The hardest part about learning to get better at Dota 2 is focusing on yourself more than focusing on your team. With Match Making Rating (MMR) becoming public, players become very focused on raising a number linked to their profile. When things go bad and you lose games, all players look for the reason they lost, and it's human nature to look at your allies mistakes first before you look at yourself.
The biggest misconception due to this is the fake principle of 'MMR Hell'. The idea is that you are unlucky and get worse than average teammates which result in you not advancing in MMR, ever. This doesn’t exist.
The reality is that being good at Dota is extremely multidimensional, as you've probably figured out from the guide.
For example, it’s easy to look at your Kill/Death/Assist ratio and notice that yours is better than your teammates. This leads you to think that your teammates obviously died too many times and that you played better, but perhaps you didn’t back them up enough. Maybe you didn’t do a good enough job zoning the offlaner, pulling, ganking, or last hitting.
There are MANY reasons that games are lost, but the chances of you getting unlucky with allies is the least likely one.
To raise your MMR, you need to get better at Dota, and you are the player that you have the most impact on. Focus on fixing your mistakes from game to game, or you will quickly grow more frustrated, continue to stagnate in skill, and stop having fun, if getting better at Dota is your goal.
Maybe getting really good at Dota isn’t your goal. Maybe you just came here to learn a few things so that playing Dota casually is a bit easier.
Regardless of your intentions, you are going to run into players that are angry and mean. They might believe in MMR Hell, they might be taking their frustrations out on you when they make mistakes, or they might just genuinely be assholes and taunt you whenever they win a teamfight or score a kill on you. If you encounter anyone in Dota 2 that is mean to you. I recommend to immediately mute them.
To mute a player in Dota 2, open the scoreboard in the upper left, find the person that you don’t want to hear from in text or voice for the rest of the game, and press the little microphone button and you’re free. The safest way to protect your enjoyment of the game is to mute them immediately.
If they were being extra mean to you or someone else, you get bonus points from me if you defend the other players in chat and use the report function to report them for communication abuse, which is the proper way of saying ‘this guy is using his words to hurt people for some reason’.
I believe that games like Dota 2 can take normal competitive people and turn them angry and mean because of under performing allies, disappointment in themselves, and the general frustration that comes from losing, but that doesn’t make it okay to spread that anger to other people.
Not only is hurtful to other people, but it significantly impacts how well your team plays.
Morale is not the easiest thing to improve on for the average player since a lot of a person's morale comes outside of the game, but it has the biggest effect on your game that has nothing to do with Dota.
Do not flame or criticize your allies when they make mistakes. Don’t call them idiots, and don’t talk down to your allies as if you’re superior (your MMR is likely similar). Say good job when they get a solo kill, or win a teamfight. Even if you think they are playing terribly, some false encouragement will make your allies play with less stress, they will feel less pressure, and their increased morale will help them play better than usual.
After all, MMR is a measurement of how much impact you have on a Dota 2 game.
That includes how well you last hit, how efficient your farming patterns are, how good you are at attack moving, calculating chain stunning, how good your map awareness is, how well you place wards, how well you teamfight, how well you itemize. Can you pull without missing the connect? Is your late game decision making correct? Does your negative attitude affect the rest of your team, lowering their ability to perform at their MMR?
All of these things matter in every single Dota game. Don’t assume that you are superior to one of your teammates just because they did a few extremely stupid things that you never would. There was probably an error that you made that they wouldn’t have.
It’s also important to remember that you can raise your MMR with any position in Dota. For a safe estimate, until you reach the 5,000 MMR range, it’s very possible to even play support and to support so well that you consistently increase your MMR.
Don’t look to your allies as the excuse of why you aren’t winning. Don’t look to the role you are playing as to why you aren’t winning (unless you are better at other roles, then blame yourself), and make sure that your attitude doesn’t prove toxic to your allies, since them playing worse can easily affect your team’s chance of winning.
Focus on your mistakes. If you have trouble seeing your mistakes, ask a friend who is better, watch a pro player stream a game, watch a pro game to see players playing at the top level and emulate what they do.
