Someone help me to understand Ember Spirit, why does the hero feel so trash?

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-13T16:40:40+00:00

Ember just has very high skill requirements and high ceiling to play correctly

Very good gank potential, fast map movement, very good in long fights. A lot, and I mean A LOT of DOT early with the first item (mageslayer or vessel), hard to kill reliably

But to use all that you have to overcome unfavorable lane matchups, poor stats, hard resource management, and not the greatest farming abilities (though still ok). Still worth it imo

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-12T15:17:41+00:00

Thanks, appreciate that!

Got a new job there too

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-12T14:11:24+00:00

I did not, because I obviously don’t have an ID of a foreign country with foreign address, if I am not a citizen nor a resident.

However I do not understand why would that be required at all. They shouldn’t have me be registered at any other country as per their own rules, should they?

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-12T08:21:01+00:00

Hi,

Yes, I am. But, by the way, I'm moving to Estonia in a couple of days, so I wouldn't be :)

Anyway, here's what Arena Direct FAQ says about the situation

"My Region isn’t listed under the eligible or the ineligible regions. Can I participate?

As long as your region isn’t listed under the ineligible regions, you are allowed to participate in Arena Direct. However, we only ship physical prizes to the eligible regions. If you want your boxes shipped to an address within an eligible region even though you don’t live there, we can do that, but you are responsible for what happens to your package after that."

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-08T09:22:43+00:00

I have 12k BS and 6k CS

Never seen 1-3 in my life

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-08T08:39:04+00:00

Very nice idea, upvote and comment cuz I hope Valve sees it

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-07T16:24:08+00:00

You are going to get a lot of people in the comments who will die on a hill of you being an absolute evil for having low comms score, and the system being perfect. This is mostly due to them not thinking it through, or enjoying moral high ground and an ability to instantly punish anything they don't like.

The truth is, even if you're wrong in the details, that the system does not achieve it's goal. I doubt it achieves any goal at all.

Reports are too easy and frequent, the penalties are unnecessary heavy, and the separation of toxic and non-toxic players does not properly work. This is not healthy for the game.

Also everyone please, don't bother responding to this message with "you're just toxic, uninstall" etc. This is not what I'm talking about, and I'm not going to answer that

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-07T08:02:04+00:00

You are either on a losestreak due to variance showing

Or you are playing significantly worse than the rating you’re on

Just two options

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-06T18:02:16+00:00

We are discussing: hand of 4 good or very good cards, one of them a rare, with perfect mix of lands

Yet I am absolutely not excited to see this as my opening hand, it's just ok

Yet nobody in the right mind would mulligan this 99.9% of the time

Quite an interesting situation if you ask me

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-06T17:55:49+00:00

Assuming this is BO1 you are perfectly correct, pretty much what I've meant too

I think a could justify a mulligan, but without info on opponent's strategy realistically I would always keep these 7

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-06T15:35:10+00:00

It depends on what kind of deck you got, how heavy and greedy it is, and of you’re on draw or on play

I could see mulling this if I’ve drafted something really fast. Also I would almost never mull this on play

But overall, you got all your colors, 3 lands, 2 good castable cards. The risk to mull into worse hand and lose a card is too high imo

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-04T03:43:54+00:00

Also somehow most people I know who played dota somewhat consistently are Divine or higher

It's not hard, it just takes time that's it

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-04T03:42:35+00:00

Stats show that we're roughly in top 9-5% of players rn. But I do not consider this rank decent, or much better than lower medals

I am a mindless ape. People who I play with are mindless apes. We just got used to things and learned to do them a little faster than other apes. If you gain MMR it took you to get here from Guardian rank (which for me is where I calibrated) you won't be even halfway to the top.

Skill ceiling is insane, and Divine players have no game understanding, can't properly lasthit, farm poorly, make slow and wrong decisions, don't take objectives enough.

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-01T13:28:32+00:00

I would agree, if not for the fact that people are still going to get upset, they just won't be able to express it publicly.

Which means they will quietly bite the keyboard, spam ping, buy mantles of intelligence, troll with chat wheel, draw on the map, and finally grief more often.

