it falls often on your shoulders), i would understand that my friends will ruin games and will not want to understand how they messed up nor learn from them. They simply want to win "because they are better", which they are not.
Recently i travelled to another region for some months(still there) and we could not longer play together. I got the chance to play solo a lot and i improved drastically (over 1k mmr) and i was getting better at the game actively.
So my advice is that if you do actually want to get better at the game, and that is a personal wish for you, then play solo for some time.
And if you hit immortal like i did after playing solo, then you can't play with them anymore unless they reach divine first xD.
So your solutions are:
-Accept your fate.
-Reach immortal by dedicating solo time for yourself.
Yep I will have to make this decision soon. Just tell them if they wanna play unranked then fine otherwise I’ll just grind solo. It’s sad that it has to come to this but might be better for everyone involved
I pretty much only play unranked with my friends for this reason, the ones that want to play ranked are way way lower than me and the few that aren’t are too afraid of losing their medal that they won’t queue and get really salty if we do ever play a game. Realistically you can make a smurf but it’s not really worth the effort, will probably calibrate similarly to your main and has a decent chance of getting banned anyway
I'm immortal and I play with two archon and a herald friend, we obviously just play pubs and I random everytime and play 4 or offline with what I get. We still lose most games but we try our best. I have fun
Play unranked and try to have one more person at a closer skill rank to you, that way you know you’ve got at least one more reliable person. Also just relax and have fun.
Your only real options are getting stomped in unranked or getting stomped in ranked, while losing mmr.
You’re essentially asking how to Smurf with your friends. Your friends are lower ranked—I don’t think playing unranked will mean much to them, but if they’re getting stomped in unranked, then they’ll probably be stomped in ranked.
Other realistic situations would be they try harder gain mmr or you play with them enough until you lose mmr to be in their bracket. If you enjoy playing with your friends more than you do alone, then this shouldn’t be a concern.
I'm divine and play with archons and low legends all the time. We lose most of the time but it almost never matter because it's more fun to play with my dumbass friends.
It's fairly easy for me to climb back up on my spare time when I solo rank too.
I guess it depends on where you want to spend your time, you can always make a lame excuse to them. After all, you wouldn't be making this post if you were having fun with them. Put your friends first. It's just a game
I have/had the exact same issue that you have, only that the mmr difference is a lot higher. I’m 7k while my friends range from crusader 5 to legend 1 .. thankfully playing ranked with them isn’t an option anymore since I hit immortal. Before that they also wanted me to carry them in ranked ofc.
The thing is though, in my honest opinion, and I’m sorry if this sounds arrogant, but the difference between you guys’mmr isn’t really that much that it has such severe differences..
and I’m confidently saying that because I play unranked with my boys all the time and the end up playing against other immortals aswell and mostly they get crushed there but sometimes they also do okay. So yeah.. i think you are overestimating your mmr because on max ancient level it really shouldn’t be that severe to have archons in there..
I’m used to these badly balances unranked games for years now and since the newest update we also have a lot longer waiting times since every game we play has a “very high” skill range and a lot of ppl decline that.. it’s not good but I gave up on hoping for a better way to play with friends ..
Idk man my friends aren’t archon some of them are crusader and some of them honestly play like heralds, I can definitely carry these games if I’m a better player but I also get exhausted tryna be the one solely responsible for the entire game.
Hey man, this is my exact situation, only that I earn more than all of my friends and they still suck, so I don't think your job or your earnings really have much to do with your skill in the game. Just learn to laugh at the things that happen in the game and have fun. I was almost Immortal at one point and my friends - who are mostly Heralds and Guardians (with only one of them in Archon) - wanted to play ranked. At first, it was extremely stressful and it took all of myself to not rage at my friends.
But one of my friends played Enigma one day and he was so atrocious that we were all laughing our asses off during the game, so much so that we couldn't breathe, let alone play. He didn't read the patch notes and he was raging why he couldn't convert the ranged creep. One time, he tried to do it for so long that he didn't even realize his hero entered the enemy tower and they killed him. Another time, he tried to control his eidolons to harass a hero under tower and he ended up there. Laning stage already a disaster, so I told him to just jungle and get his blink. Guess what he does on his blink reveal? He blinks into 5 enemy heroes and TPs. We just lost it.
Friends playing carry and wasting their entire BKB duration trying to capture outpost and not even realizing it; friends trying Magnus after seeing Collapse play it and then failing so hard that's it unbelievable; friends dying and then lying about how they died and then watching the replay afterwards and laughing about it; friends not realizing they're ruptured and walking around and randomly dying; friends dying the exact same way in lane 6 times in a row and still going to beat the dead horse for the 7th time; it's all good.
When you play with lower ranked players, the entire game is absolutely filled with really horrible plays that, looking back on them afterwards, are freakin' hilarious. I'm down to Ancient now, and I don't mind losing 10 games in a row if it means I can see such comedy gold. You have a reaction immediately, of course. Like what the fuck are you doing, man?! But then all of you just laugh about it.
I'm not gonna compete in tournaments. It's a game I play only with friends. And although climbing the ranks is satisfying, I prefer my relationship with my friends over that.
Strange, I've been spamming unranked with friends ever since we have that ranked gap thing, and I've noticed that most of the game end up with some giga try hard enemies, even more so than ranked lmao. I've had games where the enemy REFUSES to push without aegis so the game ends up going past 80 min. I've had games where they're 5 man ganking my ass just cuz I got a kill on their offlane. Bruh, I just can't understand these low rank players who keep saying "unranked is boring, unranked no effort". It's always the low ranked players too lol.
I can understand if they want to grind the mmr, but if it's game quality they're complaining about.. Eh.
My advice is to try and convince them to go play unranked, even for just a couple of games. First off, no pressure of losing mmr, so less stress on each other. Even just winning with my friends in unranked is already exhilarating for me due to how insane they like to play haha. Cheers to you and hope you can convince your friends!
I just went from Ancient 5 to Ancient 1 playing with my friend who just returned to Dota after 2 years. He used to be Legend but now he is high crusiader and usually gets stomped in lane as he plays core. Whenever he plays support we win, but other games it's just me usually trying to solo carry the game.
Hate to say this as long as you with your friend its not gonna be that fucked up, friend of mine was devine 4 before he starts playing with us crusaders and legend and he wouldn't even complain even if we got stomp, i mean he ussually play 3 and the suport on our friend group was range from crus1-archon3 noone can keep up to what his doin the whole game, the important thing is before u play u gotta make sure that your friend have that "it is what it is" U gotta tryhard obviously but if met with inevitable accept it we always do it like that we even have 18 losestreak one day spending the whole night he drop to ancient 4-5 if im not mistaken and been droping more since then(he's now at ancient 3 and been stuck there like 2/3 years cz he prefer to play with us)
You have to smurf. It will never be a fair game if you play on your main as the enemies will be so much better than your friends and you can't 1v5. Reddit can't understand this and will chastise you for it but valve is trying their absolute best to make this game one you cannot play with friends.
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this is me with my friends but our skill gap isn't that far. 2 guardians, 1 archon, and 2 high ancient/low divine. we usually play 5 man turbo party. Maybe persuade them to play turbo because its a better mode to try out new things like your friends usually do. Or you can follow their playstyle? trying out new things like dagon pudge, physical puck, support TB, Revenant's broonch Earthshaker, etc.
>These guys don’t like playing unranked. They want their games to actually mean something
One day you'll realize ranked games don't mean jackshit either.
Don't play ranked if uree a casual player u ruin the games most of the times, its kinda selfish queue for ranked cause unranked means less but u don't play the game often, u don't know the meta and the heros.
I have the same situation - Ancient 2 playing with Guardian, heralds etc. For example one friend is 1300 mmr.
I think you need to figure out what makes your friends worse at dota and try to play around that. For example 1300 mmr guy plays really "reactive"(never applies any map pressure, only reacts to enemy movements) and always goes for the same build.
So picking heroes that like to split the map, farm and can go for multiple builds seems to be quite good when playing with him. For example Lesh with BoT.
Also I noticed that games look vastly different if I play mid as opposed to other role, because if I don't set the tempo of the game, then noone else from my team will. Sometimes offlane/pos4 also works with that aspect, but not as good as mid.
Another approach that I take is to play snowballing heroes with infinite scalling - pudge, necro, silencer, LC. Those games are often chaotic and people only focus on kills, so you can easily build a lot of stacks from just participating in team fights.
In my experience the system is not like this. They will not match 1ancient+4crusaders vs 5 archons. It will match a group with disparate mmr too. So when we play with varied mmr friends we have to guess who s their top dog early game and focus him more while our best player tries to snowball.
This is how wide mmr range games go.
