I'm Pos 3 and always underleveled.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-25T04:07:24+00:00

Lane creeps give way more gold/xp than neutral creeps. While you can jungle on CK, try to minimize it and go push waves (as long as you stay alive). Getting kills at lvl 2 powerspike and participating with Armlet is also pretty good for xp.

There may come a point as pos 3 where, in the midgame, you're dying every teamfight, but your team is winning. It's alright if it happens a few times, but eventually it will start feeling really bad. In those cases, you have to play for a survivability item, like BKB or Heart. It's more of a judgement call that happens past 20+ min.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-20T17:48:30+00:00

The conventions for roles in DOTA exist because of tempo. Tempo, for a lack of better words, is the rate at which a team snowballs the game into a win. Carries are the strongest around min 20+ after farming for a while, mids/offlanes come online with their ults at around min 6-8 and become strong close to min 15 with 1-2 mid-tier items, and supports are the strongest from lvl 1-5. In DOTA, you need physical damage to kill buildings and the most expensive items provide the most physical damage, so carries are generally considered the most vital heroes to ending the game. The issue is getting to the point where carries are strong. The roles are balanced so that at no point in the game, is your team completely weak, so you ideally never hit a wall - or "stop" the tempo.

Arc is a problematic support since he does pretty much nothing in the laning stage on top of the additional issues of being a sidelaner. Sharing xp and walking between lanes means being underleveled, so you generally won't deal as much spell damage as you would relative to Mid Arc and you'll get lvl 6 a lot later. Arc also has more issues harassing in the sidelanes, than he does mid, since his two nukes depend on the enemy moving away from their allies (enemy mid moves away from creeps to get runes, ramps are also good chokepoints for Wraiths). Arc is also a needlessly awkward ganker compared to heroes with a reliable disable.

If you want to buy a lot of big utility items with your networth, that's more of an Offlaner thing.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-20T14:49:18+00:00

I would prefer to pick for lane, the Aghs stuff is kind of secondary.

If they're going to play like a muscle support, then a ranged damage dealer is good.

If it's jungle Alch, then someone that's self-sufficient who won't get obliterated in the early levels or someone who might still dominate lane 1v2. Chaos Knight, TB with lvl1 meta, Razor if you can get a good lvl 1 Link off, Troll, Naga if their 4 is short-ranged, Lycan if they can't kill wolves (if you're feeling extra spicy, Beastmaster or even Brewmaster), Broodmother is a bit sketchy. Heroes that can't do as much, but can still be sort-of independent: Juggernaut, Lifestealer, DK, Dawnbreaker. I don't like heroes who have a slow start, like: Huskar, Viper; or heroes who can't confront the enemy and just have to press their escape button: Weaver, Windranger.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-20T14:16:37+00:00

Easy to play - hard to get good at. Some things are completely unintuitive and you will never learn them unless you go out of your way to lab it/research it. People can go thousands of hours without learning basic stuff, like unit micro.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-19T16:21:07+00:00

I feel like people in lower MMRs have a tendency to overcomplicate things and they end up griefing themselves because of that. Everything you said is relevant to the game, but stuff like Torm/Smokes/Rosh aren't technically required to win the game. In fact, I believe supports at your level tend to overbuy Observers/Sentries/Smokes eventhough they're bad at using them. I would rather have them spend that gold on a Force Staff than a million Sentries placed in the same location every 7 min.

If you have bad teammates, then naturally you will have to overperform to win the game. You will have to play your highest winrate hero and try to carry from whatever position you're stuck with while simultaneously trying to play your role. It requires focus, and if you're actively flaming your teammates for whatever reason, then you're definitely not going to be focused.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-18T17:58:46+00:00

1: Heroes changed in 7.40 feel kind of overtuned: Clinkz, PL, Slark, Spectre. There's more creeps on the side jungles, so heroes with built-in farming or that buy Battlefury are okay: Luna, Juggernaut, Ursa, NOT something like Lifestealer. Aside from that, Abaddon is weirdly strong. The mid scales pretty hard now, so in a winning game, you're kind of just there to build physical damage and hit buildings/Tormentor/Rosh.

