Source
r/DotA2•
Oasio

To Those Criticizing Slacks Early Game at 4.7K

After watching Purge coach Slacks, I admit I'm surprised at his lack of early game fundamentals. I mean, I've got less than 500 games played and definitely don't execute well but I at least try to improve upon the basics (stacking, pulling, zoning, itemization, etc).

I've seen a lot of people asking how Slacks could possibly be 4.7k in light of his playstyle, but I think that's the wrong way to think about it. It's not that Slacks should be 2k because his early game sucks but rather he could be 5k+ if he improves, and that's exactly what's going to happen.

So to everyone sitting at 2-3k wondering how Slacks has a higher MMR than you even though you crush the laning stage, the answer is that DotA is a very complex game and there's more to winning than buying tangos or pulling lane creeps. Slacks excels at other parts of the game that I think a lot of people don't appreciate, especially keeping morale high.

So many pub games I end up with a team that shits all over each other. Imagine if traditional sports had players that ridiculed each other for their mistakes without offering a solution through constructive feedback and then make the situation worse by giving up or throwing the game. Teams that act that way don't win, but it happens in so many games of DotA.

Slacks keeps morale high, which has probably won him countless games by preventing people from raging, allowing teammates to recover from mistakes, and encouraging more cooperation. That's how teams win unwinnable games, and that's how players improve. Even if you lose, at least you had teammates that supported you. But it's a mindset that is so rare in pubs.

Purge mentions this in the video, but I felt like it was overlooked by a lot of people. He also points out that Slacks does crazy shit that forces mistakes (something Purge has encouraged people to do) and he has good teamfight execution. Now I can't speak towards forcing mistakes or teamfights because I'm still new and trying to figure that out myself. But I have an agenda when it comes to the attitude of DotA players. We need to learn to be good to each other. It's good for the game, the community, and the way we deal with problems in the real world.

TL;DR: Stop being so toxic, ya dinguses.

Posted Sep 11, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

447
PR0Z0R•

But it hurts to watch

4
imorbrighthand•

I mean how can u be so bad at last hitting, like honestly there is no downside to lasthitting, and it's not so hard to learn... And spaming his q as wk on creeps and still not getting the lh is just silly

1
x256•

It's as if he has 900 omni games, which for the past 3 years has had like a 60% winrate across all brackets. Hero is just good in pubs, play enough games and you'll rise as long as you got a good grip of how to play the hero. I'm not saying he's "abusing" the hero to get MMR, but winning more games than losing is a byproduct of spamming him.

3
icefr4ud•

It's also as if he plays an equal amount of techies as omniknight and its incredibly fallacious to think that simply playing a high WR hero is enough to make a low skill player 4.7k MMR. If that were true everyone would be 9k by just spamming omniknight.

1
Kodaisa•

Not really. The lower MMR a match you watch is, the more passive the whole early game becomes. This passiveness makes omni way stronger in lower games. Omni is a super greedy support and needs a ton of levels really fast. In higher games, where people play faster and punish weaker lanes Omni has by far lower pick and winrates.

The Hero just benefits from the playstyle in lower matches more than almost any other one, which makes you climb pretty fast. You will run into a wall though, because there will come enemies who punish the pick.

-2
icefr4ud•

Except that you're just making baseless statements without any evidence which are clearly false.

http://www.dotabuff.com/heroes/meta

Omniknight has the same winrate and pickrate in all MMR brackets. In fact he has higher pick rates in higher MMR (admittedly only by 1%).

A player's skill on a given hero is far more impactful than the hero's actual winrate. Now you can argue that omni is hard to fuck up and that's why he has higher winrate than other heroes but even so it's only going to boost you by a very small amount, maybe like 100-200 MMR, not 2k+ MMR

2
icefr4ud•

I agree with your assessment that if slacks was better at his earlygame etc he'd be 5k+ but I don't think his strength arises from keeping morale high that much, bit rather mostly game sense etc which is far superior for the level he's playing at

2
OasioOP•

Yeah I agree that keeping morale high won't get you to 4.7k, and it isn't Slacks crutch. He probably has 5k+ game sense which is held back by his early game. But since I'm new, I can't explain that aspect as well, so I just focused on his attitude. I think being toxic not only keeps people from winning games here and there, but it prevents them or their teammates from improving. Instead of focusing on improving map awareness or what have you, they're flaming each other in chat.

1
OasioOP•

What a disgusting looking wall of text.

1
ScoobyGooberManstupid idiot smarty pants stupid stupid idiot•

Shoulda just wrote "Stop being so toxic, ya dinguses."

1
tragamar•

He's 4.7k because he abused Techies and Omni. He's not a 4.7k player by any measure, his mmr comes from broken heroes.

1†
Ord0c•

Many ppl have high MMR and still suck at the game, because they did exactly that: spam heroes that can be used to farm MMR. And while they even might be good with these heroes, their MMR simply shows just that: being good with hero X.

MMR does not reflect your overall "skill" unless you are a player who plays many different heroes on a regular basis. So while someone might be 5k with spamming 5 heroes, he probably is not 5k with heroes he played less than 10 times during the past few years.

There should be seperate MMR for each hero. That would be a much more representative number, because it shows how well you can actually play that hero in a team with 4 other heroes.

2
itsRennnJacky Mao God•

This is getting annoying. People are at a certain MMR because more often than not, it's the case. I learned that the hard way.

I'm a 4.9k player and there was a time when I literally felt like there's no difference between 4k and 5k. I played a few games on a friend's account that's 5.3k and let me tell you - even the people that spam heroes to get to a certain mmr are way fucking better than your 4 point something mmr player. They are used to playing against better opponents. With this kind of mentality you'll never improve, whatever MMR you are. Keep it up, though. Whatever makes you feel good about your "versatility".