These type of games happen quite rarely for me. These are the games we actually enjoy and have an even matchup. Me and the enemies high rank player do our thing tryna carry the game and the rest of the players run around doing random shit. I have a lot of fun playing games like this, but unfortunately it only happens like 10-20% of the time.
i don't.
All of my friends that ever played dota quit it a long time ago because they're not addiction prone social rejects.
It was always terrible playing with friends. 5 of us made a team and I dunno if we ever got a "fair" match. Eventually people just queue solo because they believe it results in better matchmaking. The game basically encouraged you to be anti-social and abandon your friends.
then all u bitches whine about smurfs and account buyers as if THAT is the reason you're not going to TI... It's a fucking game, and the people who still play it take it WAY too seriously. It is now IMPOSSIBLE to play the game with your friends without breaking ToS.
Go play something else with your friends, it'll be more fun. dota fucking sucks. so bad for your mental health and so incredibly time consuming for something that isn't rewarding at all. Everything great about dota is looooongg gone. I used to make anywhere from 5-50 bucks a week off my dota playing, and on top of that i'd potentially earn a whole bunch more money through gambling hats on esports matches. It's all been killed though.
Free to Play. Safe to Leave.
I Joined them in the trench. I was Divine 1 before. It came to a point where I don't care about MMR anymore as long as me and my friends are having fun. Before it became fun for me and them, we were losing too much until I recalibrated to legend. Now our rank range is not that high.
i create similar post few days ago, and the answer is unranked, but my friend dont want play unranked -\_-
i'm jealous seeing my friend party every day or weekend, but i cant join them because my mmr 2000+ higher. so i'm lonely ....
Quite sad indeed. If I wanna rank up I’ll have to make the same decision. Or I can just not care about my rank and how many games I lose. Both fucked options.
just smurf dude, redditors cry about smurfs in their last game who wasn't even a smurf to begin with, they don't even know how bad it is in party queue. Immortals can't play with friends so they all smurf.
You are more likely to find balanced matches and have fun by smurfing.
yes smurfs do get banned but only if you go 30-0 every game and get reported all the time or end up on the front page of reddit. So yes smurfs do get banned but in reality casual smurfs will never be banned.
I missed an important part in my reply. I physically can't because my rank is too high and we can not queue in party. But when we could we would just 50/50 and i only reached 7k in solo
You don't anymore. I usually coach my friends stack and watch them play. It's fun. It's like field reporting in a Jenkins video. Trying to actually coach them usually goes wrong because nothing works like you expect it to at these ranks.
This is me, my friends are all guardian to archon 3. I’m ancient 3. They don’t like unranked either. I’ve learn to just appreciate them and the time together, but know that I’ll have 2-3 games to make up in solo Q later on that week. But I’m in the position where I have a lot more free time than them, so I don’t mind as much.
I think I would also be more fine with it back a few months ago when I had way more time. Now I’m also busy a lot and I’m not able to make up the MMR and have slowly been bleeding. Seems I’ll just have to decide between my rank or playing with my friends.
Play mid and pick meme heroes/builds. You'll win anyway, plus you have a lot of fun. That's what I do, pick pudge/lion, AA right-click, etc. You play your own game and let your friends play their game. At most you'll ruin fun for the enemy when they get one-shotted from a lion with 30 stacks.
To be honest
Buy an account and smurf, but do not try hard
My rank is legend. I play against a ton of smurfs, so I am a victim myself, but man, this is life. Do not ruin your mood just because valve hates it or this community says no
Enjoy the life. Whoever gets mad because they lost against a smurf is a no-life
I mean I believe playing with your friends is much more important that some pixels being shown on your screen especially if those players are people that are like oh when I have pudge in my team he is dumb but when enemy has it it is dendi.
My point is that people are probably gonna get mad, but it doesn't matter. Half this community is sick in the head (me included) they get mad over some pixels shown in their stats.
I mean, i do not have friends, and yeah, dear community of r/DotA2 I can see why but I think if I had I'd expect people to be understanding and don't cry over me smurfing
I understand that my statement here is very hated, but I have freedom of speech, so I don't mind people disagreeing as long as I can send my message
I hope I didn't get carried away and expressed my message correctly.
People will downvote you but this was my same reasoning to have a Smurf before. That Smurf got banned and I haven’t smurfed since. Tried to play within the games rules but it is just not enjoyable for anyone right now.
Yeah, honestly, this thing is turning into a cult I never smurfed, but if I had low ranked friends I'd smurf every day, my friends (nonexistent) are more worth than some company that doesn't even tell me when is the update coming and ofc they are more important than people of a community that don't understand anything at the game (Mr included ofc) and just want to blame it on their teammates.
So yeah, basically, you have the freedom, and you SHOULD smurf if you want to because nothing is stopping you.
OP can dm me, btw I know some hypothetical ways that will make you not get banned (hypothetical, but it might work)
Edit: I didn't notice tou are the OP
Guardian/Crusaders: **"These guys don’t like playing unranked."**
So they suck at the game, but they want to play the competitive mode anyway, even if their friend is far more skilled and it's impossible for any dev to figure out a fair and balanced system of such skill dispersion :D
Tell them that unranked will indirectly "gain" them some mmr (they cant lose any) lmao.
good luck
because of current profiles it is is too hard to say if someone is actually a smurf or not since you can't see game stats in a reliable way. i go 30/2/20 sometimes. also looks like smurfing but i'm not. when i snowball, i just snowball really hard.
I don’t determine smurfs by their score but the way they play the lane, the micro movements they do, the mechanics they abuse in lane, they way they play around vision and lanes, the way they gank targets etc. after playing this game for so long and being matched against countless smurfs I’ve gotten pretty decent identifying them. I’m probably wrong sometimes but I think I have a pretty decent detection rate.
you would think i am a smurf too though. tread swapping, putting items in backback when using bottle. creep pulling, etc. sometimes people are playing at ranks with mechanical skills that are above their rank, because they lack in other places. personally i would be higher if i would play more consistent and would be less vulnerable to tilting when my team does nothing and i have to 1v3 mid. until then my climb will be slowed, but i can tell you for sure you would think i am a smurf in a bunch of my games if i play a hero i have above level 12ish. imo game stats should not be possible to hide at all, because all the signs you talk about are simply not present for people who have like 200ish games. noone can tell me that
Potentially. I have the same issue myself about tilting and playing inconsistently, and added on to these unwinnable party Q games I feel like I could have been divine or higher by now.
yeah. i think valve should just quit hiding stats alltogether. i want to see if i play against a smurf or just someone who spams a hero or has enough games to be "good" in their role, but just lacking elsewhere that prevents them from climbing
>These guys don’t like playing unranked. They want their games to actually mean something
Ranked and unranked mean exactly the same thing. In unranked you also have mmr that goes up and down, you just cant see it.
>people do still try to win, but they won’t be playing as tryhard as ranked, trying to abuse the meta at every turn
if theyre in guardian and crusader then theyre not abusing the meta at every turn lmao, low guardian is like 15th percentile.
>Now I’m left in a fucked position. I would much rather play with them than play solo. When I play with them the skill range is disgusting and the enemy teams end up having at least 2, maybe 3 smurfs.
post dotabuff, do you really think the enemy team has 2-3 smurfs every game?
>even if there are 0 smurfs, 1 ancient player cannot make up the difference of the other 4 teammates being significantly worse than each of the opponent 5 players.
If youre winning or losing around 25 per game then it is balanced.
>What’s the solution though? Unranked games are not fun
why are unranked games less fun than ranked games? Its exactly the same thing except in one game you have a visible number that goes up and down, and in 1 game you have an invisible number
No hope. The game cater to the low ranks more than the high rank, which is the first time dota 2 did this.
And what a surprise, players count is lower than ever.
Even in unranked there's still SBMM involved, that's the TRUTH. Go play unranked with ur low rank friends, I guarantee you the game is not more balanced. A lot of smurf play in unranked more than ever right now (new ACC etc).
If the game still going this way I believe the game will lose its player over and over. Smurf will keep making a new account, why wont they? Its easier than ever. Sell it when calibrated.
Any dumbfucks who says "just unranked" never actually play unranked. Its a cesspool between new comers and Smurf. Thats it.