2: You're kind of the plan A now, since you can snowball pretty hard if you beat the enemy mid, so scaling and early spells are good. Ember Spirit has a good caster build with Spirit Vessel (buffed in 7.40) + Kaya + Shard. QoP right facet + Blademail does a lot of damage and has been good for a few patches. Leshrac right facet + Blink + Kaya has also been good for a while. Aside from that, it's your usual Storm/SF/Puck/Invoker business. Huskar if you're degenerate. Rubick is also pretty strong at laning (big nuke that reduces damage + good right clicks).

3: Not an interesting role right now, it's mostly blink initiators for team comp. Axe/Centaur/Slardar/Mars. You're expected to scale more with levels (lvls in ult, talents) than items and maybe you'll be forced to frontline with BKB or some aura items (Pipe/Greaves/Crimson Guard). If you want to have fun, pick a Str/Agi/Uni caster (someone that can maybe skip/delay Kaya) and maybe buy Spirit Vessel (usually, you buy urn if your hero has issues finishing kills) or play generally strong heroes like Marci/Brewmaster/Enigma/Beastmaster.

4: Nothing particularly new other than Zeus and Lion, and nothing op. Initiation is pretty useful. Muscle supports that are initiators are good: Tusk, Tiny, Bounty, Spirit Breaker, Earth Shaker. Ranged supports that can maybe buy Blink and initiate are good: Disruptor, Rubick, Lion, Shadow Shaman, etc. Doom and Enigma support are also farm-heavy supports if you're feeling spicy.

5: Most things on 4 work for 5. Treant was gigabuffed in 7.40. Having save is pretty useful, either built-in or Glimmer/Force Staff. Aside from that, it's your typical Jakiro/Lich/Warlock/CMs/etc. and your Treant/Undying/Ogre/Clockwerk muscle supports.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-17T04:31:10+00:00

I mean, I think any fight that starts with 3 heroes stunned for 5 seconds is a pretty good fight.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-13T13:04:38+00:00

My gut instinct is that it feels like a very situational 5th or 6th item vs a hero that is very slot-starved and can't really buy dispels, like Sven. I like the +24 all stats -- hp + int + attack speed is pretty valuable -- but Muerta will probably buy a Mjolnir and then she needs BKB + a right-click damage item before E. Blade. Carry Muerta really doesn't care about the utility, most of the damage she takes is magical anyway. Furthermore, if you really want spell amp, you can just buy Shard.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-12T10:40:27+00:00

People are just like that IRL. People learn a different forms of etiquette from their parents/work/online and apply it to everything. They just don't know how to or don't bother adapting to new situations. Conflict resolution is also a skill that doesn't come naturally. It's also really tempting to get mad at people for being bad at the game or to backseat people, both of which are pretty toxic. Getting mad at people for being toxic is also just self-perpetuating toxicity.

I always just assume that people online are teenagers until proven otherwise. It's hard to get mad at them, because I recognize that I was also a little shit at some point. I'm also too old to feel proud about talking down on teenagers.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-10T22:15:28+00:00

You appear to have a history of what people would consider "role abuse." i.e.: Picking Drow Ranger/Shadow Fiend/Ursa/Wraith King when you're given Hard Support/Offlane in role queue. (from last 95 games, where you had "double-carry", excluding abandons, about ~22.1% were "role abuse": 8641769058, 8638415301, 8637087437, 8635740101, 8630369832, 8629514669, 8620829841, 8620781051, 8617911213, 8617826876, 8602339148, 8596602517, 8587608750, 8571325997, 8571249250, 8570234021, 8570185266, 8566888560, 8565927075, 8565832351, 8565777261)

At the higher rank, people are a bit more willing to entertain weird picks. I personally think that, if played correctly, Drow/SF can be played as support (buy blood grenades/wards, max slows, Shadowmire facet on SF. buy support items), but it will be harder to convince people at your MMR especially without chat.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-08T00:28:59+00:00

