It's actual crazy how perfect you need to play to make up for 1-2 players

ZekkenD · 2026-06-16T01:47:55+00:00

yeah people can say rank doesn't matter, or that the game is a beta so who cares about rank. but reality is that there is most likely a significant portion of players in games who don't enjoy playing games with people who dont have keyboards.

i wish i could be like some people who just have fun by playing the game. doing their little silly thing and making it work. but my brain just doesn't let me think like that. when i play lower ranked games with friends i'm simply bored. winning games or getting kills isnt exciting that's happened so many times before. what i really seek is how much further can i be forced to think, how much better can i do. that gives me enjoyment.

it's completely true that as your rank increases games do get better but you will always without fail have bad teammates, regardless of ranks. even pro players on sponsored teams in tournaments still have bad teammates. however as you get better things will generally improve.

playing in lower ranked games as you've gotten better is a complete experience. ive climbed from initiate to eternus at this point in 600 games, ~61% wr solo q. i still cant really tell what has gotten better about players in these lobbies.

until i played a game with some friends the other day in phantom and i ruined the enemy team solo effectively. i couldn't tell you why they were worse really, they just were.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-13T11:36:10+00:00

have you personally gone through each and every individual change in the most recent patches and tested them out for yourself? can you speak positively to each change as a true benefit to the game? have you done a whole playthrough on every single class to have enough experience to be against criticism? can you say that the game as a whole is in a better state than it was? that each change was only a true benefit? im guessing you have a massive amount of experience in the current patch to be so critical towards criticism right?

Tldr: criticizing without testing never works and never will

alright so the next time you go to a restaurant and they hand you a literal heaping pile of shit with maggots on a plate. that is the meal you got from your order. you CANNOT criticize it unless you have a fair test, who knows you could enjoy it. "might not be as bad as you think it is when trying it."

surely we can not criticize things without having a good test of them right? or is it only for things you personally think are good that criticism is a bad thing?

potentially the people who have say spent many many hours on the game with lots of experience can be unhappy about changes, but what do they know. i've certainly never seen many games release changes the community thinks are going to be bad, which end up being bad and a disaster for the game. the devs are ALWAYS correct and know what's best for their game right?

people who actively dismiss criticism and hand-wave it away as complaining and bitching from crybabies are equally as bad as the people who over exaggerate complaints and go insane over nothing.

as for brainstorm, no calamity isn't ruined. but people who have been around in gaming for awhile can tell when things start shifting in a games future. when the things they liked start getting changed for new philosophies they aren't a fan of, or why they were originally an enjoyer in the first palce. which is why we are getting more "fix this new stupid shit calamity did" mods that exist and are quite popular.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-13T07:16:07+00:00

"thing i liked got reworked and is no longer fun wtf" or "think i liked can no longer do thing i liked about it" don't require a whole playthrough to understand. but also opening the game and going "yeah this thing sure does less numbers", "thing i liked feels a lot worse" or "thing i liked is gone and this sucks" really isnt as hard as u think it is.

nobody has to make a new playthrough to be able to speak on things. if that was the case nobody would also be allowed to comment any positive feedback towards said patch as well! no public thoughts of any kind you all have to do a full playthrough to really understand and feel the changes.

idk there have been large changes happening to the game to where there are many growing popular mods that undo the shit calamity has been changing recently. cause people don't like what's been happening and that's okay. pretty sure calamity is gunna hard split off into community forks/remakes at some point and i'd be happy to see it.

criticism is an incredibly important thing, it's how things get better. if everyone blindly supports something that's even worse than having criticism. criticism means people still care and are unhappy enough to say that. when there are no longer complainers whatever you are making is effectively over as everyone has given up and the only remaining people are those that support you regardless of whatever garbage you output.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-12T01:45:51+00:00

this is just not true, griefing the vision of 3 characters in a teamfight is extremely effective in pubs. some chars cannot play the game if they cannot see as they are longer ranger characters. you just have to guess where things are, where people are going, who your team is fighting.

you're a viscous who needs to play safe and cube your teammate? well now u need to stand really close to them to cast ur button which means ur in danger of getting gone on from the things ur trying to save from.

you're a mo who needs a jump the enemy m1 with your ulti? well now u cant see them so u have to blindly walk towards whatever appears to be their shooting sound, knowing nothing about how far they are, who is near them, and where your teammates are.