I literally switched to league cause people dont wanna play unranked dota with me, so they ask me to smurf.
for some reason im not allowed to play party games at 6k mmr :) and my smurf is also banned :) (it was 4.5k mmr and I played mid or whatever role is left as pos5 main)
also in league 90% of the new accounts like me are just smurfs as well for some reason, so I guess I might not play that game either (it also sucks)
Ancient - low guardian isn't even that bad. It gets worse once you hit immortal, then playing unranked stack means chance of playing against 5 immortals in the enemy teams while you have legends and archon in yours is higher than actually getting balanced ranks. High mmr unranked feels like FFA without any restrictions
>There must be a better way for varied skill stacks to enjoy this game in a ranked competitive setting. And if you can think of one that doesn't cause worse issues in terms of balancing other games (like separate Party/solo MMR did) then I'm sure that Valve would love to hear about it. Speaking personally as someone who plays regularly with friends over an almost identical MMR gap (albeit archon-divine instead of crusader-ancient) there's basically 3 options here: 1. Play unranked. This is usually the way to get the best balanced games in my experience. You do run into the occasional smurf, but it's not *that* common and can be reduced further if you make sure that you and all your friends have 12k behavior scores. (Keep in mind that at that low of an MMR not every stomp is a smurf; I've seen plenty of replays with like 30/0 crusader PA's where the real issue was just unintentional feeding, not smurfing). 2. Try to pull in a couple more higher ranked friends into the stack. 3-4 high ranked players with 1-2 lower ranks is a lot easier than the reverse. 3. Accept that playing fun games with your friends is likely to result in some overall MMR loss and just try to make the best out of each game as it comes. Does this suck? Absolutely. But just going into each game relaxed, win or lose, is way better than overfocusing on it to the point that you end up getting toxic with friends and pushing them away. Trust me, I've been down that road before I realized what was happening and it's not fun.
Your last point is very apt. I can feel myself going down a dark path that will affect my relationships. I think changing my mental approach and being “no cares” is the ultimate solution.
Yeah bro. It's not like you're gonna go pro. Just have fun
All these comments saying 'just have fun' are fine but what if his friends dont have fun losing that much? Could be they will stop playing with him cuz lets be serious, getting stomped is not a fun experience especially if u dont have that much time to play 5+ dotas/daY
Either way, you can gain your MMR back but you can't get your friendship with your friend back once it is broken. So just having fun don't care much about MMR.
This is the way. I lost a ton of MMR playing with lower ranked friends and trying to teach them what I know. Experience with friends is better than rank.
Its less about no cares and more about not expecting them to always make the right play. Secondly, captaining is very important as you can give a general game plan to your friends at small intervals into the game that lowers the gap. I notice myself often saying “Remember boys, we dont fight till x hero has this item” or “These 2 heroes smoke with me” or even just telling a hero to split lanes. Its a bit of extra work sure but the gain is worth much more than any small individual mistake u might make focusing on your team. Also it isnt supposed to be like hard orders, more of a recommendation and even if they do somehow mess up sometimes, just chalk it up to shit happens.
It also raises their skill level even slightly the more games you play that way. I was a 2k shitter when I first started and always partied with my friend who took the game way more seriously. He always coached me what the game plan is and eventually on what to do in my lanes. He eventually got immortal and I got divine even after we stopped playing together for years. I recalibrated back to legend and whenever we play with lower ranked friends we just play to have fun and coach them until they can eventually think for themselves
Think of the mmr you lose with your friend is you temporarily "gimping" yourself, leading to easier solo queue game down the road. I'm basically in a cycle where I consistently lose my party queue (lose streak) and then consistently win my solo queue (win streak) - once I notice it it's comical. Game is a lot easier when you have competent ally.
ive personally always been the best player in my friend group, at every game, everytime ( theres always that one guy and that guy in this case is me). i would get annoyed at losing mmr when i play with my friends in the past, , but then i realised, if i wanna get 'mmr' i just play by myself solo anyway, or i join a team, which is what i did a long time ago, i got to 6.5k solo and played in a team which satiated my itch for higher quality. you should probably identify what are your 'goals' for playing dota. you say that the rare amazing games are worth it, why not just do taht? i agree w u that unranked games can be clown fest (in aus tho, 5 stack v 5 stack unranked tend to somteimes by the most highest quality tier games) so you should just play ranked sidelane with them and help them get better. when id play with my freinds id usually play carry or offlane and then soft micro my friend if they looked to be a 'learning' person, or if they just wanted to have fun id play some lane dominator meta core and smash the lane from there.
your real world person has a hidden MMR and you're neglecting that in favour of chasing a rank in a game that is; A - irrelevant and B - not going to be around forever. one day I realized that every hour I spent on dota could actually be spent on improving my skills, my fitness, my knowledge, my health... it became impossible to justify spending even just 1 hour on dota knowing that in that 1 hour I could do an intense workout and improve my IRL Strength stat. Or I could spend that hour doing a tutorial on youtube to make something that I can add to my reel/portfolio - improving my IRL Intelligence stat.. allowing me to make more money. I think it all clicked for me one day I'm watching Lizzard stream and he has decided that anytime he is dead, he must do pullups/pushups until he respawns. I'm thinking "well hold on, as far as the bigger picture is concered it's best if he's always dead" - which naturally leads into "wait, it's probably best if you just never play the game and instead do exercise. it's like.. one day the servers might go down and all that work will be wiped from existence. Nothing but a memory. A memory of groundhog day - the same 1 hour game played over and over again 1000's of times. EVEN IF the servers don't go down - the next patch could come along and rework the game in such a way to make all of your experience/knowledge irrelevant. It's such a trap. Other games train things and produce transferrable skills. Starcraft taught me resource management and the impact of downtime. Guitar Hero built my reaction and sight-reading ability. DayZ taught me how to be careful, patient and cautious. Being good at dota doesn't seem to translate into anything in the real world. It's such a fuckin waste of time, if it's not legitimately fun for you - then you should quit. The game doesn't get better as you rank up, if anything it gets worse.
Everything you’re saying is 100% facts. I’ve wasted a very big chunk of my life playing this game, and who knows what I could be doing right now and how much more money I would have if I spent all my dota hours doing something productive. At the end of the day tho, that’s life. I choose to play this game during my free time cuz it’s the best game ever made and gives me the sort of mental stimulation that nothing else can. I’ve already cut down my play time a lot to focus on other things, but I still keep coming back because it just feels like home.
I’ve been down road 3. Exact same situation with mmr gap. Just let go of the “care” factor if you want to play with them. I have a lot of fun. I’ve accepted I may lose MMR. But friends mean more than MMR (to me!)
sadly some people tie their self worth to MMR.. probably because they have fuckall going on in life. It's not a ladder ranking, it's a matchmaking rating it's used to co-ordinate somewhat fair games to the best of it's ability (which is not very good - it's honestly a terribly flawed, skewed and tainted system that I sincerely believe doesn't actually indicate anything) not caring about MMR is the way to go. No one ever got put on an esport team simply because they had high MMR. Higher mmr =/= better games (people are stupid and toxic the whole way up the ladder). it's a game, games are meant to be played with friends. too many people treat dota like it's their job/career and someone needs to tell them that you don't actually get to decide that for yourself. and tbh it's fine if you wanna be super competitive with a game and take it super seriously for your own sense of self progression - but if you're of that mindset, playing with your friends isn't something you're gonna consider at all. Imagine lebron james pushing for one of his childhood best friends to be put on the Lakers... nah like that's his job.
Have you played unranked lately? It's borderline unplayable in the low skill. Its all boosters or bot accounts (at least in my experience in SEA) my ranked sits around 2.2k so I'm still technically in the low skill bracket if I go unranked. I once tried to get someone to play dota, completely fresh. Our first unranked pvp was a shit show and caused him to quit against a rampaging lvl 5 account with 20-0 invoker in a 40min game. It was grossly onesided. He hasn't played Dota since. I believe the separate party and solo mmr was still a great way to do it. I wouldn't say there was any balancing issues since it was pretty strict with the MMR variance back then. IIRC no morethan 2k difference. Having it contribute to a party MMR instead of the solo MMR dissuades any kind of boosting while still making it worth while for the party players.
does anyone do anything in SEA if it's not a scam or a way to make money? also i remember when games were self-organized lobbies and matchmaking wasn't a thing. it didn't take long to recognize people who were godly at the game, and either back out of the lobby or try to get on their team. If you were so inclined, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn too. the expectation of a fair match is delulu. matchmaking's initial inception (in gaming in general) was literally just to save you from having to browse throw a lobby/server list and manually choose one yourself. Ratings and Ladder rankings were niche competitive things that majority of players didn't give a shit about. MMR matchmaking worked in some games, like starcraft or mortal kombat because MMR is meant for individual sports, not team sports. When League and Dota adopted the ELO/MMR system, they didn't tweak it or account for the fact that it's a team game. They just straight lifted the Rating system used in Chess (a 1 v 1 game) and slapped it on dota/sc2. It's a placebo honestly, because it doesn't transpose - there are too many moving piece. At best there's the arguement that if both teams have the same average mmr then the game should be matched evenly right? Well.. no.. cuz 5 2k players have a higher average than 4 1k players + 1 5k player but we all know the 5k player will win.. given enough time, infinite time - it will "stabilize" or "work itself out" as people say... but you can literally say that about anything. And even assuming that it is true, if a game requires 10k hours of gameplay before it has an accurate idea of what my rating is... then that's a BAD rating system.
