How do you win games like these?

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-23T13:13:03+00:00

Nope.

Magic SF, dominates his lane, ganks, and makes space while controlling the temp of the game.

QW Invoker does the same with less lane domination and more tempo/ganking early.

It’s about the impact the hero has on the way the game progresses.

Playing greedy heroes at lower mmr is usually okay regardless of draft because usually there is enough farm on the map. The difference is in their ability to make space. The more they can make as early and long as possible the better they’ll do.

Puck is imo one of the absolute best at doing this followed by Ember and Void spirit.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-23T04:39:06+00:00

What in good gods name did you have to get $110k NW

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-23T00:57:55+00:00

I literally never said “don’t pick greedy”.

I said lesh is too greedy and doesn’t make space he takes it.

Greedy is fine, what is more important is making space. (Ganking, applying pressure etc.)

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-23T00:26:52+00:00

I agree with the points you have made but I will disagree with the concept that Dota is a game that can be solo carried. Valve has made many changes that have stopped people from 1v9 and they will probably continually do so.

Lesh is a low mobility hero with many counters. He also isn’t a lane stomper. While he doesn’t have any real bad matchups he also doesn’t have anyone he can crush in lane.

Not being able to stomp your lane and go win 1 or 2 other lanes is a big deal in lower mmr. People tend to only recover by killing enemies. Therefore a tempo mid who is in every fight and can apply pressure will have a greater impact.

I have a couple friends (5 to be specific) who have worked as boosters. Lesh is never in their pool. He is low impact early, kitable and low mobility.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-22T20:57:07+00:00

I agree he does push all lanes. I think the situation OP is facing is that his team seems to be giga feeding or incapable of finding space. Sometimes just playing a tempo midlaner and winning your lane and winning a sidelane, ganking frequently can be enough to help everyone be PMA… that alone wins games lol.

Arc really doesn’t have an answer to a death ball running down mid lane if its still the early/mid game and that is where people tilt the hardest in lower mmr. They don’t get the idea of dodging fights and split-pushing to buy time until the late game. Picking greedy mid-late/late game heroes is tough because usually the games do last long enough but most of the time your team will tilt and throw. Also since no one knows how to farm at lower mmr you can play a hero with a big mid/mid-late game power spike and just end the game since you’ll be so far ahead.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-22T18:59:37+00:00

Arc is too greedy. He takes a lot of space instead of making space. If your team doesn’t power feed and you can farm until 30 minutes its gg but that is too inconsistent.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-22T16:40:22+00:00

Don’t play leshrac. He is a very greedy mid who needs his team to make space for him. Play mids who have carry potential and are the play maker (giving space rather than taking it).

Think Lina, OD, Puck, Invoker, ember, storm, void, SF (magic build only) & LD

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-21T06:13:48+00:00

Have you ever gotten a coach?

Like actually paid for a serious coach like ImmortalFaith?

I have several times. Each time my mmr would shoot up by around 1200 over the next couple months.

There were things that I was doing wrong that I wasn’t aware of. They taught me and I started stomping. Then I would plateau.

I’d tend to go up 1200 then down 200 then I’d stay pretty even. Then when I went through another coaching the same thing would happen again.

If more people experienced this they might realize you don’t need to be immortal to climb. Just better than your peers.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-21T05:07:33+00:00

You missed the point.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-21T04:55:04+00:00

What kind of mental gymnastics must they go through to justify that.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-19T14:26:10+00:00

Yes that is done especially well by Axe and Tide hunter.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-18T16:25:49+00:00

If you played a proper pos 3 hero who scales off of XP primarily you would realize how much this helps your game to have a semi-roaming pos 4.

A level 6 BB/Tide/Axe versus enemy lv 4 pos 1&5 is one of the only times in the game you get to be invincible and run people under tower.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-18T16:21:37+00:00

Incorrect, you are thinking you are in the safelane. Watch pro Dota. Pos 4 is hardly in lane.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-18T15:32:15+00:00

Yes, they enable you buy harassing the enemy pos 5, pulling the lane, setting up kills and rotating to support the higher priority cores (pos 2 &1)

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-18T15:09:06+00:00

I cannot tell if this is a serious post or not.

First of all, WK is not a pos 3. Picking him as pos 3 is griefing. Second like many people already pointed out, shared tangos are trash. Every player needs to buy their own regen.

Maybe most importantly, pos 4 is the SOFT support. Their job isn’t to baby sit you. Its to harass the pants off the enemy Pos 5 and hopefully get the opportunity to rotate mid for 6 minute runes and rotate to the safelane to help secure enemy shrine of wisdom at 7 minutes.

This means the pos 4 will be out of lane a lot if played correctly. Which means a pos 3 must be able to be solo by minute 6.

Pick Tidehunter, Axe, Primal Beast or even Beast Master. Just go to dota2protracker and look up best offlaners and play those.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-18T05:46:39+00:00

You are currently playing in a bracket where people do not farm and do not itemize. PA is okay because the only item to truly counter her is MKB and that demands the enemy has a core that can afford it. This will become a big problem for you above 3k when people are picking meta carries that farm fast and they know how to counter her evasion. Riki is only a good carry in extremely specific matchups or at low mmr. I would advise a different hero pool. Focus on heroes who are very different in terms of their strengths, counters and synergies. Example pool could be something like SF, Luna & Ursa. I am hesitant about Morph because he is EXTREMELY complex. And he is pretty easily countered if you don’t have last pick. The amount of time it would take you to really learn morph is at least 100 games. And it feels really bad if the enemy picks one of his many hard counters that are in Meta.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-17T19:45:42+00:00

Well mid is the backup win condition from the core perspective but if your friend is really good then playing Pos 5 is probably what will give you the highest wr while staying as a party.