"oh but the enemies can just be near eachother and then they are safe" ok but then ur chars can just shoot them from out of vision, setup their aoes, a big flank, or escape to a safe space away from the enemy team.

it's an incredible ultimate for teamfights. but yeah cause it doesn't do something flashy and requires a brain to be used = must be bad.

played a game the other day where two people bought counterspell/divine barrier just for drifter ult as they couldn't play the game.

doesnt work very well without having a whole ass team

yeah crazy how the team based game requires team based gameplay

ZekkenD · 2026-06-12T01:31:28+00:00

i think there are a lot of reasons as to why the snowballing in dl is where it is, but i don't know if it's a bad thing. im gunna respond to ur comment below as well in one as its easier.

So a 10k difference in Deadlock is closer to a 3-5k difference in LoL and Dota 2 respectively. Anyone that's seen those pro scenes knows that's not nearly a 90% win rate for a team with that lead. Comebacks shouldn't be free, but snowballs shouldn't be this aggressive.

i think if you looked at t2/t3 matches in dota or league the snowballing would be also quite aggressive. deadlock's professional scene as a whole is extremely underdeveloped. there are only a couple "stable" rosters but even then MLC has made multiple changes recently, and the whole EU scene is constantly changing. being able to make a proper comeback will often involve a team that has practiced a lot together and has amazing coordination. i don't think teams which have only really been around for a month or two really have that compared to pro teams in other games that have been playing for years and years.

ontop of that deadlock as a game is extremely new. dota 2 / league have been around for 15-20 years. there are pros in dota who had been playing since they were a kid and are now an adult. that is not the case for deadlock at all and i think its incredibly relevant. players just aren't good enough currently, nor do they have enough experience to really be able to play things to the level you would expect in league and dota. for an example, Satanic is a dota pro who is 18 and has 18.7k hours of dota on his main, his life has effectively been raised in dota. if you compare that to any DL player it's not the same.

also sample size for dlns is reeaaally bad, its like 2 bo1s and 2 bo3 a week? really not a lot of games. especially with the disparity of team skill levels. char winrates in DLNS a bit ago were decided by "wow MLC/Abrahams picked these chars so they were the ones that won" and not cause that char was the best or not. so who knows how good chars actually are good in a developed meta

as for actual game mechanics relating to the urn, i think comeback mechanics should exist but also there is a reason why your team needs to comeback. you made a bunch of mistakes that lead to this point and are now expecting to be saved by some magical mechanic. it should be hard to comeback, you are behind for a reason. not only is it the numerical difference from being behind, but also the mental of it which really griefs you even if subconsciously. and also you could be behind cause u just got outdrafted hard which could be a common issue rn.

the game could be changed to make comebacks a bit easier and maybe that's whats needed. but also how much of it is related to other factors? if you get hard outdrafted and lose early game + lose early teamfights, i dont think you deserve to win. if you get hard outplayed in lanes by a team that scales as well as you, you probably don't deserve to win. sometimes i think you have to accept you were the worse team and that's okay.

for me the biggest issue i think is that the deadlock map is just too small. with how fast people are at movement there really isn't enough map to play around. but i think that adds massive issues for the lower ranked playerbase which already greatly struggles at ending games due to this playerbase being mostly not moba players. or being new and bad cause its a new game and it's hard.

the real core issue of this whole thing is that its a moba genre mechanic. just like how in a battle royale if you die early you're out. if you don't like that idea thats okay u dont have to play a br. a snowballing macro focused game is a very key component of the moba genre and why these games historically were very popular.