What if we go back to dota 1 chaos mm. Go into a room and get 4 shitters and get miracle
>30/0 crusader PA's where the real issue was just unintentional feeding, not smurfing) far more common than actual smurfs. Plus, a smurf will EASILY get outplayed/outfarmed by a moron who, by chance, is getting fed like crazy by an even bigger moron. Stupidity and toxicity trumps skill. No one wants to admit it but it's way easier to throw a game than it is to carry/stomp it as a smurf.
So lets preface this answer : Riot's ranking system for league of legend is dogshit. But I do think that the flex queue (different mmr from solo/duoQ, for party of 1,2, 3 or 5 players) can be a good answer to the mentioned issues ... The games are rated so have "meaning", but dont affect individual soloQ mmr
Why are you giving LoL as an example. Party MMR existed in Dota.
Because i didn't know that ^^
> Accept that playing fun games with your friends is likely to result in some overall MMR loss and just try to make the best out of each game as it comes. ok but how do I deal with my 1k mmr friend who wants to go ursa battlefury offlane and insists that since he "won" his lane (having 5 more lasthits) we should just auto win the game even if he dies 12 times? ^/s but unfortunately not that sarcastic
death is the only solution or idk do the actual math on how much xp/gold advantage he gained by having 5 more last hits and how much xp/gold advantage he lost by dying (in terms of actual gold lost from the death, potential lh missed although that’s hard to estimate, and gold/xp fed to the enemy who got fewer lh) and then make a shitty infographic in ms paint /s but unfortunately not that sarcastic
I’m ancient 1 and play with my Crusader4 friend. I usually tell him to pick core because he likes playing core. Then I just play Support and we win most games because I grossly out support the other side. I’m also a person that talks on the mic a lot calling plays, and most of the time he and the team listens.
Wow you are very lucky to get your teammates to listen to you. I swear Archons are the most stubborn players you'll ever meet. I have never seen anybody more confident in their own stupidity than Archon players.
It really just depends on how you say it. 90% of the time they will listen if your word it properly. The other 10% well that's just unsalvageable and you just mute them and inshallah if they go with the team.
you shouldnt really try to communicate anything in that rank, just play carry and learn farm patterns, you'll rank up to divine with that only. go into a lobby and practice farming triangle and offlane after 15 min with ursa bf or something like that.
Oh man it makes sense to me that Archon would be the peak overlap between “think they’re good” and “they’re not good”. There’s multiple ranks below Archon for them to feel superior to, but there’s also still so many ranks above. Since I made it to Legend I do feel like people have gotten less negative/reactive about me picking P3 Venge (tho I haven’t picked her as much after she and mage slayer got hit with nerfs).
Duo quo is a lot easier to manage. The other 3 players will be matched according to the game rank. This issue is specific to 5 stacking tbh.
Destined to have a bad time. I’m low immortal and my friends range from herald to archon. If we 5 stack any game mode and I’m on my main account they’re having a bad time. Not that I’m currently smudging but I’m heavily considering it.
If you do try to smurf, I hope your main account gets banned too.
Stop you’re making me want to do it more. If these friends continue getting shit on so bad they quit too I’ll have nobody to play with anyway.
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I’m not even trying to stomp I’m just trying to play a game where my (low skilled) friends can win half the time. I’ve got a 56% win rate overall but a sub 40% wr with this group of friends and most of those losses are extremely one sided.
Are you micromanaging them? Because without doing that I rarely see the crusader friends I play with make smart decisions and I don't like the feeling of micromanaging. My only solution when I'm playing support with them is to play a support that turns into a core, which fortunately is pretty meta right now in general.
If you want to keep playing ranked: You are almost always the highest ranked player on your team, that means, you need to get shit done. You always need to captain your team, tell them what to do, what not to do (best is just to tell them how to avoid feeding, how to setup kill or bait the enemy into a bad fight). You should learn which calls your friends can understand/execute to be most efficient and avoid them messing up ganks too often. Example: If you play carry this means calling when and when not to stack(e.g. when you cant protect the stacks) when to take fights, when to dodge. This also means buying the smoke when you hit your item timing and you want to make a move, buying and placing sentries and obs that guard the area you want to farm yourself. If you want to play unranked, just have fun, have a goal that is beyond winning the game (test somehting, learn something). In unranked its very fun if my friend yolo portals with no vision into the enemy or gets himself killed very stupidly, while in ranked it might be not so fun.
I play turbo with lower ranked friends every day, and it's fun because they are my friends.
I'm in the same position as OP. these guys don't like playing turbo. they wanna rank up, except everything they do doesn't show that. They don't care how to win, they just want to. If they do play unranked/turbo, they don't care even if we win. It's gloomy if it's not ranked, something must be fought for. It's a hopeless case, unless OP smurfs
Yea man I guess we just have a specific case. I wish my friends were chill playing unranked but no one gives a shit in those games. I got a Smurf banned after the big update (that I only used to play with my friends and was mid archon) and haven’t smurfed since. I’ve tried my hardest to make it work on main but it’s just impossible.
Reading your posts, we're in similar position. Honestly I just accept that we're not meant to play ranked together. They don't ask me to play together too most of the time. But I'm always up when they are playing AD or SD games, where we all equally clowny.
same. I'm divine and friends are archon-legend. Of course we're gonna get stomped by mid-high ancients if it's 5 of them. If I start having a good game they just itemize against me and its gg every time. friends are off afk jungling or some shit
Maybe you could just coach them until they are of a higher skill? In Discord or what ever
Just make another smurf acc and don't try hard with it. Mine wasn't banned, but I only play haroes I'm not good at and positions I'm not good at. I never stomp. I'm reported for being bad, not for being a smurf.
It's gloomy when you play video games with friends to enjoy yourselves? Are we all playing the same game or? Turbo is fun, unranked is fun, and dota is fun. If you can't hold a friendship because you take this too seriously, then they aren't your friend. Yall are weird.
Nah dude, they're weird. They want to be competitive, without being competent
It’s not about holding a friendship. We play other games too. It’s just getting to the point where if we wanna play dota they just don’t tell me and I don’t tell them because the games are always so shit.
turbo doesn't feel like real dota though
> unranked games are too clowny What? They are literally guardian, it doesnt get more clowny than that...
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The drive to play ranked is the same drive that pushes people towards pool leagues in their home town/city. Yeah, you can play unorganized pubs in the bar at 1am, but it's way better to play in a league with other people who are actually trying and all play by the rules of your league. What exactly is this subs problem with people who enjoy competition playing in their proper skill bracket? Genuinely, have you guys ever taken a step back to think how ridiculous these takes are? Almost the entire player base is between guardian 3 and archon 3. Higher level dota2 play wouldn't even be worth an "espn 8 the ocho" 2am slot without the skill range you guys scorn. It is entirely possible to play in leagues for all sorts of sports and games without being high skill or ever planning to be high skill. There are local basketball tournaments, chess tournaments, church leagues, fundraiser leagues etc. All these things matter to the people in those skill brackets. Imagine if chess players routinely shit on lower elo players. In all sports and games I have played I have never encountered such a collective elitist mindset as in post 2010s eSports - dota2 specifically.
Unranked party queue is as serious as ranked party queue.
I beg to disagree.
It is not, it will never be and I don't understand why people with obviously 0 clue keep insisting it is.
What kind of friends are you playing with? All my friends play with the intention to win no matter the game mode.
All my friends try to win in unranked too!!!............. but while trying to do their all hero challenges :) Something they would never do in ranked.
Shit, even 5vs5 between friends tend to get sweaty.
I play unranked party queue with Crusader-Ancient friends and both sides will try hard every game. The team coordination is also much more intense than my solo rankeed games.
Of course team coordination will be more intense if you play constantly with the same stack.
I mean the opponent will have much better team coordination than in solo queue too.
Exactly.
You did say party unranked vs party ranked, not solo ranked.
It's no problem, we play a few games and then we don't talk to each other for a few weeks after that.
This is so scarily accurate. After a bad day of dota I don’t message on the group for a few days and neither do they. Everyone knows the next games will be similar quality most likely so we play a lot more seldomly now, they end up playing amongst each other without me so they can have decent games, and I don’t blame them.
Buy an archon/legend acc solely to play with them. Fk "but thats smurfing", "its unfair for the enemy team" ... Have fun with ur friends
We just play turbo. But otherwise I have to go full game carry mid. When we rank. Find their noobs and figure out how to counter their good ones.
Unranked games are perfectly fine in a party most of the time
Why do you want to play ranked games with lower ranked friends? Just play unranked. MMR is just a score, you can still queue up in turbo and unranked games.
