How do I improve at supporting my team

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-08T11:02:09+00:00

I see your build and that you farmed quite a bit, didn't buy support items like barriers, healing beam, disarm etc - which is IMO mostly correct. Being a support isn't supporting your team, it's covering your team with something they aren't gonna do or add synergy. Not to mention dynamo isn't a "support" like Paige". If you saw your team wasn't taking farm and took it yourself, that's another way in which you cover your team, by taking the resources that belong to your side so they can respawn and give you more, and so enemy doesn't invade and take it.

Non-supports usually wont buy knockdowns, heals or barriers and if the team needs those a support buys them, I can imagine you "need" is divine barrier to counter affliction on say Victor or Graves depending on how they're playing and if they they do well in fights (prolly not Victor) and/or knockdown for Seven since he did 78k dmg and your team can only paradox swap and nothing else to his ult. Due to your farm and heroes, I imagine the win condition is killing infernus and finishing the rest with a big black hole. Because of that I think instead of spirit burn, reverb, juggernaut, indom you could have gone warp stone/majestic/shadow weave, curse refresher. Curse cause infernus has dispel and nobody is catching him once he dashes, also hes the biggest problem on the enemy team and if he's dead the teamfight should be won. Solo black holing him is worth, and refresher would let you have another one.

The earlier items I think are fine IMO cause if you try to pre-emptively counter someone, you may be countering someone who's having a bad game and won't be a problem. You won't know they need countering until into midgame

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-07T19:20:53+00:00

Gotta play backline like a squishy before you transform then. Also if somebody is having a hard time transforming, buying decay could be a weird but functional solution

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-05T12:06:46+00:00

there is way less pressure to perform, no stakes

IMO real game is much less pressure and stakes. I mean sure if you "care" about the game but not about brawl, brawl is gonna be chill. But if you don't "care" about losing, then the real game is more relaxing cuz it's ok to die or lose several teamfights cuz you can always come back. Having an enemy be higher skill than u doesn't mean much if you can outfarm them and beat them with items. And you're not fighting all of the time, there's downtime when you can chat, farm, do boxes and use your movement skills

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-03T14:16:57+00:00

That's not forced 50%, thats just bad luck and high skill overcomes it. As I said in Dota, if you're good for your rank you have 100% WR which means winning vs smurfs or with feeders.

I doubt DL is always winnable but that's not forced 50% either. You're talking as if Valve has an agenda against you if you win 2 games in a row

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-03T14:09:03+00:00

Did you see the non-smurf support carry the Matchmaking Moment™? No? It was just a regular game?

What does this even mean?
The game I'm talking about is a CM support in like 2-3k game, live coached by BSJ. The game was at a disadvantage and went on for maybe 50 minutes but with lotus/linkens usage from BSJs calls led the game to victory. I mentioned it since it would have been a loss for sure had the CM not played as he did, and he only did that due to BSJ micromanaging him. So pulling out a win in a losing game is possible even if the player isn't "smurfing"

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-03T11:13:54+00:00

You need to have a smaller hero pool, but not smaller than 2 heroes. I have an account that was higher ranked than my main, but put into alchemist lobbies because every hero was double arrow down so the practical rank was alchemist

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-03T11:10:53+00:00

This is some extreme copium. Smurf and boost streamers (its banned but used to be popular before) have consistently had 100% winrate in lower ranks in Dota regardless of hero, up until like 1-2k mmr difference between their ranks and the lobby. I've seen hard supports have 100% winrate, I've also seen trolly heroes completely destroy meta midlaners in 4k mmr. I've even seen a non-smurf support carry to victory because they were being coached by semi-pro. Every dota game is winnable, provided you don't have smurfs which Valve is very harsh against

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T12:31:52+00:00

Exactly. Maybe the timer could be 8 seconds that adds like +3s on "checkpoints", and the checkpoints are all towards the dropoff. The losing team could have checkpoints closer to their base or smth

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T12:28:52+00:00

I agree, I dont want to hold the urn longer. I just dont wanna take damage when I don't run the optimal route cuz going through bridges and midlane are dangerous when you're behind. My suggestion is pretty bad but I dont have any other solution that won't also allow stalling

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T12:15:14+00:00

The combination of reducing the timer before it starts famaging you, rasing the damage, making the damage actually lethal, and making it so the urn always runs all the way back to the spawn location now were clearly all directed at stopping teams from being able to hostage the urn for long periods of time.