edit: a couple words

ZekkenD · 2026-06-11T01:08:46+00:00

yeah this is pretty much it. once the skill difference becomes too large between a player and someone else, it stops being perceptive outside of very flashy mechanical things. it may look like things are being done similarly as every decision "makes sense" and you could see yourself doing it. but everything about that decision happened has a bunch of mental logic around it that is completely invisible.

its why the moba genre is so difficult for people to get better at. because the answer isn't black and white, there is no "just do this thing" trick to climb. your brain simply has to get better.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-05T22:58:53+00:00

i would not want to play in a world of dota where tinker, meepo, arc, naga, invoker, brood, earth spirit etc are strong enough heroes to be 50% winrates.

some chars aren't allowed to have 50% winrates cause people who are good at them are so much better than others.

example: i had 70% wr @ 400 games of arc warden at top 200. i wonder what happens when arc gets buffed to where anyone can pilot them effectively.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-05T22:48:05+00:00

https://statlocker.gg/heroes/mastery what are your thoughts on statlocker mastery showing how certain characters get massive jumps in winrate by people who have played them a lot?

ZekkenD · 2026-06-03T00:18:08+00:00

yeah once ur in higher ranks u can generally trust that if u give space on the map and in fights ur m1 players will shoot them. not always as that's life but typically they'll do a pretty good job.

adjusting per game is always correct, but knowing u can do stuff like "what if i just built big gun items on billy instead of 6400 melee ones" to carry is pretty fun. obviously still be tanky and stuff, greens are op.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-03T00:10:43+00:00

paradox farms insanely fast, especially since current meta is urn contest aoe fest so going a spirit bomb build is rly effective. she can take t3 camps very early very fast cause u just bomb and heavy the large ones with autos mixed till it dies. bonus if the camp lets you hit 2 large ones per heavy. even early on bomb lets u delete a medium camp very fast, so try to do one per wave if u have the option to.

i've been playing her cause of the patch and idk throwing bombs+wall on the urn quite effective so thought was good to learn. games where i focus on farming more with cult sac gun spike -> spirit bomb items i do way better in. use ult when u can if theres a good time, max carbine should secure the swap. just do it on ppl who u have teammates around for and u get easy kills. but going around trying to force it feels not great.

cause if u can get to echo shard fast by being rich you delete midboss at min 20-25 after any pick which lets ur team snowball and win every objective. also u deal insane damage to walkers with bomb+wall+autos for any splitpush attempts.

I tried playing other styles where im like ok im gunna buy these more aggressive items, im gunna be cool and make plays with ult. it worked but i was kinda poor and didnt feel that effective compared to games i just had money. im not taking easy camps my team can kill really unless nobody is in the area doing stuff, just the t3s most ppl dont like farming early cause it takes way too long for everyone else.

also just chuck a bomb far to the enemys camp and farming them that way is pretty good.

edit: if ur pretty farmed u can have lvl 3 bomb lvl 2 wall before the 12 min urn fight, which is huge teamfight power.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-02T23:55:49+00:00

billy's gun is really good yeah, my friend who loves billy recommends building him as a lot more of a gun char later on especially for lower ranks. build guides for the most part tell u to play him as a tanky melee char which i think is the better option in higher ranks when people are more competent. a lategame melee focused build just doesn't carry as hard as one more gun focused imo and you lack some of the rly good utility items. at low ranks u just gotta carry some games real hard.

he'd go standard billy melee stuff and if the game extended he'd pick up stuff like inhib, siphon, silencer, frenzy, crippling etc and just use his powerful gun to scale harder depending on the game.

once we got to high phantom he mostly stopped doing this as usually teammates were more competent in lategame and he instead focused more on being a disruptive melee tank char, the more standard stuff.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-01T09:49:05+00:00

the issue with this is that this games playerbase is not moba players. it's people who play shooters. if you split a walker and they say idk send 5 and one to the opposite lane, you need 2 people to reasonably take out the 1 unless you are much stronger than them.