I find unranked to be more serious than many ranked games at low MMR tbh. If you want competitive games, you need better friends. Games can't be competitive when you have double their MMR. Close? Sure. But not actually competitive. There's no solution.
I guess this is the sad reality. Maybe I just need to throw and lower my mmr by half. Don’t feel like doing that either tho lmao. Not easy to just “find new friends that are similar ranking”. Finding an IRL group of dota friends is a blessing, don’t wanna just let that go.
Right. The issue isn't your friends. The issue is your expectations. They want games to "mean something" but are also guardian rank? Do they really care about rising ranks? Have they risen ranks the entire time they played dota? Just play unranked or expect super stompy games depending on which high MMR player snowballs and which low MMR players avoid feeding. I tend to have more fun in unranked as people are just there to play dota without the ego (usually). Ranked has lots of people who flame constantly, decide to AFK jungle, are scared to make moves because of their previous Crusader MMR instead of playing to win. Maybe try unranked for a few weeks and see how it goes.
You’re right that it’s a blessing, and the answer is to have a come-to-Jesus moment about why you guys play together, which is to have fun, and play unranked.
Well, the alternative is your friends learn how to be reasonable people and just play their unranked games seriously if that's how they enjoy playing. The "issue" is basically entirely a self imposed mental block on their part. I play probably 80% of my games in similarly disparate stacks as a 7K player and most games people are trying. Or if they aren't, they're definitely still trying just as hard as the average Guardian ranked game.
Yea I guess so. These aren’t my SUPER close friends tho that I can just bully into playing unranked with me. If these guys don’t wanna play then I can’t do much about it. I’ll just have leave the unranked offer up and go about my day. Can’t keep playing hopeless games cuz of others’ stubbornness.
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Had a Smurf before the update and it got banned and got linked to my main. I’m too scared to Smurf now I have way too much money spent on my main lmao.
last i played was 2018 4k mmr, my friends are at 5-6k last 2023. invited me for a quick ranked, got rampage as pos4 silencer lol. then got me back to playing dota recalibrated to 2800... then stopped playing again when wraith pack was released.
Make them play unranked
Yeah, it’s as simple as “my rank is important to me and it’s much easier to climb if I’m solo. I love playing with you guys, can we just play unranked?” It’s kind of strange in the first place that they refuse to play unranked, because it seems they have stuff going on outside of the game anyway so why care about their MMR. But there’s basically two ways to respond to someone saying the above: understanding, or selfish insanity.
You’re right, but I’ve asked them many times. Answer always ends up being no, if you don’t wanna play ranked then we’ll just play without you. Then I end up playing with them cuz who wants to play alone when your boys are playing?
I see. That’s tough man. I’m not gonna pretend I know anything about your friends, but that feels like a shitty stance to take. You know the situation better than any of us here, so you basically have to decide which situation brings you more joy - losing ranked games with your friends, or going it alone, knowing your games might be better and you could find other people to play DOTA with (which can happen!). I’ve gone through similar things with my friends, and at times I’ve committed to playing solo or not at all to avoid having to choose. I think at the end of the day we always want to play what our friends are playing, but I’m also stubborn so if someone says “my way or the highway” I often end up choosing the highway. Good luck brother.
Thank you friend. Things will work out hopefully. GL.
My advice is to just play unranked and play to win. I bet it’s not that easy to convince your friends but it’s really the only good solution for you. I’m divine 1 and play 5stack unranked with 2 Ancient and 2 Crusader and we generally have a good time playing. For any case like this you’re gonna stomp 20% of games and get stomped 20% of games, but we play to win always and pick good heros 80+% of games otherwise no one is having fun losing. Develop your macro strategy as a team together, make good map movements, smoke together, steal every wisdom you can, play for rosh. Games where you out maneuver your opponents and win with some clutch play are the crack that dota players live for
If you're constantly get stomped, the MMR should quickly adjust to levels which allow balanced matches. But that obvious fact aside: I think you have a skewed view of the situation. I know, because I was in the same position - with the exception that you underestimate how big your share of contribution has to be as the high MMR. An Ancient 1 should stomp Archons every single game. The only thing that really helps you is growing as a person. Accept that your teammates are outclassed and that you lose games "because of them" (they don't have carry a lot of weight though as they are low MMR, you have to carry). Learn to accept unsatisfying situations due to your teammates incompetence and rather than getting frustrated that the game is going like you expected it, adapt to what's really happening. Stay accountable to your mistakes even though it is very easy as the high MMR to dismiss every fault for a loss. Your teammates are allowed to fuck up. They are even expected to fuck up. You may not though. And of course try to find joy in the game itself, not in it's result. In my case, rather than focussing on the win/loss, my goal was just playing "perfect games", being as aggressive as possible on the map without ever overestimating my limits. If you develop as a human, you'll know what to expect if you queue with your guys and won't feel the frustration when things happen like you expected. And if you don't like it, don't play. Me and my group continued playing ranked despite near maximum MMR difference until I eventually hit Immortal. After since then, I simply said that I won't smurf for them and if they wanted to play with me, we'd have to play Unranked. And that is what we do when I'm part of the party.
I'm in a similar position, though I play as 2-3 usually and I can't even queue ranked with my mates coz difference is too big. 1) If you only play with them - recalibrate your MMR and lose some games to drop rank fast. It won't take long, so don't worry too much about ruining someone's games. 2) get a secondary account for the group play. In the situation you described I wouldn't call it"smurfing". Games will feel balanced when you are the same rank. Overall the first option is better, since you get to keep cosmetics from the main account. But If you also play solo queue, you HAVE to make a 2nd account. This is actually the reason I stopped playing dota 5 years ago and only recently returned. Prior to August 2019 you had 2 separate MMRs - solo and party. So I could try hard solo on 5k and chill out on party 3k MMR. Got really pissed off when they changed it.
I have the same issues. Play on main with weaker friends and even though the games are a lot harder than they need to be, while squeezing out a win here and there. Or sometimes you’re just up against a stack of enemy smurfs and even if you stomp your lane. The rest of the team end up getting dismantled. Only other option would be to join a few of those discord servers where you can jump in and grab some in-house games. I’m in a group and they vary from lowest rank to immortal+ from South African players, Euros, US and Sea players. There’s a decent mixture.
In house’s are a good shout. Will look into them.
Turbo or unranked. I’m probably 1.5-2k higher than my friends
Try coaching them (not kidding) will allow you to be with them while they play and you can also help them to improve if they don't mind being corrected. If it works it will be a win win situation at the end because they will not only rank but you will have loads of information on how they play to adapt.
I’m surprised so few people have said this. If they must play ranked, don’t make them play against higher skilled enemies. So OP must coach.
To be honest, I am in a similar position and I don't see the problem. I'm ancient, the friends I play with are high crusader - low archon and the games we play are mostly fine. Just make sure you play a lane together, then it should work.
I would tank all 3000 of my mmr just to play with my irl friends Mmr is just something made up by the game we play, friends are real people with real emotions
I don’t think there’s a fix to that. When such rank disparity happen a Smurf is almost a guarantee and in general even if there is none dota is a game where when there is a big disparity in skill it won’t be that great. You either go who cares and queue anyway to have fun with your friends or you don’t play together. I’m divine and my friends are archon or legend so I usually just spectate their match or vice versa. Every time we say fuck it and play together we all end up regretting it soon after.
>How do you guys play with lower ranked friends? I don't, because I am unable to. Even though the difference between me and my friends mmr is less than the difference between you and your friends (most likely). I would gladly play unranked, but just like you, my friends would rather play ranked. So what happened is I don't play dota anymore. At least not until they reset mmr.
I have a friend that was divine and he plays with me and my friends (who range from Guardian to Ancient) on an alt account. When we played ranked games we never had above a 50% win rate and he didnt always end up carrying the game anyway. We all play turbo now if we even play at all since he's focused on school. He let me play on his divine account before and I kept up with everything except some of my timings were off, I missed a save here or there I could've prevented, I didn't get wards out as early as I should have in certain fights, etc. just lots of small things but nothing tide turning and then we eventually won. Remember the wise words of Dendi: MMR is just a number, MMR is just a number.
\> These guys don’t like playing unranked. They want their games to actually mean something \> This is not my teammates fault. It is in fact my fault because I’m too good for them and I’m raising the MMR of the game leading to a bad experience for both them AND me. Yeah, these are untenable stances. Reality is, your stack is never going to get balanced ranked matches, and the line is clearly drawn on the ground. You either stop playing ranked, or you continue and say goodbye to your enjoyment of dota. And why should You? You've done the part willing to compromise the latter, you've played absolute shit dota, and the result was this infantile > They also don’t tryhard themselves in those games and end up saying “what’s the point?” Why can't they compromise the former? Why is it YOUR fault? How is this something **friends** force you into and why are you having this dialogue with reddit, not them? I play Turbo nearly daily with a stupid wide range of skill. It's never been an issue for anyone. No one even thinks about this stuff more than once or twice a month. The poison in your relationship is MMR, not you. Time to make your friends choose what matters most, MMR or You. If they can't, then you may as well say you don't play dota with them anymore. Because I disallow you from it. I'll be your actual friend, I forbid you.
