Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................4

What You’re About to Master ..................................................4

Motivation for This Book ..........................................................6

My Ranking History ..................................................................7

Chapter 1: Techniques & Strategies ............................................9

The Basics – Customizing Dota 2 Settings ................................9

Fundamental In-Game Skills ...................................................21

Chapter 2: Climb Higher! Strategies for Increasing MMR .........31

Pick Heroes That You Can Play Well .......................................31

Learn How to Play Support Heroes .........................................32

Become More Versatile ..........................................................33

Know Your Heroes ..................................................................34

Recognize Your MMR Bracket’s Play Pattern .........................35

Counter the Enemy Team’s Heroes .........................................36

Buy the Right Items ................................................................36

Go for Buildings, Not Kills .......................................................37

Don’t Delay .............................................................................37

Chapter 3: Mindset ...................................................................38

Know what you want to do.....................................................38

Play to win ..............................................................................38

Be prepared ............................................................................40

Chapter 4: Motivating Factors ..................................................41

The desire behind the number ................................................41

Imagination ............................................................................42

Goal setting ............................................................................42

Breaking your MMR limit .......................................................43

Chapter 5: Feelings and Emotions ............................................45

Handling defeat ......................................................................45

Winning streaks ......................................................................46

In-game emotions ..................................................................46

Chapter 6: Communication .......................................................48

Guiding your team ..................................................................48

Giving suggestions ..................................................................49

Praising and evaluating instead of finger pointing .................50

Final Words ...............................................................................52

Introduction What You’re About to Master Boosting your Matchmaking Rating (MMR) in Dota 2 is an uneasy journey, and

there are highs and lows that you need to deal with, either physically, mentally or

emotionally. This book is for those who want to enjoy the game while boosting

their MMR limits and feel satisfied by achieving their MMR goal with their own

hands. If you are looking for some regular Dota 2 how-to-play guide, then stop and

close this book right now, as you can find such guides online for free. If you have a

goal and that goal is to reach a certain MMR in Dota 2, finish this book and you

will find not only in-game skills but also the strategies to prepare your body and

mind for this long journey to whatever MMR you have set for yourself.

When you begin to read this book, you already have within yourself the intention

to increase your MMR without paying for an MMR boosting service. The only

MMR booster is you. You will learn to maintain and remember your original

intention, and become aware of the ultimate reason behind the MMR number you

have set for yourself. You will have the proper mindset that most players ignore or

are unaware of. If you’re a new player, you will learn about skills which will help

you improve your playstyle. If you’re already an experienced one, use this

opportunity to check yourself against these skills to see whether or not you apply

them while playing.

No matter what your current rank is, use this book to its fullest and you will find

yourself achieving the MMR you desire, as well as the actual goal behind this

number. Remember, boosting MMR isn’t just about improving your skill level, but

also about fulfilling your desire to get to that rank.

Motivation for This Book Through this book, it is my hope that the reader will be able to understand and

achieve the correct mindset along with the strategies required to boost his MMR to

a certain number. In addition to this, the intention is to spread the harmony of

playing a multiplayer game in the Dota 2 community, through the mindset

emphasized on its pages. It’s always sad to see a game that should be bringing fun

and joy to people turned into a flaming hell that breaks human relationships.

My Ranking History When I started playing Dota 2, the only two heroes I knew were Lion and Luna.

Dota 2 was completely new to me as I had not played the old Dota before it. I

didn’t know much about the skills, the mechanics, the heroes and the items. So in

the year 2015 when my MMR got calibrated, it was around 2600. Then came The

International 2015 (TI 5) and I bought the compendium. It was the first time I

bought it and without thinking very much, I used Ranked Match to complete the

quests (yes, it was a stupid thing to do!).

Throughout the three months of completing the compendium quests, my MMR

dropped drastically until 1000 and at the end of TI 5, I was sitting at around 800

MMR. This number was a hell to me, with the hero pool I had at the time. Finally,

I decided to quit Dota 2, but it was temporary.

In May 2016 I picked up Dota 2 again, and this time I told myself that I must get

back to at least 2000 MMR. My friends told me it was impossible, because the

1000 MMR bracket is literally a black hole! Fortunately, I am a person who does

not give up easily, so I told my friends that I will prove I have the ability to get out

of the “black hole”. This thought then became my burning desire to reach my goal.

So began my journey to 2000 MMR. At first I started to learn the basic skills of

Dota 2 such as last hitting, warding, positioning, analysing situations etc. I also

started playing other heroes in order to become more versatile. Following this was

the items learning phase, especially the situational ones (like Diffusal Blade and

Heaven’s Halberd). By the time I reached a more profound level of understanding

compared to the one I had when I first started playing the game, I was already at

1300 MMR.

Going from 800 to 1300 MMR was easy, and took around one month. However,

gaining the remaining 700 points was difficult, even with the skills I had acquired.

Around 1600 MMR was the turning point where I discovered half of the strategies

needed to reach my 2000 MMR goal. For around three months I stayed at 1700 just

to test out my strategies and theories, and within one more month, I pushed my

rank to 2000 with incredible winning streaks.

