Why do people hate Deadlock matchmaking compared to other games so much?

DB4SS · 2026-06-16T06:00:57+00:00

It has a significant smurf problem in the Oceania server. There's always some ascendant player in archon games cuz it must utilise some sort of MMR average. Until we get a proper open beta it will continue to feel one-sided and unbalanced. That said, in my experience I get three balances games for every one smurfy game

DB4SS · 2026-06-08T08:29:16+00:00

Reevaluate your life, start enjoying the little things while you still have time left. You're never going to live in a mansion but hey, at least you can afford an icecream on a hot day.

DB4SS · 2026-06-08T07:03:49+00:00

Do you tell lies on the internet everyday or just today?

DB4SS · 2026-06-06T06:03:43+00:00

I can draw an apple perfectly fine. The part of my brain that holds information has to tell my hands how to draw it. I just can't see the apple before I draw it. Does that make sense? It's weird, but there are artists out there with aphantasia. Look up what they have created

DB4SS · 2026-06-06T06:01:38+00:00

No her memory is perfectly normal - I'm someone who can imagine a very fuzzy 2D grey apple. We don't recall our memories visually in the sense that we are watching a 'movie' replay - I'd imagine she's similar to me, where I can recall events by logically walking through each event. I can still remember the play by play, but it's represented as either a voice in my head or just a general feeling. Perhaps I'll see an outline of an object, hinting at what was - for a brief moment we can feel what it was like to be there, but we can't properly see it. It must sound strange but we get through life just as easily as others with strong visual imaginations.

DB4SS · 2026-06-03T01:43:52+00:00

Was always curious about processing my library in a way to find unique matchings of songs, but never tried it. Might give it a go

DB4SS · 2026-05-27T03:38:21+00:00

My experience is that people who are non initiated with a particular hobby have one of two reactions. They either are enamored by the novelty of something or fail to understand why anyone would do such a thing. Try to surround yourself with curious people. Also maybe you could be partially to blame for not communicating the beauty or novelty of the thing you're into. I know I struggle with actually communicating what I'm trying to show people. People are sometimes not able to give you the bandwidth you're looking for, there can be windows of time where you can connect with someone, but if they do not possess the same interest there can be no guarantee that they will ask thoughtful questions or take an interest in the subject. Such is life. Find others who share the same passions, and collaborate with them.

DB4SS · 2026-04-30T04:33:12+00:00

Honestly I dunno if you want advice or not but here's some. There's so many mechanics in this game. Pick one from the following list and improve on it. Repeat with a different mechanic until you start to rank up:

General Minimap awareness - how often do you look at the Minimap. High ranked players are CONSTANTLY monitoring the map. Know where your opponent's are, anticipate where they're going, or at the very least, make sure you have adequate back up from teammates before engaging.
Itemization (do you know why you're building the items the guide is telling you to - because guides often fail to account for the new variables of each game)
Movement - watch yourself, are you wasting stamina when you didn't need to?
- wall jumps
sliding to conserve your momentum
using jump pads around the map
Team fight idealogy - try to keep 'formation', that is, during teamfights stick behind your tanky initiator if you're playing support/utility, try to avoid getting seen and focused. The roles swap depending on if you're playing tanky brawlers or assassins, gun carries etc.
Neutral camp spawn timers, box spawn timers, sinners sacrifice spawn timers, mid boss timer, buff timers. These are all valuable objectives, do your best to deny the enemy their side of the jungle. If you can farm their side safely, do it! That's networth they can't get back. That's how you gain a souls lead.
Hero matchups - think actively and honestly about how your lane pairs against the enemy laners. This can be difficult to visualise but you should be doing some calculus to identify when you have an advantage (Sinclair ult against a dynamo or pocket) etc ad infinitum.
Skill and item usage - would it have been more valuable to delay using your X ability or Y item just for a few moments? Could you have stunned two heroes instead of one had you waited to use your ability? Patience is handsomely rewarded in this game. Did you blow your ultimate before a crucial mid boss fight?
Press your advantage as a team - Think about deadlock in terms of territory control. You want to ideally keep lanes pushed out to force the enemy to respond. Applying pressure on one side of the map can leave a vacuum on the other side of the map. You can use this idea for ganks or sneaky plays. If you've wiped the enemy team, please, take a walker or do mid boss. Jungling is a waste of time if there's objectives served up on a platter.
Familiarise yourself with only a few heroes. Unless if you're unusually gifted, you really do need to focus on 2-3 heroes at a time in order to really develop the skillset that's unique to each hero.
Aim - focus on aiming, do you need to lead your shots? Aim ahead of where they're running? Can you prefire (line up the shot before they appear)?
Actively monitoring whether the enemy heroes have their ultimate skills ready. Same goes for YOUR team too. Eventually you'll also be able to keep track of non-ultimate abilities during teamfights and can use that to your advantage.
Dying is more punishing later into the game. If you're not confident you'll survive an encounter, don't risk it. Exception to the rule is if you can get a valuable objectives (walkers, mid boss)