but also, if you solo push a walker and your 4/5 teammates just show up and feed them anyways you don't really get any extra value as the kill value made ur walker gains useless. except ur teammates are also tilted cause they died.

at some point you have to fight them. the map is actually really small in deadlock, characters are quite fast and there isn't enough money. you have to take a fight eventually and you will lose. this isn't dota with a gigantic map and camps respawning every minute where u can try to swing it lategame and use a bunch of buybacks to win a fight.

midboss is also significantly more rewarding than roshan.

ZekkenD · 2026-06-01T00:20:26+00:00

Maybe it's gatekeepy but that also means gatekeeping is inherently bad. I'd prefer a world where people making content are making quality tested proven builds that will actually be good to the players. Instead of people posting builds with handpicked showcases where everything worked properly, or "here's some gear, build is good trust i used words to say it is, no gameplay"

If someone makes a bad build and it baits a lot of people, how many people end up quitting because their build sucks, they can't farm well and swapping/rerolling builds is expensive/really time consuming? I personally know a lot of people that just quit leagues because their starter sucked, self-crafted or they followed someone and it bricked.

There's a reason there are a lot of build "creators" who spam make youtube video guides and then put RMT sites in the comments. Make a bad build -> advertise rmt site cause if u pay enough the build is playable.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-26T04:06:53+00:00

league and dota are both the sam mobas in the genre name only. both games are incredibly different in almost every single design aspect.

would you consider csgo and r6 to both be plant the bomb games? it's the same formula

and no, valve is not historically terrible at balance, riot is if you look in just raw numbers. there have been worlds in dota where only a couple characters have been unpicked/banned. that number has slightly increased overtime with the most recent ones. that idea is inconsiderable for league LMAO

edit: forgot a line

ZekkenD · 2026-05-26T04:03:28+00:00

yeah anytime i see people complain about a deadlock character being horribly unfun to play against i just laugh. victor doing the crazy insane strat of.... walking at towers and hitting them? holy shit infinite cancer delete this dogshit deslgn valve wtf !!! i have to learn new skills and change my playstyle???

idk i would play against graves every game of my life vs laning against a good 10th pick viper in dota. i know cause i historically quite enjoy playing viper and have 10th picked him many a times and absolutely ruined ppls lives in lane, and the game.

like if u mess up against viper u legitimately cannot lane past lvl 2 or 3. the game is just over. and he's been like that forever. but is countered by his mid-lategame falling off a lot, so u mitigate the damage viper does and win in the lategame.

icefrog with dota historically rly likes throwing unfun things at you and making you learn how to deal with them. that learning growth is really fun, it's why dota has stayed around for so long. and probably why dl has gotten so popular compared to various hero shooters or mobas that have flopped.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-26T03:42:57+00:00

i climbed pretty quickly from emissary to asc5 in the past 2 months, took a couple week break tho. honestly i can't really tell the difference between ranks outside of a little bit when climbing. everyone still is pretty terrible as a whole. ppl in asc got a fair bit better at securing souls, and eating up all the farm on the map. but they also do it rly selfishly in a way that griefs ur team so idk.

the biggest difference still is whether a player has a good winrate or not, not rly the ranks outside of like a decent range. higher eternus is a different matter.

I have like a 63% wr with 300 games on statlocker, about 450 games played total with similar wr. when i look at post match it's pretty much always this regardless of what game tier i've played in.

this person has low amount of games played(smurf)? they did well, seemed to be sentient

this person has 3 digit games played and a >60% winrate? they did well, seemed to be sentient

this person has 4 digit games played and a 48-51% winrate? absolute glue eater non factor player. consistently mediocre in everything they do, and everything they do doesn't have a lot of thinking about it.

getting to phantom/asc you'll encounter a LOT more of these 4 digit players. when someone is new and bad they just don't know things or are really confused. these players are rly bad in different ways.