For those who play in higher MMR brackets, 2000 MMR is probably not a very

significant rank, and I believe my current in-game skills cannot compare to those

of people who play at 5000 or even 7000 MMR. However, the second part of this

book represents the essence of boosting MMR, and this essence is true and stays

the same regardless of MMR. No matter what MMR bracket you play in, you will

bring your rank to new heights if you study and apply the strategies and principles

described in this book.

That’s my story of breaking the black hole of 1000 MMR, and it feels good. The

journey took me around 5 months to complete. If you wish to move to a higher

MMR bracket regardless of your current one, this book will surely help and is

dedicated to you.

Ryuga

Chapter 1: Techniques & Strategies From here on you will find the actual techniques and strategies I used when

boosting my MMR. First, let’s cover the topics related to Dota 2 itself, such as key

binding, important in-game skills and the playing style or pattern in different

MMR brackets.

The Basics – Customizing Dota 2 Settings The customization of Dota 2 settings is heavily dependent on each player’s

personal preferences and playing style. You can’t really find a customization that

is clearly the best and suits every player. Nevertheless, I am going to share with

you my customized settings in order to make you aware that this type of

customization is possible. I would recommend that you try it out, but it is not

mandatory. Another point on which it’s important to take note is this: since the

settings affect how the game is played, they usually form the playing style or habit

of a player. This means that you will need to get familiar with your own settings

before you can unleash their full potential and benefit from them.

Basic Hotkeys

These are my basic hotkeys. The category I want to emphasize is the one related to

items and inventory. If you observe carefully you will notice that these keys look

familiar. That’s right! They are similar to the ones used for casting abilities!

However, they are used with the Alt key modifier.

The purpose behind these settings is to eliminate the need to search for keys and to

reduce your left-hand movement. With this setup, your hand basically stays on the

ability keys all the time, and when you need to use items you just press the Alt key

with your thumb in combination with these basic keys! I couldn’t count out how

many times this setup saved me during fights and critical situations. Your left hand

will react faster whenever you need to use items to save your life, escape, chase

and sometimes counter kill the enemy.

I can give you some examples of items that will basically change the tide in a

battle if used properly. Items such as Black King Bar, Blade Mail, Manta Style,

Armlet of Mordiggian and many more. Speaking of Armlet of Mordiggian, if you

ever wondered how a pro player controls Unholy Strength toggling so effectively

that he can survive even Sand King’s Epicenter, let me tell you a secret – you can

perform this toggling very easily by using the settings listed above, and achieve

perfect timing through practice.

Another great example is Juggernaut’s famous Blade Fury and Teleporting

combination. Since his Blade Fury is cast using Q, place a Teleport Scroll or Boots

of Travel in the Alt + Q slot. This way you can immediately teleport after Blade

Fury and escape dangerous situations.

Under the Unit Actions group, the Attack (A) setting is the most important of all.

You might be wondering why it is important since there is already a right click

mouse button for attacking. This is the more advanced attack playstyle called

Attack Move which I will discuss further in the next section. Another important

reason for using the Attack hotkey is to prevent your hero from moving forward

when last hitting. You might have noticed that sometimes, when you right click a

creep that died before you managed to attack it, your hero moves forward. This is

especially true for ranged heroes and it is very dangerous because it will move

your hero towards the enemies. Besides, I find myself to be more accurate in

denying creeps or towers using the Attack hotkey compared to right clicking, but

this is a personal preference.

The Shop Actions group is not as important as the Items one, but no harm is done

by paying attention to it (sometimes it will benefit you!). The first two settings are

simple: the first one is used to select the courier and the second to have it bring

your items.

The most important setting in this group is the Purchase Quickbuy one, for which I

use the V key. When pressed, your next item in the Quickbuy bar will be

purchased if you have enough gold. This hotkey is important when you have

enough gold to purchase an item but at the same time are on the verge of dying.

Pressing this hotkey will cause the item to be purchased instantly before dying,

thus saving you the time to farm for that item again. Since dying will make you

lose some a portion of your gold and delay your important items, using this hotkey

can benefit you a lot.

The last thing I want to talk about in regard to the Basic Hotkeys page are the

Phrases. Out of so many phrases available in Dota 2, there are only four that I find

essential: “Missing”, “Missing top”, “Missing mid” and “Missing bottom”. These

are just simple messages that will be shown in the chat box when you press their

corresponding hotkeys. I bind them to F4 (Missing top), F5 (Missing mid), F6

(Missing bottom) and F7 (Missing). This setup is helpful for remembering where

they are, because I can keep in mind just one of them (F4) and then simply find the

others next to it since they are placed in an intuitive order. So, when I look on the

map, I don’t have to do any additional thinking about the key I need to press in

order to indicate that enemies on a certain lane are missing.