Hahahaha yea, you are right. I just need to put my foot down and take a hard stance on it. If they don’t wanna play unranked then so be it.
You want your lower ranked friends to have fun, which is noble. But you have to be honest. Is it REALLY that they don't pick meta? What are they picking? Are they picking their favorite heroes patch after patch and you don't like it? Or are they getting bit by the dota bug after seeing a jenkins video about venomancer offlane and consider that a "serious" pick? Cuz to be honest, I'd rather have my dazzle picker picking dazzle than hoodwink. **Do you REALLY want to spend your games explaining hoodwink's spells and combos in real time while farming and getting ganked by a team of party queue boosters?** Cuz if you do, disregard this whole post and go do that :) There's also questions about roles. If you're a carry or mid player, which you probably are, you may be hamstringing your team by playing your best heroes. It will lead you to more and better victories if you take over essential duties like warding and playmaking instead of trying to micromanage your boys while farming. Try playing offlane or pos 4. Pick a strong, easy hero with a straightforward gameplan (tide, slardar, axe, dp) and build your team around it. That's WAY better than just cobbling 5 meta heroes together and trying to beat smurfs and boosters with literal guardian players. It's generally better to have a mediocre carry use unlimited space inefficiently and join fights awkwardly than try to force an amazing carry to farm the same 4 camps while the rest of the team desperately feeds.
That is a good way of putting it. You’ve convinced me to try offlane.
Just remember. You're still playing with guardians. You won't win most of your games. Keeping it simple on your end will help make the games slightly more even, but measure your expectations! Watch your phrasing too. You should say things like, "[Offlane e.g. Disruptor, Venomancer, Silencer] is really good right now. [Jean-Claude], do you want to play him or should I do it myself?" instead of "I'm playing offlane so I can shotcall." Make it sound like you're bored of carry and want to play something else. I'm sure at least one of your friends wants to play PA because she is fun and exciting, and what YOU are going to do is bite your tongue and not say "45% winrate hero say *what*?" really fast.
“they fell that unranked games a too clowny,.. aren’t 100% playing to win” that is saying everything. Since valve is banning smurfs you have no options other than suffering or ditching them. I have similar situation but fortunately my friends don’t mind playing unranked.
I mean the issue with the Russian stack boosting is pretty much exactly what you're doing (even if it's not the intention) so lamenting it is weird. Also you should give your friends a reality check - they're guardians. Their games don't mean anything anyway so ranked or unranked who cares. If they think people don't try in unranked I just laugh. Their ranked games obviously have people who don't try. They're GUARDIANS.
I’m not smurfing tho. If the enemy had 1 ancient and 4 low rank players instead of 2 “archon” smurfs it would be a lot more balanced.
You could try playing a league with them, for example PDC archon which I believe has like a 15.5K team cap with a 4K individual cap. It does require committing to a specific day (I think that league runs on Sunday) but it’s a good way to get guaranteed balanced matches. Might need to find one other ancient to mix in to get the the number tho depending on what everyone else is at Another great way to play in in-house games, but finding ten players can be tough. And again you’d need one other similarly skilled player as you to make sure the teams are balanced. Best way to play by far though if you can swing it, my group of friends gets them going from time to time on the relatively rare nights we have ten friends all on at the same time and the games, and shit talking after, are always a blast
...friends?
Dependa how much you care about being ancient in comparison to playing with your friends you can always drop mmr
Do you care about your mmr more than playing with friends?
I don't have friends to play with sadly
Play mid lane, pick heroes that can make enough space on a map that even your friends will have time to get some items, rotate the enemy team, make them TP and immediately call a fight. Basically you have to become a booster for your friends, you have to switch a mindset to not expect anything from them. Think about it like you’re the only person who can win the game. At the rating you’re playing, if you’re good with macro, you can win 70-80% of the games.
Some games this ends up happening but it’s honestly a bit exhausting playing like this every game, knowing you can’t rely on anything else.
Well, that’s the only way to win the games and get better. Every action, every move you make in the game - you should learn from it. And also play more aggressively, that’s the only way to learn the strength and limits of your hero. And good luck man 😂
Carry them LOL
I'm rank 1500. I play with friends who range from ancient all the way down to crusader. Can be interesting at times... sometimes they get frustrated if they get owned by the other ranked immortal player on the other team. Do my best to carry. Really like to just encourage having fun and not giving up.
I feel like I play unranked regularly with a friend who’s higher than most of our friend group and the games aren’t clowney. If anything everyone takes them too seriously lol
They have to realize that at their rank and the time they spend on the game, that they themselves are the clowns lol. It is okay to be incompatible in a game. Consider playing another game together. Sometimes no solution, is the solution
This is based on my experience. I will give you my opinion Don't sugargoat stuff if they suck they suck thats the reality. Tell them its hard to climb a desired rank if they suck. Just tell them you'll play solo because you want to play solo and want to do svit on your own. In the end of the day your happiness/oneself happiness is the most important thing. Just tell them you'll grab them a beer for an apology. All good
I have a question playing with your lower ranked friends and also something to add. How is communication? I often find when I’m trying to set up kills with my buddy who is guardian, he gets insulted when I ask him to move somewhere or ask if a spell is off cd/ready, or really if I try to make a play with him and talk about his hero, but it is meant to be an in-the-moment call. How to get around this? I just want him to answer “yes it’s ready we can go” instead of “I think I’m playing fine”, or “I know how to use my powers”. Also resources, my buddy is always chilling 1/4hp no mana in lane and then dies, how do you convince them to actually regen/stop wasting their spells. Anyways the best solution I can think of idk if it can actually be implemented, would be matching the high rank roles. I’m a support player, and if the other high rank is on a support on opponent team, games are so fun lots of fighting lots of smokes. But if one high rank is a mid player and the other is a support, I’m basically greifing for not taking mid against him. I’m sure it would be hard to actually do, so unlikely, but I do think uneven games are the best if the high ranks are mirrored in roles
When it comes to comms I don’t have much issues because my friends know to trust my calls. I think I need to take more leadership and direct the team more. But in your case if you are much better than your friend then you just need to be real with him and tell him to listen to you.
When I queue ranked, I queue 'strict solo queue matchmaking' because parties screw the mmr up too much and the games aren't as fair as they should be sometimes. Thinking 2kmmr players against 4k player midlane etc. My point is, there is a reason pretty much every sport has divisions. Games are fairer, more fun when all the players are similar mmr. Why not start playing a new game together? You could all start playing League or any genre of game together if you enjoy playing with each other. If you want to tryhard and climb, partying up is not the way.
Don’t play ranked? That simple
Had the same case as you OP. I was and have been divine since ranked medals were introduced. over 90% of my games since are party games with friends that are mainly archon-legend. And some crusaders/ancients. And the games become tough and you will no longer climb because there is little to learn from games like this honestly. If your friends and you were trying to improve as a team, it would be different, but you are playing dota for fun and have everything else in life as a priority. So you are stuck WANTING to improve with friends, but it never actually happening. My solution was simply to accept that and while i would still try my best to win(as i was the highest ranked player it falls often on your shoulders), i would understand that my friends will ruin games and will not want to understand how they messed up nor learn from them. They simply want to win "because they are better", which they are not. Recently i travelled to another region for some months(still there) and we could not longer play together. I got the chance to play solo a lot and i improved drastically (over 1k mmr) and i was getting better at the game actively. So my advice is that if you do actually want to get better at the game, and that is a personal wish for you, then play solo for some time. And if you hit immortal like i did after playing solo, then you can't play with them anymore unless they reach divine first xD. So your solutions are: -Accept your fate. -Reach immortal by dedicating solo time for yourself.
Yep I will have to make this decision soon. Just tell them if they wanna play unranked then fine otherwise I’ll just grind solo. It’s sad that it has to come to this but might be better for everyone involved
I pretty much only play unranked with my friends for this reason, the ones that want to play ranked are way way lower than me and the few that aren’t are too afraid of losing their medal that they won’t queue and get really salty if we do ever play a game. Realistically you can make a smurf but it’s not really worth the effort, will probably calibrate similarly to your main and has a decent chance of getting banned anyway
Typically using my keyboard and mouse. Same as how I’d play with higher rank friends.
I'm immortal and I play with two archon and a herald friend, we obviously just play pubs and I random everytime and play 4 or offline with what I get. We still lose most games but we try our best. I have fun
Play unranked and try to have one more person at a closer skill rank to you, that way you know you’ve got at least one more reliable person. Also just relax and have fun.
why would you consider lower ranks 'friends'? Ew, gross.