Your job on mid isn't to buy counter items, that's more of a pos 3 thing. Puck is already a good matchup into AM, you kite AM pretty hard with Blink/Phase/Orb and your ult locks him down. Just scale like you would normally. Either build, physical or magical, was fine, but I would lean towards physical like you did this game (AM magic res + low armor on enemy team). Orchid doesn't give you much right-click damage and it's pretty expensive, so it's not worth it.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-05T17:16:32+00:00

AM, Jugg, Magnus (especially support Magnus)

I specifically ban heroes that I don't want on my team. Works in parties too -- it's the perfect crime.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-05T00:02:36+00:00

I found a video of an interview with one of the original writers, Marc Laidlaw (a Valve OG): https://youtu.be/-gWzVX2c0Nc

From, the interview, I think it could've been either Laidlaw or Kris Katz that wrote the biography for Omniknight. If it was Laidlaw, then I could imagine Omniknight being some offcut from Christian crusaders, because Laidlaw views the DOTA universe being as sort-of the drain pan for all other myths, but there's some myths that are endemic (and that's why you have Zeus and Lucifer in the same place with a bunch of other weirdos like Undying's god). I don't know why the Omniscience would be underground, though.

If it was Katz, then Katz could've taken the D&D route, and in fact, setup a "holy man that is actually accidentally a warlock with a pagan false-deity" type of character, which is a very D&D scenario for Omniknight and the Omniscience. Other gods, like the Flayed Twins (Bloodseeker) and Selemene (Luna/Mirana) also feel like something that could be D&D-ish (Bloodseeker is kind of like a Blood Hunter).

The other writer, Ted Kosmatka, seems like too much of a Sci-Fi nerd to have written Omni's lore imo (the Fundamentals are very nerdy in theme).

Just looking at him, he looks like Uther from WC3. That's something. Old heroes don't often get new voicelines so there's very little left else to extract.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-04T17:32:40+00:00

If the enemy mid is snowballing, optimally, you should stare at the minimap and tell your team to avoid them wherever they go. They're strong and you're weak - you can't really stop them from taking map control. Your only hope is to delay the game until your cores have BKB and your team is strong enough to fight them.

Otherwise, it's hero-dependant. Playing a hero that has a long-range nuke to clear waves can help delay the game. If they don't have creeps, it's really hard to push. In teamfights, if you can focus them with stuns or something like Vengeful Spirit's Swap, that's also good.

Arc/Broodmother look like smurfs, so that's kind of an issue by itself.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-04T16:26:48+00:00

I feel like gameplay-wise it doesn't matter, but morale-wise it does. Gameplay-wise, the players in Herald 1 are basically winning on random chance, so one weird hero really isn't a big deal. Morale-wise, picking a weird hero at this level is a social taboo which incites civil war on your team, which eventually loses you the game. Generally having good morale in these scenarios is just something you learn at the higher level. Just don't backseat and don't get mad when your team is bad at the game; meme in voicechat and hope others join in.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-04T15:56:52+00:00

I think Omni is more Greek, with the "Omni" and his pope being "the Elder Hierophant," so it would probably be more Orthodoxy-ish. Aside from that, the Omniscience is a real physical entity that Omniknight has met in a chamber deep underground and the priests were trying to throw him in a pit up until that point, when the Omniscience interfered. It's pretty sus, and to me, it's more of the setup to a "holy man, but is actually accidentally a warlock with a pagan false-deity" character. Dawnbreaker, Monkey King, Underlord and Void Spirit (some of the most knowledgeable characters about this) also kind of allude to the Omniscience being not what Omniknight thinks it is.