2
Ord0c•

Not sure you understand what I'm saying. A versatile 6k player, who can play 30 heroes very well on that level is far better than a 6k player who can jsut spam 10 heroes (imho).

Why? Because a player who can play many different heroes at a certain MMR has a deeper understanding of these heroes. A player who just knows 10 heroes very good but sucks with others never picks them, which is why he can stay at that MMR.

Not sure if I can make myself clearer, so here is an example: imagine two piano players. Both of them can play five very complicated pieces of Beethoven perfectly. They both can play it at maximum speed without making any mistaktes, everything is jsut fucking perfect. Now, both go to a contest to see which is the better piano player. Each of them plays these five songs and both do great, so ppl say they are on the same skill level.

Now imagine, one of them can also play five more pieces of Bach and five more of Mozart - also perfectly, while the other one can not. They both are having a contest again and the one pianist just plays 3x 5 Beethoven because that is all he can. The other one plays all the 15 different pieces. And everyone decides - they are on the same skill level, because both played perfect - yet the other one is much more versatile. So how is it possible that ppl claim they are on the same skill level? Because they are not.

Their skill set may have an intersection of some sorts, an area of expertise both are the same level. But the other one is at a higher level of skill.

My point being: MMR is inflated, not just due to the usual issues, but also because certain players can keep their MMR by spamming certain heroes (which is great), but their MMR would be much lower if they were to play other heroes.

This is why there should be different MMR for different heroes. Because then, you can actually compare "skill" - and not just some number that is generated by picking the cherries out of the hero pool.

1
itsRennnJacky Mao God•

Except, it's a bad analogy because in dota, the draft and knowing how to play more than a few heroes is just one small part as to why you are playing a certain bracket.

It's a system that works. A 5k player will always be better than a 4k player and so forth. There are exceptions where a certain 4k player may be better than a certain 5k player on a certain hero but that doesn't mean that he'll win the game based on just that.

It's a fact that the bracket you play in represents your mindset, playstyle and so forth. The only way to improve is to break bad habits and stand out from the rest of the crowd.

My point is; a player may spam a few heroes to gain some mmr but indirectly, by playing against better players, his overall gamesense, mechanics and the small details that parts a bad player from a good player, start to grow on them. So while he may have gotten to a certain point with a certain hero, if he manages to keep his win to lose ratio the same, it means he improved ever so slightly and not just hero-wise.

An example is Attacker. Known to spam his signature Kunkka yet proved everyone wrong when he started dominating high mmr pub games with many other heroes.

1
tragamar•

I'll just say that at barely 5.2k, I'm far from being great, but the system does have something fucking broken with it when a guy with 2 binds, no understanding of early game, itemization, pulling, stacking, zoning or rotating is anywhere near my MMR. I mean, TWO FUCKING BINDS on this guy. TWO. That's opposed to me, with everything bound, who plays 3-4 heroes well for each position and tries to play "properly". I have no fucking idea how it can be possible to balance some heroes this badly that they can inflate your mmr by 2k even though you're totally fucking clueless about the game. It's honestly infuriating.
 
I have nothing personally against slacks, he's obviously used the tools the developer gave him to cheese his way up, but good fucking lord.

1
RampagingRagE•

Git gud m8

2
Sload-Tits•

sounds like you are just bad

1
ch1l0ng•

I agree about the seperate MMR. Look at this shit. http://www.dotabuff.com/players/19254264/matches?hero=outworld-devourer

I'm 2k mmr but I can dumpster literally any 2k game with OD.

1
AnalyzeLast100GamesGot questions? PM /u/lumbdi•

Analyzed a total of 100 matches. (62 wins, 90 Ranked All Pick, 7 Captains Mode, 3 All Pick)
Hover over links to display more information.

averagekillsdeathsassistslast hitsdeniesgpmxpmhero damagetower damagehero healingleaver count (total)
DB/OD9.644.612.49163.674.99491.27543.6216182.731889.9528.280
ally team7.586.3912.95141.94.67440.09483.6714470.531781.95569.574
enemy team6.077.9310.58124.362.92388.47434.1413382.811198.47442.789

DB/OD | 13x 8x 5x 4x 4x 4x 3x 3x

^^source ^^on ^^github, ^^summon ^^the ^^bot, ^^deletion ^^link

1
ice_tee123I'll be 6k once Lycan gets buffed again. For now... 5k.•

So what mmr do you think your OD belongs at?

1
ch1l0ng•

Well I'm 2.2k, so 2.3k xd

1
icefr4ud•

Why dont u go "abuse" techies and omni let me know how that works out for you

1
tragamar•

I can't into autism single hero spam, but with Omni I'd keep on gaining MMR. Techies isn't OP anymore.

0
icefr4ud•

And yet slacks keeps playing techies. And you still believe he's got his MMR by abusing heroes.

Also you're seriously stupid if you think you can keep gaining mmr just by picking omniknight every game. At a point your lack of skill (and brains) will seriously impede you.

2
tragamar•

Omni has a ~60% winrate. Factually, one can keep picking Omni and gain MMR. Not only that, but he abused Techies when it was ridiculously broken. You can win with it these days, but it's not stupid like it was last year. Here's an example. Almost all of his MMR is factually from picking Techies or Omni. He has reduced the amount of ranked he plays since this gigantic MMR gain binge for a reason: he knows he will fall down into 2k over a period of time if he keeps playing ranked a lot. Sorry your fanboy butt can't deal with the fact that your meme idol is a gigantic retard and a griefer.

1
h34vier•

This, kinda. And his nonstop prattling.

0†
Kodaisa•

its rather that he will not be able to get higher, because stronger enemies will be able to punish Omni in lane, make him get levels waaaay slower and not let him make up for the lost early game by pressing ult and repel.

1