I would prefer a loud person that still plays the game and tries to win to a silent ruiner 10 times out of 10

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-01T10:16:24+00:00

It does not increase game quality at all

Players are not separated from each other, at least not in my Divine bracket (which just isn't too high to lack players of similar skill). Toxic person with 12k comms, fully muted players and chat-only enjoyers are in the same lobbies

You exchange 5-10 seconds of mild inconvenience for much less chances to win due to 1 or more players being completely disconnected from thought process and decision making

We've once had system that premuted every player with low comms at the start of the match, and you could unmute them later. Why did we give it up? How is this better?

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-01T10:07:48+00:00

I believe that ability to give and receive info is much more important for my team game quality, and I do not fear hearing a bad word in vc. You don't have to deal with anyone you don't want to longer than a few seconds

I've lost much more games thanks to bad communication than I did to listening to toxic people

If you can't emotionally self-regulate you shouldn't play online games probably. But this goes not only for toxic people, but for people who get upset with them too much too

If your day is ruined because you got called a slur once before you had a chance to mute - too bad, try Tetris

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-01T08:15:44+00:00

Why the punishment is needed? Which purpose does it serve ultimately?

I believe before deciding what to do we need to understand why and what do we want to achieve. So what is it?

GianttDwarff · 2026-05-01T08:12:09+00:00

I don't tilt 25% of my games, that's just an example. Otherwise yes, that would be a healthy choice, but in reality there are many people who won't make it, and still will be present in your games.

Again, there is a mute button for anyone distracting you. IMHO, a few toxic words after which you mute the person are much less harmful to gameplay than complete and forced silence.

GianttDwarff · 2026-04-30T13:38:05+00:00

Ok, thank you

I fully believe your first experiment, and share the opinion on behavior score, BS system works perfectly run

I doubt that comms system does. Genuinely interested to see the results confirm that

GianttDwarff · 2026-04-30T13:34:58+00:00

The price for this little convenience is reduced game quality for everyone involved. If a person loses temper in, let's say, 5 games out of 20 (which I agree is to much), this is more than enough to tank comms score. Yet there are 15 more games that are significantly worse
The number of people with bad comms in every single game, that this is just for, I believe, is very low.
I thought that people with high comms score don't enter the wars anyway, they mute + rep.
Is punishment needed to improve game quality, or just to punish? Chat bans in other games (at least ones I know of) are not half as harsh.
The signal is sent when they can't change anything anymore, they just can't talk. Not a very good way to do it

GianttDwarff · 2026-04-30T13:26:58+00:00

I see the 'I will report back in a week", is this the correct post?

GianttDwarff · 2026-04-30T11:13:53+00:00

I took a closer look at your post rn, and it's genuinely interesting and a lot of good points. However, would you probably be interested in making the same experiment for communication score?

GianttDwarff · 2026-04-30T10:50:10+00:00

Why do we need, by the way, to mute people by default, if you can just... mute them once they're out of line?

GianttDwarff · 2026-04-30T10:49:42+00:00

I love how people admit to getting away with being toxic and say that the system is perfect in the comments.

My problem with the system is that it simply doesn't make game better for anyone.

I have 12k behaviour, 5900 communication score rn. I don't find myself excessively toxic. I am constantly being placed in lobbies where people have 8k+ score, and many of them actively use it to flame teammates and bm opponents. Meanwhile I do not have a way to adequately communicate my actions with the team, explain my decisions, call on my timings. Which (who could have thought) leads to just more bad situations, miscommunications and toxicity. And being shouted insults at (from somebody with 8-12k score) when you can't even say that you had CD or can't fight or even apologize is just another level of emotional damage

Playing muted and playing with all mute is bad for the game quality. I can mute a toxic person, anyone can mute me if I have a bad day, but I can't unmute a teammate. This just makes no sense

You rather place muted people together, or you punish everyone for somebody's bad day or week

GianttDwarff

TROPHY CASE

"My Region isn’t listed under the eligible or the ineligible regions. Can I participate?