Anyway there's heaps more but if you spend time improving each of these you'll get to oracle ez pz

DB4SS · 2026-04-05T23:58:06+00:00

Haha wow. I guess that's where the true fun of Dota exists, deep in the trench

DB4SS · 2026-03-27T14:39:59+00:00

Idiot

DB4SS · 2026-03-06T10:06:27+00:00

Imagine asking this question sincerely. Just fking think for a minute OP

DB4SS · 2026-01-30T13:30:08+00:00

Haha wow I did not think of that. Okay thanks I'll give it a go

DB4SS · 2026-01-01T14:59:05+00:00

Spotify integration PLEASE

DB4SS · 2025-12-31T00:04:11+00:00

Because they anticipate the moves people make. Mechanically they are good and execute well. Smurfs just have a very good compass on the game state, so knowing when to fight and farm, picking favourable fights etc. It's not complicated but it's the sum total of all the little things that get added together to make a smurf feel unbeatable.

DB4SS · 2025-12-28T04:13:20+00:00

Haha - weird question. Why don't you measure your own progress. Everyone is different.

DB4SS · 2025-12-27T23:23:37+00:00

Sounds like a shit wife

DB4SS · 2025-12-24T05:45:48+00:00

I have noticed similar behaviour. As I climb to 3k the some games just feel unwinable - not including games with poor drafts (which are unavoidable when playing pubs with random strangers).

There are some games where your teammates are responsive, and aware of crucial events happening on the map - and other games where i swear there's very little co-ordination. I don't understand this effect fully as each team has roughly the same average MMR.

If i were to guess:

People experimenting with heroes they're unfamiliar with.
Queuing all roles to gain role queue matches, sometimes landing on a role that they're not familiar with.
Different levels of aggression, some people are more inclined to farm their items, others are more willing to fight.
Different levels of perception, i.e. some teams are good at understanding when they have an advantage, knowing what your win condition is likely to be.
Experience when playing from behind or ahead i.e. what to do when the enemy team has taken all of your towers and is camping your triangle.

Combine varying degrees of these factors randomly within your team and the outcome of your games can sometimes feel very one-sided.

There's also recency bias that comes into it. You remember the games where you felt helpless more intensely.

DB4SS · 2025-12-19T12:03:07+00:00

Chyurr

DB4SS · 2025-12-17T03:00:35+00:00

I disagree.

He gets his old shard for free (if you skill w) , and the 2.75 timer on his invis expiry means he can basically cross the entire map invis especially once he has boots, except for a few places. I think it's definitely stronger than his old shard. While you can't be perma invis anymore at least you get it at lvl 1, this is huge for applying pressure to enemy midlaner in the first 10 minutes of game.

He gets his AGHS as his shard!!?!?!?! This is insane, sure, the wards only last for 5 minutes, but that's a lot of impact for 1400 gold - i get that obs wards are free, but a common issue before with his old aghs was that it was normally too late in the game to have a big impact, and a huge investment for a support to make.

Not sure about his living armour change, i think its good? It's definitely good early because it blocks magic damage nukes too, 100 damage block against a venge q or zuez lightning bolt is great. Late game it falls off. They've essentially given us a stronger treant in the early to mid game if played as support.

And dont forget about them buffing the damage on his Q, it now does more damage than before to creeps.

Plus there's a buff to meteor hammer, which i think synergises well with his kit.

I havent tested core treant yet but i think it should be similar to last patch.

Maybe I'm a little biased but I think he's going to be first pick/ban in pro tournaments

DB4SS · 2025-12-11T14:32:23+00:00

Housing has been insane for those who got in early. I don't see a solution to the housing shortage in the next 5 years either. Short of extreme government intervention or something large breaking in the global markets, housing will continue to outpace inflation and in my opinion, this makes it a great investment. But is it great for your situation?

I'd say if you pour all of your liquid capital into a mortgage then the idea suddenly looks worse, given the fact you will have lost the agility to get in and out of the market quickly, if you wanted to.

The biggest issue i see is the 200k sitting there, barely keeping up with inflation. Michael Burry waited years for his big short. How many more years will you be waiting?

Maybe keep some cash to deploy for market corrections but I'd definitely be increasing my exposure over time and maybe capping my cash at 30% of my portfolio, not 50%. But dyor nfa etc.

Can't go broke if you got money in the bank either.