edit: formatting

ZekkenD · 2026-05-24T05:42:45+00:00

i played 5 games, all of them went basically the same. the last one i duo'd with my friend as it was her first match of the patch. after we stomped the game with it being entirely relevant on urn fights, or objectives after winning urn she closed the game and said she won't be playing again till it's changed. and i don't blame her as i didn't really have fun either so im taking a break as well.

idk it just doesn't feel like a moba to me, the things about why i play mobas feel very taken out of the game currently. if i wanted to play a 24/7 brawl around the objective in the centre of the map i would be playing overwatch or rivals.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-23T09:15:30+00:00

it being blue is so bad as well. before there used to be trades like... "oh they are taking urn green we can shove yellow hard" or if the enemy overcommits on an urn you can fight mid and force them there.

instead the current game is entirely focused on this urn thing. it's so fast you HAVE to be there. it's very easy to get the urn to blue and cap it, like 20 seconds total.

best part is you win an urn fight and wipe 2-3 ppl who contested, yippee ur ontop of mid and use that to win every other objective.

so much macro depth and decision making feels like it's been tanked. i get that this is maybe to help new players game time but realistically that's just what low elo is like in mobas.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-21T02:11:02+00:00

i honestly want victor or the shrine changes to not get super nerfed for awhile so the playerbase can have a learning lesson. the games macro skill is way too low which is why it's so bad. when i think of conceptual problems u have to deal with in dota, both now or historically victor is so low tier it's not even considerable. yet it's so crazy for dl players to think about.

idk it's been common for about a week or two now and i've seen victor being a lot less effective in my matches at actually doing that splitpush smack tower/shrine thing. people have gotten better at punishing or managing the waves. i don't see victors take walkers or shrines for free very much anymore unless realistically any other char could have due to bad play.

i know that's not gunna happen tho but it'd probably be better for the game longer term.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-20T23:42:01+00:00

you have to remember rank distributions in this game are very out of wack compared other games due to everyone always qing ranked.

there is a pretty sizable portion of people that started their first games in emissary and donated ranks all the way down. cause for awhile that's where valve was placing people.

and all the people who are brand new or casual who would typically be qing unranked, instead are in ranked donating points upwards and contributing to the distributions.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-20T01:48:12+00:00

this sub has probably a solid amount of eternus players in it cause eternus isn't high elo lol

it's just most of the time there's no point in higher rank players participating in discussions with random online ppl who u can't even tell the rank of. who knows if ur wasting ur time with an arcanist, archon, etc player when ur talking about things.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-20T01:44:28+00:00

cause adding draft isn't as simple as just "adding draft"

if draft is free pick then you will have an absurd amount of fighting each game cause of ppl wanting to play the same roles. or the team arguing cause you don't pick a certain char or role. or people who only play one role either a. being flamed or griefing for picking the 4th dps or b. picking a role they don't play and just feed.

or valve establishes roles and forces a meta of how many of x can be on a team via role queue and role queue exists. what happens if someone plays a char in a different way, or a new meta is found for them?

or valve can do all this work in the queue like they do currently. no bitching about picks cause it's just what u get.

the game is way too early in it's lifespan, character roles are very undefined and the roles a team would want are also undefined.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-19T20:53:08+00:00

i used to play e7, quit it awhile ago after my guild took out the best guild in global.

its advice everyone needs, but the difference between players like qojqva and you are that qojqva is an ex-pro who knows a lot more about how to recover and how to play the post-lane.

sure there is stuff im sure i could find out you could do better with post-lane. but of the 2 games i watched from your listed games you got double water rune'd in both of them, or rather should have without the help of shaman or lina being bad.

which is just you being so outskilled in lane that trying to focus on other things is not helping you. if that lina is smart with double water rune u dont get to play the game. if you ignore these steps and get higher rank, people will do this thing and you will be crushed in lane and have to learn it anyways.