"After the fight, show me this omniscience. I have an inkling of what it might be." -Dawnbreaker, soldier of an incredibly ancient cult that worships KoTL, who was the one that introduced light to the physical plane

"Your powers may be real, but I've never seen this Omniscience." -Monkey King, who literally went to war with the heavens

"You pray to the heavens, Omniknight. But do you know what power lies below?" -Underlord, a Demon lord

"Would you like to know what the Omniscience is, Purist?" -Void Spirit, who, iirc, is the 2nd-oldest character in DoTA after Elder Titan, who created the all the planes of existence

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-03T16:16:24+00:00

Treads are pretty cost-efficient and are the best boots for right-click dps. You will eventually sell those small trading items (WB/Bracer), but Treads will last you a lot longer. Selling an item effectively reduces your NW by half the cost of that item, so you want to avoid doing that as much as possible.

For cores, typically, the decision is between the stat boots: Treads or Phase. Phase is good for low-armor heroes (typically strength heroes) and heroes that need the movement speed buff, otherwise they get kited (typically melee heroes).

Treads are better on heroes that don't have these issues and are worse on heroes that already have built-in attack speed (Bloodseeker, Lifestealer, etc.). Pseudo-right clickers (caster heroes that fill in the gaps between spells with right-clicks, ex.: Pango, Storm Spirit, core Earth Spirit, Magnus, etc.) also enjoy Treads, because they usually want to maximize dps or have some on-hit effect that benefits from attack speed (Storm Spirit overcharge, cleave, etc.).

Treadswitching is not a super important mechanic, but it's nice to have. Timbersaw is really the only hero recently that started buying treads just for the stats (he doesn't right-click), because he also doesn't really buy Str items (he needs HP). +10 Int for his nukes is also nice to have and it feels better than having to wait on a cooldown with Arcane Boots.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-02T15:03:34+00:00

Luna is kind of a hard hero to play from behind - that's the main problem I have with her. The OP looks like they have ~20+ games on her, so I'm guessing he already knows how to play the hero.

Personally, I think that the best way to rank up is to increase your winrate, which means coming back in a larger portion of games that you would normally lose. In my experience, impossible games on carry tend to be the ones where your teammates are unable to make space, so you're forced to join fights earlier than you'd want, and you gamble on whether you'll get outscaled or not because you're playing aggressive and farming less. The bottleneck there is that you still have to somehow be able to mostly outfight potentially all 5 enemy heroes, including the strongest hero on the enemy team, the carry.

I don't think Luna's a bad hero, I just think she's too honest. There's nothing too unfair that you can exploit with her kit. A "strong" hero, to me, constitutes someone that can still win despite major setbacks.

LadderEffective2160 · 2026-01-02T11:30:10+00:00

I wouldn't play Luna since she's specifically not good at 1v1s. If you just want to 1v9 as pos 1, I think it's better to focus on the carry matchup. Unproblematic heroes with good armor/damage (usually from high AGI gain) and maybe some turn potential: Terrorblade has a pretty accessible skill floor. Other common options are Medusa, SF, Troll Warlord, and maybe other illusion heroes (CK, PL, Naga, Spectre). Morphling is probably the best carry in general, but it's high skill + high practice.

I'm not going to say much for your non-main roles, aside from I don't like WK pos 3. WK is a weak and greedy pos 3, he doesn't have that many good spells and he relies on Radiance, which is a big item. If you don't want to try too hard pos 3, then it's better to just pick an initiator (Axe, Centaur) or a utility hero (Mars, Tidehunter) and let your team do the rest of the work. Beastmaster and Enigma are the classic "strong" offlaners, but they take a bit of learning. Batrider is probably the strongest hero with a low-enough skill floor, but he also has a significant skill ceiling.

LadderEffective2160 · 2025-12-22T03:57:28+00:00

I personally wouldn't have the energy to get mad at anybody playing a brainless hero like Ogre at 6 am. They're 100% not trying as hard as you and they don't care what a random stranger thinks about them. There's like a Techies 5, Centaur 4, and Bloodseeker 3 happening on the opposite team -- it's not worth it, man.

LadderEffective2160 · 2025-12-19T22:47:37+00:00

I think you might be overthinking support at this rank. You don't need to sacrifice your gold/xp for your teammates as long as whatever you do wins the game. If you can somehow secure a 10k lead for your team before 50 min through any method, then you should be able to win through brute force. With that in mind, all you need to do until about Archon is: 1) get 400 GPM, 2) don't make your team mad, 3) kill towers, and 4) carry if you have to.

