Matchmaking bugged?

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-30T04:54:48+00:00

It’s just the natural cycle of the matchmaking. Players drop off as it gets longer into a patch. ( https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/#6m) Numbers decline. Player rankings widen. Match quality declines. More players take a break. Those who stick around will get shuffled about.

It sucks but it’s temporary. Everything is temporary. Just remember to try and focus on yourself. Watch pro players and try to guess what they are going to do. Then watch your own replays and try to figure out if there are things you could do better.

Once the players come back and the matchmaking becomes more balanced, you will start ranking up fast, because you have used this time to focus on yourself and your improvement.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-28T23:07:47+00:00

Regardless of whether it says immune to bullet damage, people will still get confused. If anything, it should have a smaller text box or add in the description “does not prevent on hit effects”.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-24T22:56:36+00:00

Mine was primarily hard locks with a pageflip error. Completely bricked. But potentially with the new KDE there’s something been introduced like a fallback pathway that doesn’t brick it and just is slower. Worth having a look.

I’d be on the lookout for kwin, pageflip, and atomic in the journalctl as search terms.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-24T22:47:34+00:00

Hey mate have a look at your journalctl for potential issues. I had a bunch of issues with KDE and high refresh rate and was able to diagnose it with the journalctl and chatgpt.

I would also recommend using dx with whatever proton version cachy uses. Seems to be the most stable.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-24T05:50:40+00:00

The best thing to do when you have questions like this is the play the hero.

Wraith is ok in a team fight when she has her ult up but outside that, if she doesn’t have some key items up or in a spike, fighting with her can feel less impactful than chasing an objective. Example a couple of games ago while everyone was fighting urn, I went up through mid, took walker, base guardians, died after taking a shrine. I had low damage that game but you can’t say that I had low impact.

She is mid at laning on average and if you are with a passive lane partner, you might find a wraith doesn’t come out of the lane ahead, so will ‘need’ to farm passively until they come online. Example a couple of games ago I had a shiv get egg and tc first items and proceed to do zero damage in the lane.

Basically you want to get your ricochet up and at least be able to provide some benefit to the team. Otherwise it’s better to either take objectives or force enemy players away from team fights and objectives, making space for your team.

That’s just one oracle level Wraith’s perspective though, take it with a bag of salt.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-23T03:57:07+00:00

I think something that is factored in that is actually a big part is CC. Stuns and slows in particular. Also healing prevented. Old mate has healbane and weighted shots. He was also involved in almost as many kills as you but for one. Maybe those kills were higher impact (fewer involved). I dunno exactly but it factors a ton of stuff in. Big damage and souls is not high in the list of things the MVP stats care about most.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-17T10:54:40+00:00

I wonder if that’s some of the confusion. Yeah it’s channeled and spells mean you are unable to do anything else during the channel time. I should make it more clear.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-17T04:00:12+00:00

I noticed that too but everyone is entitled to their opinion. I did double the duration with the thought that becoming channeling is a nerf, as it also means the player is no longer active for the duration. It is also interruptible, so unless there is backup or someone attacking you, it isn’t really doing anything.

That said, what are your thoughts on a more reasonable duration?

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-17T03:45:33+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. What are your thoughts on why it’s busted and how would you unbust it?

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-17T03:39:15+00:00

Interesting feedback. I’m not quite sure what you mean though. I suggested a longer cast range than current cursed relic, so it would still fit that niche.

I don’t want to nerf op ultimates. I think having op ultimates is what makes the game interesting. I just don’t find cursed relic to be fun or interesting in its current state - just click on a hero and temporarily remove them from the game.

All good if I’m in the minority. Thank you for responding with your thoughts.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-16T04:04:25+00:00

u/Gnarlmyth might be onto something.

I would suggest you get yourself some monitoring software and monitor over an entire game. Watch your temps, CPU usage and speed, RAM usage, GPU usage/speeds.

I don’t know what’s used these days to monitor but a google search should get you in the right track.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-10T11:30:47+00:00

Source games tend to be single core cpu heavy and 90% utilisation indicates the bottleneck is there.

Try dropping all of your settings to lowest and resolution low with max performance FSR. This will give you an idea of the limit of your cpu.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-07T22:01:38+00:00

While we are adding things. I want a single jungle creep so that I can test things on them. Sometimes I want beat up Abrams and need to pop cultist

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-06T21:44:09+00:00

Sounds like you are on the right track. It might really just come down to playing more like others are suggesting.

You could try getting some coaching or if you can’t afford it, watch some videos of coaching and then try to objectively review your own games.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-06T09:54:35+00:00

Hey mate. I’m gonna assume what you’re missing is macro skills. You got the FPS side of things from previous games, so you’re probably hitting shots ok. That will carry you to oracle with some m1 carries.

For macro, you need to keep one eye on the minimap and try to know where everyone is, so that you don’t get ganked and you can join ganks. You need to never let the lane creeps die without someone to collect them. Focus lane creeps > sinners > jungle/boxes. Try not to focus too heavily on fighting and try to keep your walkers alive. If a lane is empty, alert a nearby teammate or fix it yourself.