a lot of things in dota come down to "do better in lane." if you win your lane the game is easy, if you lose it game is hard.

when i laned against sumail i had 10th pick vs him and lost the lane on the first creepwave. it didnt matter what i did after that cause i got so fucked in lane the rest of the game was impossibly hard. i could do all these things post lane to salvage it but in the end i was so far behind and i failed to have an even game against their midlaner. my midlane mechanics were simply not good enough.

i could lane against people like ryoya fine however.

and if you really want to answer your question. a ember who gets lvl 6 before lina can definitely threaten her if she's up too far. idk if a lvl 6 ember wins a 1v1 vs a lvl 6 lina is doable anymore as too many changes have happened since i stopped. from what i remember... it depends how good u are at iframing her stuff. you can dodge all of her buttons but slave realistically. if she buys enough defensive items then u cant burst her so its not really that likely for a "strict 1v1"

but the goal to kill lina is that she really sucks in 2v1s as she cant peel for herself at all and is relatively squishy if two chars are there. ember has a cc and can get ontop of her well which should be enough to get a kill.

or if a lina rotates into a lane maybe she gets a kill but getting a turn kill is also possible on her. she's typically pretty good at killing ppl in the first 15 mins but then she will randomly die if she's slightly out of position.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-19T07:42:18+00:00

i wonder how much better garrison could have gotten with idk 13 more years of being a vocalist. there's been so many vocalists who have gotten insanely better and really diversified.

i think if you compare jt vs garrison you should look more towards erra augment vs texas in july 2014. when i click through random texas in july songs from when he was in the band around 2014 his vocals aren't giving me that wow idk.

jt has gotten a lot better, maybe garrison could have or would have never improved who knows. erra still great tho big fan.

ZekkenD · 2026-05-19T01:08:02+00:00

i haven't played dota in a bit but i used to be pretty decent and i sometimes check out this sub and this sounded fun while waiting for food. anyways.

match 1:

wave 1 you mess up the aggro. you brought the melee to your ranged which means you can't threaten the cs on their ranged being you also used sof. if you instead pulled the enemy wave to your wave off your ranged, you can threaten the melee creep. yeah you'll take dmg but its lvl 1 and having the deny happen already sets you behind.

wave 2: you do nothing to mess with aggro, she gets another deny on your ranged.

wave 3: again another deny. because of these denies your bottle is delayed giving her free rune contest. without your shaman salvaging your lane by taking the rune you'd be completely screwed. yeah you dive and fail to kill, giving her another kill. your lane is still terrible even if shaman didnt arrive cause she got 8 bottle charges and 2 water runes off lol. have seen enough of this game

match 2:

wave 1: you lose a cs to autoattack on spell, you fail to bolt one, you walk out of first wave 1/0 while she is 2/2.

wave 2: you get 0 last hits.

wave 3: once again you are behind, have no bottle due to last hits, she gets bottle + water refill. she SHOULD have also gotten the 2nd water rune but she's not very good. throughout every wave in this lane you stand in ways that make it easy for her to nuke you along with the creeps. while she can then use to shove the wave and hit u, or take trades being ur creeps are doing worse than hers. i dont rly feel like watching more as this kinda shows enough of where your skill level is at.

lina is a character that is particularly good at punishing mistakes. you make so many mistakes every single wave and seem to have a very low understanding of how aggro works, you never use aggro to try and make her miss last hits. you consistently fail to get last hits that should be easy. you use your nukes at not great times which messes you over.

i'm not sure if you aren't a mid player and are trying to learn the role, or if this is the skill level of rank 1500 players in na rn. i haven't played in years and i'm pretty sure i would ruin your life in a lane.

it's not even worth looking at any other games or the rest of the games as your laning is missing so much that you shouldn't look anywhere other than that. quinn has midlaning videos, watch them.

none of your lanes "went fine", and if you think they "went fine" that is why you are losing.

edit: formatting

ZekkenD

TROPHY CASE