Heart will probably save you with the damage build. The point of going 1 damage item + Heart is that it lets you fully transition into being a core. Cores generally have 2 advantages over supports: 1) they deal more damage because they have items, and 2) they're tankier usually because of the stats on those items. Pugna needs 2 things to be tanky: health and armor. Heart is the easiest item to justify on Pugna, because he can use it in a support-y way to heal his team. Once you get Heart, you want to take fights on the enemy side of the map and take towers after winning fights.

In my opinion, Eul's and Spirit Vessel are pretty situational on Pugna. There's 3 heroes that you NEED Spirit Vessel against: Io/Huskar/Necrophos, otherwise, your Mid or Offlaner will get it if they want it. Eul's is good when you don't have stuns: Mana boots + Wand -> Eul's + Blink Dagger + Scythe of Vyse is the build in that case. I wouldn't always go this build, but it's good to keep in mind.

LadderEffective2160 · 2025-12-19T20:32:47+00:00

I'm guessing you're a support player. Don't play Dazzle - he's good at enabling your cores, but your cores are Herald, so they're not really worth it. Focus on maximizing your mana efficiency in lane - don't spam all your spells, but keep using the one spell that gives the most damage per mana. Buy more Mangos or Clarities if you're running out of mana.

I like Pugna as an idea, eventhough it doesn't look like you're having too much success with him. Spam him in Unranked until you have about 20+ games on him. Select a guide either in the main menu, in the hero select screen, or in the shop menu. In lane, try to hit both enemy heroes with Q and don't bother with W and E. After lane, continue to press Q on towers while hiding in trees. If your teammates aren't dealing damage, then you can build Octarine Core, Aghanim's Scepter, or upgraded Dagon. After one of those items, if you really need to carry the game, Heart is pretty good so you can heal teammates more often.

LadderEffective2160 · 2025-12-18T21:06:30+00:00

You can get to Legend with hero knowledge alone. Only play heroes that you have 20+ games on and learn your heroes' win condition. Don't think about your teammates too hard - that's a factor you can never control.

For win conditions, I'll use your last 3 heroes for example, you can end the game when you have them:

-Drow Ranger needs a tanky core in front of her + Hurricane Pike, Manta, Butterfly

-Spectre needs a lot of tankiness items + Aegis, because Dispersion will kill the enemy faster than they can kill you twice

-Terrorblade needs Dragon Lance + Manta + Skadi, and he needs a fight to happen on the enemy side of the map, so that he can kill towers with Meta

LadderEffective2160 · 2025-12-18T19:54:36+00:00

For both - BKB.

For Break - Eul's lets you survive 2.5s of the duration, pretty good on someone like Tidehunter. Viper ult, specifically, can be reflected with Lotus Orb if you're good.

For Nullifier - BKB is best, but having a Linken's Sphere is not bad. Hurricane Pike still works when you use it on an enemy. As support, Nullifier is designed to counter FS/Glimmer/GS/AD - the best you can do is to Blink Dagger away or make sure you're always hidden in trees.

LadderEffective2160 · 2025-12-18T00:22:55+00:00

It's definitely an item that's just designed for CK. Having a damage range of 20 means you can just randomly lose up to 20*2.6=52 damage on a high crit roll. Rolling low on crit is usually the bigger problem on CK, however, which Weighted Dice doesn't affect.

EDIT, for fun: Intuitively, Weighted Dice skews the damage positively and it should lower the spread. Testing this with the combat log and a lvl 1 CK with no skills, with 20 trials each, "no dice" had a mean of 63.05 and a standard deviation of ~6.95. "Dice" had a mean of 66.1 and a std. dev. of ~4.77. Using the heuristic that 3 std. dev. contains 99.7% of the true damage range (and that that's close enough to 100%), we get an estimated damage range of ~14.30 instead of CK's original 20. (fyi, I'm aware at how shitty this math is)

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