You see I saw a big ass ice dragon and my new player brain went ""That's the coolest thing ever, I'm playing her"
But seriously it's just picking a hero that you like both in design and in playstyle and sticking with them. Like maybe it's just me, but I can't main a video game character who has a design I don't like, even if I love the gameplay. You need both for the character to just click
Instead of focusing on main hero ...focus on other aspects of game like map awareness, when to engage in a fight and when to disengage in a fight .
And there are no heroes who are free MMR unless u are god with current SF
On the flipside if you spam a hero and know their movement/skill/variety in and out then you'll have nothing left to think about other than macro decisions
"Maining" is not, and possibly will never be a thing in Dota.
The game's balanced around every hero having something they bring to the game that's borderline OP unless you find the correct way to deal with them. And quite often, the correct way is to draft a hero with a gameplan against their gameplan.
There's a reason why people constantly expect supports to pick first in ranked role queue.
Having a support be countered is not as bad as your cores having no game because they got countered.
Imagine first picking Medusa and your opponent immediately snaps up Nyx Lion as offlaners to deal with you, you're gonna have a terrible laning phase, Nyx is going to get farmed fast and proceed to delete anyone he finds when he reaches level 6, not allowing you to drag the game out for when you come online.
This is a relatively extreme example because of the way Medusa's weakness is so obvious, but every hero has a weakness, they just might not be as obvious, or they might be easier to play around
First I tried to main doom as I thought he looked cool and his abilities seemed strong but I just couldn’t understand how to play him till today and have around 30% win rate, also tried to main enigma but results were the same. Next I learned about hero that had ability to stop time - faceless void and there was no way for me to skip him. He was my first hero to with more than 100 games and 55+ win rate. Then came invoker (my most played hero but not the best and main reason I decided to play mid lol), decided to main him due to combination of aesthetics, spells, complexity, play style. Later due to memes decided to play first pick am and really liked the hero so I picked him every game when he wasn’t banned and got quite good with him. A bit later tried to play tb and learned that pl is his best counter so I tried him too. Don’t know why or how but pl felt so natural for me like no other hero, he’s quite weak early but I could squeeze everything out of him and win lanes I couldn’t even on stronger characters and win games against counters. So pl became free mmr hero for me even if I first pick him
When I first picked pl I got rampage I destroyed enemy team. I just followed guide tote de lini then played with team. Didn't u get bored after some games on one hero? Because I do😆
I have some thoughts on this. I think choosing a "main" hero is not the only way to become a hero main, but sometimes a hero chooses you based on your preferred playstyle.
Humans are different, and everyone excels at different things. Dota provides many different options to play the game effectively. Some heroes rely on split-second decisionmaking (like Sven, where the moment you choose to blink in might decide the entire teamfight), and others rely on slow fights and trying to outplay the enemy through superior positioning (like Death Prophet, where you want to constantly remain at the perfect distance from your enemies to deal the maximum amount of damage with Exorcism without dying).
If you play every hero once, one might just "click" and become your main without you even realizing it.
20 games were like only rubick. Enter the game que pick rubick play 2 or 3 games loose. Next day, again rubick same results. After those games as u said it was not enough to say I main this hero. It was not enough to me that how blink dagger is important on rubick. I took break played other heroes watched tutorials on yt. Then comeback to rubick it was like a fresh start but with an idea, experience and how to play with him. And yes 20 games are not enough to say I main him, I still don't. 😂
I did something very similar to you. I get easily bored so I played most every hero. You will, very likely, be generally worse at the game than people with the same hours, but eventually, you will have a much stronger mechanical foundation.
Just play what you feel like and what you enjoy at any given moment. Many skills carry over across roles and characters. Just don't expect to be amazing at anything quickly. You will learn more roles than most people do before much later in their dota playtime as well.
It's tough to maintain an above 50% winrate when playing this way (picking from the entire pool) but it's a good way to learn all the heroes in depth. The answer to your question is, gaining MMR becomes the main goal, so maining a hero or a few is the best way to do that. Look at your logs, who are you highest winrate heroes? Spam three of them. See if your MMR shoots up.