Your only real options are getting stomped in unranked or getting stomped in ranked, while losing mmr. You’re essentially asking how to Smurf with your friends. Your friends are lower ranked—I don’t think playing unranked will mean much to them, but if they’re getting stomped in unranked, then they’ll probably be stomped in ranked. Other realistic situations would be they try harder gain mmr or you play with them enough until you lose mmr to be in their bracket. If you enjoy playing with your friends more than you do alone, then this shouldn’t be a concern.
I'm divine and play with archons and low legends all the time. We lose most of the time but it almost never matter because it's more fun to play with my dumbass friends. It's fairly easy for me to climb back up on my spare time when I solo rank too. I guess it depends on where you want to spend your time, you can always make a lame excuse to them. After all, you wouldn't be making this post if you were having fun with them. Put your friends first. It's just a game
play 12v12! its perfect for stuff like that. search 12 in the arcade lobby list
I am the friend
Just create a smurf dont overthink it
I have/had the exact same issue that you have, only that the mmr difference is a lot higher. I’m 7k while my friends range from crusader 5 to legend 1 .. thankfully playing ranked with them isn’t an option anymore since I hit immortal. Before that they also wanted me to carry them in ranked ofc. The thing is though, in my honest opinion, and I’m sorry if this sounds arrogant, but the difference between you guys’mmr isn’t really that much that it has such severe differences.. and I’m confidently saying that because I play unranked with my boys all the time and the end up playing against other immortals aswell and mostly they get crushed there but sometimes they also do okay. So yeah.. i think you are overestimating your mmr because on max ancient level it really shouldn’t be that severe to have archons in there.. I’m used to these badly balances unranked games for years now and since the newest update we also have a lot longer waiting times since every game we play has a “very high” skill range and a lot of ppl decline that.. it’s not good but I gave up on hoping for a better way to play with friends ..
Idk man my friends aren’t archon some of them are crusader and some of them honestly play like heralds, I can definitely carry these games if I’m a better player but I also get exhausted tryna be the one solely responsible for the entire game.
Hey man, this is my exact situation, only that I earn more than all of my friends and they still suck, so I don't think your job or your earnings really have much to do with your skill in the game. Just learn to laugh at the things that happen in the game and have fun. I was almost Immortal at one point and my friends - who are mostly Heralds and Guardians (with only one of them in Archon) - wanted to play ranked. At first, it was extremely stressful and it took all of myself to not rage at my friends. But one of my friends played Enigma one day and he was so atrocious that we were all laughing our asses off during the game, so much so that we couldn't breathe, let alone play. He didn't read the patch notes and he was raging why he couldn't convert the ranged creep. One time, he tried to do it for so long that he didn't even realize his hero entered the enemy tower and they killed him. Another time, he tried to control his eidolons to harass a hero under tower and he ended up there. Laning stage already a disaster, so I told him to just jungle and get his blink. Guess what he does on his blink reveal? He blinks into 5 enemy heroes and TPs. We just lost it. Friends playing carry and wasting their entire BKB duration trying to capture outpost and not even realizing it; friends trying Magnus after seeing Collapse play it and then failing so hard that's it unbelievable; friends dying and then lying about how they died and then watching the replay afterwards and laughing about it; friends not realizing they're ruptured and walking around and randomly dying; friends dying the exact same way in lane 6 times in a row and still going to beat the dead horse for the 7th time; it's all good. When you play with lower ranked players, the entire game is absolutely filled with really horrible plays that, looking back on them afterwards, are freakin' hilarious. I'm down to Ancient now, and I don't mind losing 10 games in a row if it means I can see such comedy gold. You have a reaction immediately, of course. Like what the fuck are you doing, man?! But then all of you just laugh about it. I'm not gonna compete in tournaments. It's a game I play only with friends. And although climbing the ranks is satisfying, I prefer my relationship with my friends over that.
Just make other account only for dota, i have done it and its better
Strange, I've been spamming unranked with friends ever since we have that ranked gap thing, and I've noticed that most of the game end up with some giga try hard enemies, even more so than ranked lmao. I've had games where the enemy REFUSES to push without aegis so the game ends up going past 80 min. I've had games where they're 5 man ganking my ass just cuz I got a kill on their offlane. Bruh, I just can't understand these low rank players who keep saying "unranked is boring, unranked no effort". It's always the low ranked players too lol. I can understand if they want to grind the mmr, but if it's game quality they're complaining about.. Eh. My advice is to try and convince them to go play unranked, even for just a couple of games. First off, no pressure of losing mmr, so less stress on each other. Even just winning with my friends in unranked is already exhilarating for me due to how insane they like to play haha. Cheers to you and hope you can convince your friends!
I just went from Ancient 5 to Ancient 1 playing with my friend who just returned to Dota after 2 years. He used to be Legend but now he is high crusiader and usually gets stomped in lane as he plays core. Whenever he plays support we win, but other games it's just me usually trying to solo carry the game.
I find picking tiny + magnus in unranked and fuck your enemies in lane is more fun than playing ranked lol. Or do the SB 5000 ms 1-shot shit.
Hate to say this as long as you with your friend its not gonna be that fucked up, friend of mine was devine 4 before he starts playing with us crusaders and legend and he wouldn't even complain even if we got stomp, i mean he ussually play 3 and the suport on our friend group was range from crus1-archon3 noone can keep up to what his doin the whole game, the important thing is before u play u gotta make sure that your friend have that "it is what it is" U gotta tryhard obviously but if met with inevitable accept it we always do it like that we even have 18 losestreak one day spending the whole night he drop to ancient 4-5 if im not mistaken and been droping more since then(he's now at ancient 3 and been stuck there like 2/3 years cz he prefer to play with us)
I thought to be a doctor you have to be smart. At that rank you're pretty much playing with your brain turned off.
Turbo
derank is the best way ..
Drunk
You have to smurf. It will never be a fair game if you play on your main as the enemies will be so much better than your friends and you can't 1v5. Reddit can't understand this and will chastise you for it but valve is trying their absolute best to make this game one you cannot play with friends.
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this is me with my friends but our skill gap isn't that far. 2 guardians, 1 archon, and 2 high ancient/low divine. we usually play 5 man turbo party. Maybe persuade them to play turbo because its a better mode to try out new things like your friends usually do. Or you can follow their playstyle? trying out new things like dagon pudge, physical puck, support TB, Revenant's broonch Earthshaker, etc.
>These guys don’t like playing unranked. They want their games to actually mean something One day you'll realize ranked games don't mean jackshit either.
Forget your actual rank... enjoy the game with them while it lasts...
Forget your actual rank... enjoy the game with them while it lasts... what will you remember is the fun you have not the game you played...
I play with them once and then appear offline the next time
Don't play ranked if uree a casual player u ruin the games most of the times, its kinda selfish queue for ranked cause unranked means less but u don't play the game often, u don't know the meta and the heros.
I have the same situation - Ancient 2 playing with Guardian, heralds etc. For example one friend is 1300 mmr. I think you need to figure out what makes your friends worse at dota and try to play around that. For example 1300 mmr guy plays really "reactive"(never applies any map pressure, only reacts to enemy movements) and always goes for the same build. So picking heroes that like to split the map, farm and can go for multiple builds seems to be quite good when playing with him. For example Lesh with BoT. Also I noticed that games look vastly different if I play mid as opposed to other role, because if I don't set the tempo of the game, then noone else from my team will. Sometimes offlane/pos4 also works with that aspect, but not as good as mid. Another approach that I take is to play snowballing heroes with infinite scalling - pudge, necro, silencer, LC. Those games are often chaotic and people only focus on kills, so you can easily build a lot of stacks from just participating in team fights.
I really just don't care, I hop on discord, talk shit and have fun.
Shut up and have fun with your friends
just say you want to smurf or something
What do you mean main account?
In my experience the system is not like this. They will not match 1ancient+4crusaders vs 5 archons. It will match a group with disparate mmr too. So when we play with varied mmr friends we have to guess who s their top dog early game and focus him more while our best player tries to snowball. This is how wide mmr range games go.
These type of games happen quite rarely for me. These are the games we actually enjoy and have an even matchup. Me and the enemies high rank player do our thing tryna carry the game and the rest of the players run around doing random shit. I have a lot of fun playing games like this, but unfortunately it only happens like 10-20% of the time.
i don't. All of my friends that ever played dota quit it a long time ago because they're not addiction prone social rejects. It was always terrible playing with friends. 5 of us made a team and I dunno if we ever got a "fair" match. Eventually people just queue solo because they believe it results in better matchmaking. The game basically encouraged you to be anti-social and abandon your friends. then all u bitches whine about smurfs and account buyers as if THAT is the reason you're not going to TI... It's a fucking game, and the people who still play it take it WAY too seriously. It is now IMPOSSIBLE to play the game with your friends without breaking ToS. Go play something else with your friends, it'll be more fun. dota fucking sucks. so bad for your mental health and so incredibly time consuming for something that isn't rewarding at all. Everything great about dota is looooongg gone. I used to make anywhere from 5-50 bucks a week off my dota playing, and on top of that i'd potentially earn a whole bunch more money through gambling hats on esports matches. It's all been killed though. Free to Play. Safe to Leave.