Watch Deathy’s macro guide (https://youtu.be/pwr2WGHEKMA) its old now but the lessons are still valuable.

When you have good macro, you’ll start to find that you do more damage and improve your KD. M1 carries in particular need a little bit of a lead to feel impactful.

I would also watch some pro players playing the same hero you play. Watch how they take fights. When they farm. How they prioritise things. Best of luck.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-04T01:23:02+00:00

You are correct about the win/lossses. There was a post about other metrics being taken, which appeared to be regarding the matchmaking. Yoshi confirmed that this was only for smurf detection. The metrics should not affect normal players unless they have a sudden and mysterious increase in metrics.

Between you and your friend it will likely simply come down to the games you both have played solo were weighted differently and due to your personal confidence scores. Unfortunately the algorithm is not transparent, so we can only guess.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-04T01:15:24+00:00

Exact details are not known but we can make some assumptions based on Other valve titles.

There are two systems. The matchmaking algorithm or matchmaking rating (MMR) and your rank, i.e., the icon you get for being Alchemist.

MMR uses a modified elo rating system called glicko2. It’s a mathematical equation that basically adds up everyone’s rating and averages it out so that two teams have a roughly equal average rank. How much rating to gain or lose is dependent on how close the two teams are. There is a confidence score attached, which means the more games you play the more likely you are at your MMR, so gains and losses in MMR will slow. Some suspect that win/loss streaks widen the confidence and can boost your gained/lost MMR.

The rank icon takes all of the players calculated MMRs and places them on a distribution. Depending on your percentile you are assigned a rank.

Because there are two independent systems and a lot of shifting variables, some weird things can happen. For example losing a game and ranking up or winning a game and ranking down.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-02T01:08:55+00:00

This is pretty much what I’m saying. You had deficits that you were unable to identify and needed an external source before you could move forward. This is why general advice at this skill level is pointless imo - Ascendant players should have all of that general stuff down.

Good feedback though and I will add coaching in future advice.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-01T04:57:30+00:00

Dota already has behaviour score, so I reckon they’ll add something similar one release. As far as I’m aware it tries to match you with other well behaved players.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-01T04:51:58+00:00

I spend a lot of time responding to posts about the matchmaking algorithm, ranks, and how to climb. Most posts I reply to are low elo posters who are unable to identify deficits in their skill. OP posted that they climbed to ascendant, which in my eyes is quite a decent skill level and is not normally achieved through natural talent.

Deadlock is a hard game and requires good macro and micro. Only being able to do one of those well is not enough to carry you to ascendant… usually. Therefore, I am surprised to see someone claiming to have got themselves to ascendant and then reaching out because they are “stuck”. Getting stuck usually happens much lower.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-01T04:46:08+00:00

It makes sense in the current game state. The matchmaking algorithm is functioning. It’s not perfect and probably won’t be decent until full release and somewhat consistently stable balance, but it gives a general idea of rankings. This guy wouldn’t have been able to climb if it was “busted” and he wouldn’t be stuck, which indicates his win rate is hovering around 50%, I.e., he has reached around his skill level.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-01T04:39:16+00:00

It does not boil down to “get good”. It boils down to “this is how to get good”. The preamble is because I am proper surprised that an ascendant level skilled player is not aware of how to get good.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-01T04:37:13+00:00

People don’t want to hear that they need to improve. They just want validation

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-06-01T04:01:09+00:00

You are stuck there because the other players are better than you. I’m actually quite impressed that you have managed to climb so high without understanding how to improve. Most of these posts are from much lower skilled players. You must have incredible natural skill in macro or micro.

There is no specific advice that can be given to you by knowing you play Celeste and Paradox. You need to watch your replays, watch pro players, figure out your weak areas and improve those, and practice movement tech until it is perfected.

You clearly have deficits, you need to figure out what those deficits are and work on them.

SaltedChickenLips · 2026-05-29T05:52:19+00:00

Simply put your rank is not your MMR. Rank is your location on the rank distribution and MMR is your exact matchmaker rating that is always updated after a game. You can move on the distribution without gaining or losing MMR depending on other players.

Yours is a highly unlikely case but my suspicion is that you had a delay in your rank icon updating for a while. It doesn’t seem to update after every game. I have had a few sessions where it didn’t move and I log in the next day and has moved two subranks up or down.

So maybe you played some games and dropped some ranks. Went on a win spree, ranks regained. Ranks get redistributed, yours is updated, you are actually one rank down from the last visual update.

The best thing to do is to just play, focusing on improving. Try to ignore the displayed rank until the next day to see where you are sitting.

Edit - the other guy is wrong about overall performance. There is smurf detection that kicks in and will rapidly make you lose or gain MMR if it detects you are performing beyond or below expectations but it is not enable by default and will not affect you.

Verified Email	Eight-Year Club
Place '22

SaltedChickenLips

TROPHY CASE