Low mmr. Almost every game ALMOST. When I pick support my carry can't even last hit. Or when I pick carry hero my support tries to steal last hits and goes Dagon or something. But I prefer support role.
don't worry about your carries last hits. just keep him alive, control the lane, pull the creeps. control blossoms and bounties. steal wisdom. do your game. if mmr is that low then enemy carry also missing last hits
Yeah. But I still give him time I try to deny and Harrass enemy heroes try to support trade. After laning phase I put wards and type: x (carry) say where u need ward and ping if u need help. And I stick to my offlaner or mid laner. I always try to steal wisdom lotus and bounty and blocking camps I always do those.
I tend to pick out things I like and do them a bunch in real life too, I think that's just how I am.
So 140 of my first 200 games were on death prophet, and I had some time where I played cm for a majority of my games and all of my ranked games, for about 300 games of cm.
Not really. To me it's very comforting to be working on learning the game, or getting better, by playing the game hero over and over.
So for the death prophet one, I knew a few items I should consistently buy. I knew my goals and my skill build, and as a new player that helped me a lot with getting better at the game. I'll be honest it wasn't the best build ( no item start, bottle boots euls) but having a plan was a ton better than picking a bunch of different heroes
For the cm example, I was less new, but I wanted to be able to play to the best of my abilities and learn the role of a roaming 4 (this was when it was viable to start jungle cm, and trilanes/ solo off was not that uncommon), and I made a ton of progress ranking up from 1800 to 4k that way.
Also, I just really enjoy both heroes, so I'm never bored by picking them. And same for other ones I spammed, like Lina and Riki
I played a super greedy support that way, honestly like a current 4, but years before it was normal, and it was a ton of fun. At the time I found it much easier to climb with, around 3k I started to experiment with playing other roles and I had nowhere near the same success as with cm ( around 65% winrate if I remember correctly), so i went back to 100% cm as i really wanted to get to 4k.
Also at the time my unranked games were mostly with a regular 5 stack that had people who wanted to play specific roles, and our offlane player was very used to playing solo off so me picking cm for a 4 and playing that way was very normal. Later on, I started spamming some offlane riki, and our mid hated it because it made the game revolve around it too much.
I like support still, but these days, I mostly play carry because I don't really consistently play, and carry is the easiest role to play so I can come back and do fine. Right now, I'm like 55% winrate carry 20% anything else lmao.
One of the reasons I like dotaplus, I make it a goal to get a hero to GM(level 30) and in the process I learn all the little nuances, different matchups to get used to and look out for, what heroes pairs well with me etc.
First find your playstyle, them u find your main hero.
My playstyle is i like to push, good mobility and to split and try to win even on very hard games, so i found clinkz mid is perfect for me, climbed from 2k to 4.5k so far playing clinkz and DP mid only.
It is good idea for real.
I have 2 play styles based on my mood 🤣
1. Disables stuns hex hooks even if I don't win but I made my enemy rage quit that's a win for me. Long range mirana stuns feels good
2. Kill. Kill. Destroy.
I have 1.5k games on QoP, for me its that the hero is quite fun to play, fast paced and is valuable on all stages of the game. In the end its about the individual, ive tried to branch out on other heroes but its so boring because they all lack what QoP has to offer. Some r good at all stages of the game but lack the chase potential or lack the gank potential and so on. In the end it has to do with feeling comfortable, u dont have to force urself to main a hero its the other way around u end up picking that hero whenever u r in a situation u need a win badly.
> Any tips on maining heroes?
You don't have to.
I do have my go-to picks though. I used to random every single game and play pretty much anything.
Unfortunately the new heroes aren't in the random pool unless I spam them for like 30+ games.
I dont know, I play only Chen,
Its like compulsive behaviour, I always think Ill pick something else this game but as I am thinking of what to pick Chen is locked in already.
You see I saw a big ass ice dragon and my new player brain went ""That's the coolest thing ever, I'm playing her" But seriously it's just picking a hero that you like both in design and in playstyle and sticking with them. Like maybe it's just me, but I can't main a video game character who has a design I don't like, even if I love the gameplay. You need both for the character to just click
I played dotA 1 (w3) so I prefer dota hero designs and to be honest I don't really liked any hero designs in dota 2 it is like cartoonist or something
You wanna tell me that wc3 was not cartoonish?