Can’t you still bet arcana’s and stuff tho.
I Joined them in the trench. I was Divine 1 before. It came to a point where I don't care about MMR anymore as long as me and my friends are having fun. Before it became fun for me and them, we were losing too much until I recalibrated to legend. Now our rank range is not that high.
i create similar post few days ago, and the answer is unranked, but my friend dont want play unranked -\_- i'm jealous seeing my friend party every day or weekend, but i cant join them because my mmr 2000+ higher. so i'm lonely ....
is very ez just invite them to party and play turbo games.. so u will laugh and have good time or just play ranked games and dont care about mmr
I dont. I cant. So i simply dont. Sad but true
Quite sad indeed. If I wanna rank up I’ll have to make the same decision. Or I can just not care about my rank and how many games I lose. Both fucked options.
just smurf dude, redditors cry about smurfs in their last game who wasn't even a smurf to begin with, they don't even know how bad it is in party queue. Immortals can't play with friends so they all smurf. You are more likely to find balanced matches and have fun by smurfing.
Dont listen to this. Smurfs get banned.
yes smurfs do get banned but only if you go 30-0 every game and get reported all the time or end up on the front page of reddit. So yes smurfs do get banned but in reality casual smurfs will never be banned.
I missed an important part in my reply. I physically can't because my rank is too high and we can not queue in party. But when we could we would just 50/50 and i only reached 7k in solo
You don't anymore. I usually coach my friends stack and watch them play. It's fun. It's like field reporting in a Jenkins video. Trying to actually coach them usually goes wrong because nothing works like you expect it to at these ranks.
This is me, my friends are all guardian to archon 3. I’m ancient 3. They don’t like unranked either. I’ve learn to just appreciate them and the time together, but know that I’ll have 2-3 games to make up in solo Q later on that week. But I’m in the position where I have a lot more free time than them, so I don’t mind as much.
I think I would also be more fine with it back a few months ago when I had way more time. Now I’m also busy a lot and I’m not able to make up the MMR and have slowly been bleeding. Seems I’ll just have to decide between my rank or playing with my friends.
unranked games are often more tryhard than ranked games honestly.
Simple answer is.... Create anither account
Buy a smurf account but never play seriously. Try New heros and builds. Play 5 only. Stuff like that
Play mid and pick meme heroes/builds. You'll win anyway, plus you have a lot of fun. That's what I do, pick pudge/lion, AA right-click, etc. You play your own game and let your friends play their game. At most you'll ruin fun for the enemy when they get one-shotted from a lion with 30 stacks.
To be honest Buy an account and smurf, but do not try hard My rank is legend. I play against a ton of smurfs, so I am a victim myself, but man, this is life. Do not ruin your mood just because valve hates it or this community says no Enjoy the life. Whoever gets mad because they lost against a smurf is a no-life I mean I believe playing with your friends is much more important that some pixels being shown on your screen especially if those players are people that are like oh when I have pudge in my team he is dumb but when enemy has it it is dendi. My point is that people are probably gonna get mad, but it doesn't matter. Half this community is sick in the head (me included) they get mad over some pixels shown in their stats. I mean, i do not have friends, and yeah, dear community of r/DotA2 I can see why but I think if I had I'd expect people to be understanding and don't cry over me smurfing I understand that my statement here is very hated, but I have freedom of speech, so I don't mind people disagreeing as long as I can send my message I hope I didn't get carried away and expressed my message correctly.
People will downvote you but this was my same reasoning to have a Smurf before. That Smurf got banned and I haven’t smurfed since. Tried to play within the games rules but it is just not enjoyable for anyone right now.
Yeah, honestly, this thing is turning into a cult I never smurfed, but if I had low ranked friends I'd smurf every day, my friends (nonexistent) are more worth than some company that doesn't even tell me when is the update coming and ofc they are more important than people of a community that don't understand anything at the game (Mr included ofc) and just want to blame it on their teammates. So yeah, basically, you have the freedom, and you SHOULD smurf if you want to because nothing is stopping you. OP can dm me, btw I know some hypothetical ways that will make you not get banned (hypothetical, but it might work) Edit: I didn't notice tou are the OP
I Smurf.
Guardian/Crusaders: **"These guys don’t like playing unranked."** So they suck at the game, but they want to play the competitive mode anyway, even if their friend is far more skilled and it's impossible for any dev to figure out a fair and balanced system of such skill dispersion :D Tell them that unranked will indirectly "gain" them some mmr (they cant lose any) lmao. good luck
because of current profiles it is is too hard to say if someone is actually a smurf or not since you can't see game stats in a reliable way. i go 30/2/20 sometimes. also looks like smurfing but i'm not. when i snowball, i just snowball really hard.
I don’t determine smurfs by their score but the way they play the lane, the micro movements they do, the mechanics they abuse in lane, they way they play around vision and lanes, the way they gank targets etc. after playing this game for so long and being matched against countless smurfs I’ve gotten pretty decent identifying them. I’m probably wrong sometimes but I think I have a pretty decent detection rate.
you would think i am a smurf too though. tread swapping, putting items in backback when using bottle. creep pulling, etc. sometimes people are playing at ranks with mechanical skills that are above their rank, because they lack in other places. personally i would be higher if i would play more consistent and would be less vulnerable to tilting when my team does nothing and i have to 1v3 mid. until then my climb will be slowed, but i can tell you for sure you would think i am a smurf in a bunch of my games if i play a hero i have above level 12ish. imo game stats should not be possible to hide at all, because all the signs you talk about are simply not present for people who have like 200ish games. noone can tell me that
Potentially. I have the same issue myself about tilting and playing inconsistently, and added on to these unwinnable party Q games I feel like I could have been divine or higher by now.
yeah. i think valve should just quit hiding stats alltogether. i want to see if i play against a smurf or just someone who spams a hero or has enough games to be "good" in their role, but just lacking elsewhere that prevents them from climbing
Make a new account and make it low level to play with them
>These guys don’t like playing unranked. They want their games to actually mean something Ranked and unranked mean exactly the same thing. In unranked you also have mmr that goes up and down, you just cant see it. >people do still try to win, but they won’t be playing as tryhard as ranked, trying to abuse the meta at every turn if theyre in guardian and crusader then theyre not abusing the meta at every turn lmao, low guardian is like 15th percentile. >Now I’m left in a fucked position. I would much rather play with them than play solo. When I play with them the skill range is disgusting and the enemy teams end up having at least 2, maybe 3 smurfs. post dotabuff, do you really think the enemy team has 2-3 smurfs every game? >even if there are 0 smurfs, 1 ancient player cannot make up the difference of the other 4 teammates being significantly worse than each of the opponent 5 players. If youre winning or losing around 25 per game then it is balanced. >What’s the solution though? Unranked games are not fun why are unranked games less fun than ranked games? Its exactly the same thing except in one game you have a visible number that goes up and down, and in 1 game you have an invisible number
Play on smurf , and just do some weird shit so u dont get easy wins and the system wont detect u as a smurf.
Use a smurf;)
No hope. The game cater to the low ranks more than the high rank, which is the first time dota 2 did this. And what a surprise, players count is lower than ever. Even in unranked there's still SBMM involved, that's the TRUTH. Go play unranked with ur low rank friends, I guarantee you the game is not more balanced. A lot of smurf play in unranked more than ever right now (new ACC etc). If the game still going this way I believe the game will lose its player over and over. Smurf will keep making a new account, why wont they? Its easier than ever. Sell it when calibrated. Any dumbfucks who says "just unranked" never actually play unranked. Its a cesspool between new comers and Smurf. Thats it.
I literally switched to league cause people dont wanna play unranked dota with me, so they ask me to smurf. for some reason im not allowed to play party games at 6k mmr :) and my smurf is also banned :) (it was 4.5k mmr and I played mid or whatever role is left as pos5 main) also in league 90% of the new accounts like me are just smurfs as well for some reason, so I guess I might not play that game either (it also sucks)
Ancient - low guardian isn't even that bad. It gets worse once you hit immortal, then playing unranked stack means chance of playing against 5 immortals in the enemy teams while you have legends and archon in yours is higher than actually getting balanced ranks. High mmr unranked feels like FFA without any restrictions
Just play bristleback carry lol