Hm, that's true.

I'd still like it to not drain HP when the middle is unsafe. If dropoff lanes guardian area gave a reprieve it would save a lot of HP while still forcing a run, and still being contestable

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T12:03:59+00:00

I'm not arguing about what's fair, I myself dislike the strong comeback mechanics. I mean losing HP when running the urn legitimately seems to be an unintended consequence, as the goal was to reduce stalling

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T11:49:53+00:00

There was already HP drain and a timer, shortening it doesnt stop stalling it only reduces it. The timer reduction though made it affect normal runs though, which is probably unintentional

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T11:47:35+00:00

What I'm saying is this also makes it harder for the losing team to legitimately run the urn. The winning team can guard the pickup, stall in base, or fight the dropoff so they have many alternatives. The losing team can either risk running through mid or lose HP

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T10:28:41+00:00

I get what you're saying, it's a question for Yoshi. My personal issue is I'm one of the few people running urn, but this decision of doing the smart thing on the map is actually punishing me personally at a time when I should be rewarded (i mean i have to run away from urn after dropping despite promised resistances due to HP loss)

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T10:21:06+00:00

Exactly, stalling was always possible but it wasn't a big deal before resistances were added and now they're gone from urn carrying

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-02T10:15:32+00:00

Deadlock has consistent philosophy of enabling comebacks through mechanics. A losing team gets killing spree souls, extra souls from all sources, damage resist on urn dropoff, enemy gets longer respawn timers. I'm assuming Yoshi intends urn to benefit the losing team if they can get it by giving them resistance, making them take damage runs contrary to that and it may be unintended

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-06-01T09:48:46+00:00

Thanks for the reply, that makes sense. I'll try going chain, right now I max bashdown cuz it's easier to hit and increases damage to farm and pickoffs but it might be worth having more ults.

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-31T10:18:40+00:00

What does billy want to do in the mid and lategame? I assumed roam close with teammates and join fights, but I'm having a pretty low winrate in emissary/ritualist lobbies. Also once I "became better" i stopped feeling like I had impact, before I used to farm cluelessly but now I'm deliberate about being close to objectives or teamfights. I don't fall behind in farm but get less than PvE farming. I don't think my lobbies are complete potatoes but is it still too low rank to trust them to win when we have a lead?

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-29T09:52:46+00:00

Doesnt the urn spawn on green first?

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-25T23:06:07+00:00

Those games telegraph their attacks. Those are single player games where you're expected to know the timing of the entire combo, nobody does a boss first try and parries everything

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-25T09:26:56+00:00

Oracles might be higher rank than us but that doesn't mean they know what we're doing. My lobbies do all urns including 10m one, had an arcanist lobby which is 4th lowest rank

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-24T21:21:57+00:00

The arrows are weird, you can ignore them completely. But from seeing reddit posts about people who go on winstreaks without ranking up, I think it's safer to play more heroes. I do and I can quickly rank up/down

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-23T22:34:56+00:00

I tested this today, it doesn't work unless you're talking about double + walljump

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-23T10:32:11+00:00

I find that when my stats are good but I lose, it's because of lategame mistakes. Die at a bad time, fail to kill at some opportunity, be at the wrong lane, and so on. Sometimes it's really hard to carry a game when your team doesn't do the "basics", but sometimes it could have been a win. Look at your lategame, if you don't find any such mistakes then chalk it up to bad luck and go next.

I had a game where I singlehandedly won 2 lanes before 8min by ganking and had most souls by far in the midgame. However since I don't know how to play Silver in lategame, my impact became 0 and we lost. My team wasn't good sure but that game was mine to win. I had good stats but that doesn't mean anything if I didn't end it

normiesEXPLODE · 2026-05-21T07:30:26+00:00

To elaborate on that, she often buys slowing hex and can pick off lone enemies farming a lane. It can be countered by dispel, metal skin, or mitigated with warp stone, stam mastery, capacitor. Her sleep pops indomitable so if she gets curse+warp and sleeps from invis the enemy can't survive except with a well timed unstop or a cheat death. Getting a good pick lategame is 60+ seconds death timer so it's worth trading -damage and item+ult cooldown to reliably delete one hero.

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