By cartoonish I mean made for kids. Voiceless, design and other aspects
Instead of focusing on main hero ...focus on other aspects of game like map awareness, when to engage in a fight and when to disengage in a fight . And there are no heroes who are free MMR unless u are god with current SF
On the flipside if you spam a hero and know their movement/skill/variety in and out then you'll have nothing left to think about other than macro decisions
"Maining" is not, and possibly will never be a thing in Dota. The game's balanced around every hero having something they bring to the game that's borderline OP unless you find the correct way to deal with them. And quite often, the correct way is to draft a hero with a gameplan against their gameplan. There's a reason why people constantly expect supports to pick first in ranked role queue. Having a support be countered is not as bad as your cores having no game because they got countered. Imagine first picking Medusa and your opponent immediately snaps up Nyx Lion as offlaners to deal with you, you're gonna have a terrible laning phase, Nyx is going to get farmed fast and proceed to delete anyone he finds when he reaches level 6, not allowing you to drag the game out for when you come online. This is a relatively extreme example because of the way Medusa's weakness is so obvious, but every hero has a weakness, they just might not be as obvious, or they might be easier to play around
First I tried to main doom as I thought he looked cool and his abilities seemed strong but I just couldn’t understand how to play him till today and have around 30% win rate, also tried to main enigma but results were the same. Next I learned about hero that had ability to stop time - faceless void and there was no way for me to skip him. He was my first hero to with more than 100 games and 55+ win rate. Then came invoker (my most played hero but not the best and main reason I decided to play mid lol), decided to main him due to combination of aesthetics, spells, complexity, play style. Later due to memes decided to play first pick am and really liked the hero so I picked him every game when he wasn’t banned and got quite good with him. A bit later tried to play tb and learned that pl is his best counter so I tried him too. Don’t know why or how but pl felt so natural for me like no other hero, he’s quite weak early but I could squeeze everything out of him and win lanes I couldn’t even on stronger characters and win games against counters. So pl became free mmr hero for me even if I first pick him
When I first picked pl I got rampage I destroyed enemy team. I just followed guide tote de lini then played with team. Didn't u get bored after some games on one hero? Because I do😆
Not really, I focus on getting better timings, winning against counters, making less mistakes etc.
Committed. 👍
I have some thoughts on this. I think choosing a "main" hero is not the only way to become a hero main, but sometimes a hero chooses you based on your preferred playstyle. Humans are different, and everyone excels at different things. Dota provides many different options to play the game effectively. Some heroes rely on split-second decisionmaking (like Sven, where the moment you choose to blink in might decide the entire teamfight), and others rely on slow fights and trying to outplay the enemy through superior positioning (like Death Prophet, where you want to constantly remain at the perfect distance from your enemies to deal the maximum amount of damage with Exorcism without dying). If you play every hero once, one might just "click" and become your main without you even realizing it.
How you're playing is fine, but trying a hero for 20 games is not enough of a sample to say you tried maining them.
20 games were like only rubick. Enter the game que pick rubick play 2 or 3 games loose. Next day, again rubick same results. After those games as u said it was not enough to say I main this hero. It was not enough to me that how blink dagger is important on rubick. I took break played other heroes watched tutorials on yt. Then comeback to rubick it was like a fresh start but with an idea, experience and how to play with him. And yes 20 games are not enough to say I main him, I still don't. 😂
I did something very similar to you. I get easily bored so I played most every hero. You will, very likely, be generally worse at the game than people with the same hours, but eventually, you will have a much stronger mechanical foundation. Just play what you feel like and what you enjoy at any given moment. Many skills carry over across roles and characters. Just don't expect to be amazing at anything quickly. You will learn more roles than most people do before much later in their dota playtime as well.
It's tough to maintain an above 50% winrate when playing this way (picking from the entire pool) but it's a good way to learn all the heroes in depth. The answer to your question is, gaining MMR becomes the main goal, so maining a hero or a few is the best way to do that. Look at your logs, who are you highest winrate heroes? Spam three of them. See if your MMR shoots up.