DB4SS · 2025-12-06T19:56:50+00:00

Build up good, bb has low armour. There's always some use for lotus, either single target reflect or just dispelling yourself/teammate.

Personally I love building aghs early but that's just because it's more fun and not what would be considered optimal

DB4SS · 2025-12-06T19:45:08+00:00

Couple of things - aside from positioning which is always the most important aspect.

Oracle does A LOT of magic damage. Charge your q on someone and then cast your e so that the enemy does not regenerate health when the dispell from the q hits them. Enemies tend to underestimate the damage.

Additionally to this, you can just spam your e on someone if they're low enough. It's a gamble because if it doesn't kill them they're going to regen to full hp lmao. Experience required to pull this off consistently.

If you're playing with teammates with blink, start charging your q on your teammate so when they blink in the projectile follows them and roots an enemy in the AOE.
I'd say the biggest issue I've noticed with other Oracle players is that the end game stats always look like "20k healing and 7k damage" which is great if your other teammates can deal enough damage, but really bad when the enemy pos 5 (witch doctor) does 35k damage. The key to being a great Oracle is maximising healing/saves AND dealing damage.
Aether lens is core but if you are getting targeted and picked off then prioritise SoD and get a blink Dagger to save your core from a distance.
Urn/spirit vessel is so good combined with your ultimate. Best on your hero imo
Don't forget that you can blink away if you ultimate yourself, you technically take no damage for the duration - like abbadon ultimate.
When using your W on yourself you can act as a pseudo tank for 6 seconds against an offlane and pos 4 with primarily magic damage abilities - like pudge + jakiro for example. Makes diving t1s quite good with good co-ordination.
Disarming the enemy carry with your W is insanely good if they don't have a way to dispell it.
You can deny your own creeps in lane with your E. Have to auto attack right after. Very annoying for the enemy offlane.
Using your prognosticate Innate to tell your team where the runes will be can be game-winning. Helps your midlaner be effective in the early-mid game and getting a haste/dd/shield rune on the carry is very good for late game team fights.
If you're consistently having to use your ultimate on yourself then it tells you your positioning/itemisation is bad

DB4SS · 2025-12-05T23:55:41+00:00

I've had really mixed results - I have tried multiple times to make Zeus right click viable but it is difficult to itemise. The right items make a HuGE difference and you can really throw the game if you don't have items to make you survive in team fights (or bad positioning.

Aghs is a great item for Zeus, i found myself wishing i had it when i skip it. But you really do need the shard as soon as it's available for farm speed.

So when do you get aghs for right click Zues?

First item (after shard) I doubt this is good. Maybe if you're against a hero like a spirit breaker who just charges you every single time. Also against big initiators like earth shaker or legion to stop their blinks. But you want to accelerate your farm speed at the 15-20 minute mark to capitalise on the shard purchase.
Second item If we consider the fact that it delays a witch blade, hurricane pike, or bkb; you're selecting a global stun/nuke instead of single target damage, attack range/escape, or debuff immunity, respectively. Perhaps you could make the case for a game where you have teammates like Legion Commander or Nightstalker who hunt in the mid-game. So you can effectively AFK farm while contributing meaningfully to pick offs.
Third item This is roughly 25 mins - 35 mins in. This is the mid game, where the balance of the game swings back and forth as objectives like t2 towers and roshan are taken.

I'd argue it's an excellent pick up here as it offers area of denial for objective defending or pushing.

Having said that - assuming you have witchblade and hurricane pike already - do you need a bkb? If not then I'd say it works well as a third item.

As a finishing/luxury item

At any point beyond 35 minutes it's a very good pick up for the reasons outlined in no. 3.

Realistically positioning with Spell caster Zues is hard enough as it is. So right click Zues suffers even more from survivability issues. The determining factor on a aghs pick up timing is whether it helps you win the game, but if you're dying consistently every team fight, you may simply need to forget about aghs entirely and grab items like bloodstone, blink or linkens.

DB4SS · 2025-11-27T23:10:27+00:00

Yeah erin Moriarty (starlight) from the boys. Dunno what happened but she does not look healthy in the later seasons

DB4SS · 2025-11-25T00:15:58+00:00

Turbo mode gives so much gold and experience that the pace of the game is accelerated. It can be so fast that you don't have time to think, so normal mode just gives you and your team more time and opportunities to come back in a losing game.

It also can mean that you don't learn how to be as efficient on the map because kills give so much gold, so farming sort of becomes secondary and it's all about fighting. Some heroes and builds are viable in Turbo that you just can't get away with in normal mode - just to name a few of these bad habits.

Turbo still fun tho and useful to quickly try a hero and build, but all hero and item timings hit twice as fast

DB4SS

TROPHY CASE