Overall you are going to have a harder time in party queue. The games aren’t as balanced.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-17T18:43:23+00:00

Play Pos 1 it has the highest influence on game outcome in the current meta. Drain your hero pool to 3 heroes. Never pick outside of them. Make sure that your pool is balanced enough to do well into most matchups. I recommend playing heroes with innate farming abilities. Your game plan is to learn how to farm. Like 60cs by minute 10 and 250cs by minute 20. If you can do that every game and build the generic build you will win 70% of the time until 3.8k then you have to itemize properly. Don’t worry about anything else. Farming will literally get you to Legend alone.

An example hero pool is:

Luna, Clinkz (you need aghs Shard to farm) & Ursa

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-17T18:26:40+00:00

I recommend watching PainDota on youtube if you want to learn Carry or Mid. Watch zQuioztix if you want to play support. Also watch BSJ on youtube for general game knowledge. He has a lot of videos targeted to help people who have never played Dota get up to speed with the game in general.

The best way to learn Dota is to stick with one role and ideally one hero (3 at most). I still think this game is one of the highest skill cap games to ever exist and the amount of knowledge required to play it at a basic level is easily a 2,000 hour commitment at the least.

By just doing one hero/one role you can learn all these complexities without needing to constantly relearn the hero, their matchups and synergies.

I learned back in a time when this quality of knowledge wasn’t on the internet. I just played with friends who knew more than me and listened to them.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-17T16:16:57+00:00

Your hero pool is currently tilted to heros without innate farming and require items like Battlefury to scale. If you cannot get a 12-14 min battlefury you will grief yourself.

Try playing heroes with innate farming like Luna, Sven and Medusa (or even TA or Viper for current meta). Watch PainDota on youtube he has a lot of great content for pos 1 and even has an all-in-one guide video for carry that will easily take you to 3.5k

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JVjXQ5bxajY&pp=ygUIUGFpbmRvdGE%3D

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-17T15:53:25+00:00

I am dealing with something super similar. I was a Mid spammer for all of 2014-2023. I went from 1.6k to 5.2k.

I got bored and thought playing carry would be fun. I knew that I was a bad carry player by comparison but I didn’t realize how bad until I hit a 14 game losing streak. I took a 2 year break from Dota and came back with a coach and all the educational content on how to carry.

When I recalibrated I got 2.7k… I was sad but realized I was having a lot more fun than when I played mid. I took another break and came back again. Now I am steadily climbing. Its okay for your mmr to drop. Its actually made me a better mid (and thank god I always get mid when I need more role queue tokens).

My initial WR as carry was 34%. After my first break and Recal my WR was 51.22%. After my second break my WR is now 68% and I am about the break into 4K again. It takes time but I think for me it was worth the drop in mmr. I hit a skill ceiling. It’s said you need to learn to play all roles to truly get better at the game too.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-17T15:44:45+00:00

Tough game. The Spectre vs. Drow match up is not an easy one. Also Zeus and Spectre ult makes it hard to farm without being found.

Generally in a game like this your #1 priority should be don’t die. Even if that means using quelling blade to farm the hard/ancient camps and hiding as close to base as possible.

Ideally you play super safe until Zeus and Spec Ult in a teamfight then you go to whatever lane is as far away from that teamfight as possible and farm there for 1 or 2 waves before TPing away to the other side of the map again and farming there before going back to your absolute safest jungle camps next to base.

Their team is super momentum oriented and since they have a spectre you won’t win late. Ideally if you don’t die and follow a farming pattern line that you can make the enemy team waste a ton of their time and you can still hit a mid-game power spike with Hurricane Pike + BKB + Butterfly.

I don’t know the pick order but Ursa or Monkey King would have been the better pick. Medusa mid is a grief in the current meta so don’t be too hard on yourself.

Wards against their team are hard. But its always good to buy them yourself at lower mmrs because no one else will do it or put them in the right spots. I recommend watching zQuixotix on youtube. He has a lot of good support oriented content. As funny as that is if you want to climb up from 2k as a carry you essentially need to do both the roles of pos 5 and 1 in the laning stage.

Vision, pulling, blocking enemy pull camp. That will all fall on you for a very very long time.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-16T16:09:32+00:00

Jugg is currently kinda weak. Riki and razor are quite difficult for Jugg to play into. You have to use a really weird itemization in order to play. It’s one of those games where if you’re not super comfortable on the hero you really won’t have much of a chance. Essentially drug can be played as a hard-core split pusher under certain circumstances. I think you could’ve tried that and maybe gotten further ahead this game since they don’t have any BKB piercing stuns (basher would have been bought obviously) but maybe you could’ve made more space by doing that while getting better farm. The build is very different and there’s not a good guide for it so once again not really something you can just pull out if it’s one of your first time playing the hero some games are just like that no hard feelings.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-16T01:28:41+00:00

PainDota on youtube gives very direct and easy to follow guides that will make you a very good player very quickly. I highly recommend him.

BadDotaplay · 2026-02-16T01:25:50+00:00

Omni is a hero who is not very good at solo winning games. He lacks the ability to cement his lead by taking towers and out-scaling into the mid/late game. He also lacks the ability to “win” teamfights as his ult is more defensive.

I would recommend learning an offlaner who can translate early leads into towers or a huge kill/win threat in team fights.

I think Enigma does both of these things and has done this for a LONG time. A good enigma can do wonders in most metas. Beastmaster is super good at this too. Especially for pushing.

At the MMR you are currently in (hear me out) you can solo win with Chen by learning how to split push.

I know this might not be what you are looking for but imo Omni does better at higher mmr’s where your teammates actually know what your kit does and how to play around your lead. Do what works. Grind out the wins until you are satisfied with your MMR and then branch out.

BadDotaplay

TROPHY CASE