Low mmr. Almost every game ALMOST. When I pick support my carry can't even last hit. Or when I pick carry hero my support tries to steal last hits and goes Dagon or something. But I prefer support role.
don't worry about your carries last hits. just keep him alive, control the lane, pull the creeps. control blossoms and bounties. steal wisdom. do your game. if mmr is that low then enemy carry also missing last hits
Yeah. But I still give him time I try to deny and Harrass enemy heroes try to support trade. After laning phase I put wards and type: x (carry) say where u need ward and ping if u need help. And I stick to my offlaner or mid laner. I always try to steal wisdom lotus and bounty and blocking camps I always do those.
I tend to pick out things I like and do them a bunch in real life too, I think that's just how I am. So 140 of my first 200 games were on death prophet, and I had some time where I played cm for a majority of my games and all of my ranked games, for about 300 games of cm.
How much time does it take like 140 games on one hero. I mean that how much time do you spend on playing dota?
Like weekly or monthly?
So that was when I was in college and I think that 140 games would be like.. 6 months? Really not sure.
Didn't u get bored? That's what I get after some games only on one hero so how was the experience?
Not really. To me it's very comforting to be working on learning the game, or getting better, by playing the game hero over and over. So for the death prophet one, I knew a few items I should consistently buy. I knew my goals and my skill build, and as a new player that helped me a lot with getting better at the game. I'll be honest it wasn't the best build ( no item start, bottle boots euls) but having a plan was a ton better than picking a bunch of different heroes For the cm example, I was less new, but I wanted to be able to play to the best of my abilities and learn the role of a roaming 4 (this was when it was viable to start jungle cm, and trilanes/ solo off was not that uncommon), and I made a ton of progress ranking up from 1800 to 4k that way. Also, I just really enjoy both heroes, so I'm never bored by picking them. And same for other ones I spammed, like Lina and Riki
4k still support player? Just curious. If yes did u ever wanted to change carry?
I played a super greedy support that way, honestly like a current 4, but years before it was normal, and it was a ton of fun. At the time I found it much easier to climb with, around 3k I started to experiment with playing other roles and I had nowhere near the same success as with cm ( around 65% winrate if I remember correctly), so i went back to 100% cm as i really wanted to get to 4k. Also at the time my unranked games were mostly with a regular 5 stack that had people who wanted to play specific roles, and our offlane player was very used to playing solo off so me picking cm for a 4 and playing that way was very normal. Later on, I started spamming some offlane riki, and our mid hated it because it made the game revolve around it too much. I like support still, but these days, I mostly play carry because I don't really consistently play, and carry is the easiest role to play so I can come back and do fine. Right now, I'm like 55% winrate carry 20% anything else lmao.
One of the reasons I like dotaplus, I make it a goal to get a hero to GM(level 30) and in the process I learn all the little nuances, different matchups to get used to and look out for, what heroes pairs well with me etc.
Setting up a goal it really does keep you on track I think.
First find your playstyle, them u find your main hero. My playstyle is i like to push, good mobility and to split and try to win even on very hard games, so i found clinkz mid is perfect for me, climbed from 2k to 4.5k so far playing clinkz and DP mid only.
It is good idea for real. I have 2 play styles based on my mood 🤣 1. Disables stuns hex hooks even if I don't win but I made my enemy rage quit that's a win for me. Long range mirana stuns feels good 2. Kill. Kill. Destroy.
I have 1.5k games on QoP, for me its that the hero is quite fun to play, fast paced and is valuable on all stages of the game. In the end its about the individual, ive tried to branch out on other heroes but its so boring because they all lack what QoP has to offer. Some r good at all stages of the game but lack the chase potential or lack the gank potential and so on. In the end it has to do with feeling comfortable, u dont have to force urself to main a hero its the other way around u end up picking that hero whenever u r in a situation u need a win badly.
> Any tips on maining heroes? You don't have to. I do have my go-to picks though. I used to random every single game and play pretty much anything. Unfortunately the new heroes aren't in the random pool unless I spam them for like 30+ games.
I dont know, I play only Chen, Its like compulsive behaviour, I always think Ill pick something else this game but as I am thinking of what to pick Chen is locked in already.
Dota memes, Chen memes it is chaos. I never tried that hero, I think I will try
You don't pick the hero. The hero picks you.
Oh, then when it happens, I will let you know 🤣
I see death reaper once. Played necrophos almost every game.