The “Missing” phrase is the most general of the four listed above (because it can

be used for any map location) and is typically used during the laning phase. A

unique aspect of it is that your hero will actually say that a lane is missing in an

audible way, and its voice can be heard by everyone on your team. For example, if

you’re playing Axe in the top lane and are pressing F7, the chat box will show

“Missing top!” and your hero will say “Top is missing! According to Axe!”. If you

are in the jungle however, pressing F7 will only show “Missing” in chat. That’s

why you will need to rely on the remaining three phrases while jungling.

Advanced Hotkeys

The advanced hotkeys represent settings for more advanced playstyles, so you

might not be customizing many of these controls unless you are a top tier player.

However, I will mention some of them because they are very helpful and you will

use them a lot.

The most used and important setting in this group is Cancel Current Action (S).

You will use this hotkey to stop your hero’s movement, block creeps, last hit and

cancel skill activation. I use this hotkey a lot during the laning phase to get more

accurate last hits. Last hitting is a very important skill because it is your main

source of gold during the first 10 minutes of the game. Make this hotkey your best

friend if you want to get better farm in the early game!

The next important usage of Cancel Current Action (S) is to stop skill activation.

Imagine wasting an ultimate due to bad timing or accidentally pressing R! If you

get familiar with this hotkey, your finger will automatically press it whenever you

need to cancel an ability.

Finally, pressing S repeatedly while moving will make your hero move slowly,

step by step. This is very helpful when trying to approach an enemy without

getting noticed and will lead to more successful ganks.

Just like the basic settings, the advanced ones include several possible

customizations for shop actions. The two most important ones are Courier Speed

Burst (`) and Open Shop (B). Both of these hotkeys have a common benefit, which

is to save you precious time by allowing you to simply press a key instead of

having to hover the mouse cursor over the respective icons and click them. The

Courier Speed Burst setting has another important usage on top of the obvious

benefit mentioned – to save your courier’s life! Since we seldom manually control

where the courier should go throughout a game, you might not know that it is

flying towards an enemy. In these unfortunate cases, when your courier flies into

an enemy, the speed burst is used to help it escape from a chasing hero who’s

trying to kill it. Quickly activating the speed burst in such moments using its

associated hotkey may save your courier’s life and prevent your items from being

delayed for two minutes.

A third important setting on the Advanced Hotkeys page is the Double Tap Ability

to Self Cast, located under the Hotkeys Options group. When checked, the game

will automatically select your hero as the casting target of the ability you use,

whenever this ability can be cast on yourself. For example, Outworld Devourer’s

Astral Imprisonment, Bloodseeker’s Bloodrage, Invoker’s Alacrity and Huskar’s

Inner Vitality. Like other settings, this one will save you precious time in key

situations where even a one second delay might cost your hero’s life.

Basic Options

We now move on to the Options tab. Here you see a variety of radio buttons and

checkboxes that enable a particular in-game function (when selected), or disable it

(when not selected). If you do not understand the meaning of any of these settings,

you can hover your mouse cursor over their names and their descriptions will be

displayed.

Similar to the Hotkeys tab, I will not be explaining all of the options available.

Instead, I will hand pick a few that are important. Referring to the figure below,

there are two key rectangles including settings that I will focus on.

1. Auto Attack

The value of this setting should be “Standard”. This will allow you to attack in a

semi-automatic way. Your hero will attack the next creep automatically while you

can do something else, like checking your opponents’ items, browsing the map or

searching the shop for items to buy. However, it will stop attacking when you deny

a creep or press the stop/hold hotkeys, which is exactly what you want.

Choosing the “Auto” option is a bad idea simply because your hero will keep

attacking whenever it can, and just mindlessly hit creeps whenever they are in

range. This interferes in a negative way with last hitting and denying.

Selecting the “Never” option is also not recommended because your hero will be

idling after killing a creep and this will feel unnatural when pushing or jungling.

2. Auto Select Summoned Units

This option is very useful especially for illusion-based heroes like Phantom Lancer.

Your enemies will be confused because both your hero and the illusions will act

identically.

If you want to select only the illusions and non-hero units, assign a hotkey to the

“Select All Other Units” setting from the Advanced Hotkeys page. This is helpful

for pushing. For example, you might approach the enemy tower, use Manta Style,

and when the enemy creep wave approaches select your illusions with one key,

send them to attack the creeps, and then immediately press F1 to go back to

controlling your hero.

Double tapping this key will also center the camera on your hero (in case you

moved it while controlling the illusions).

3. Teleport Requires Stop

This setting helps you to prevent the accidental cancelling of your TP scroll or

Boots of Travel by simply right clicking during their channeling. Without it, you

might right click before teleporting is finished and cancel your intended action.

When using this setting, you can press the Stop hotkey (S) to cancel the teleport, if

you really want to.

4. Use Alt to Show Hero Icons + Invert Alt Toggle

These two settings combined cause the mini-map to always show the heroes’ icons

as long as the Alt key is free, thus making it easier for you to know what’s going

on at all times.

Seeing hero icons instead of colored pins or arrows will make your life easier and

allow you to concentrate on other aspects of the game instead of asking yourself

“which hero was represented by the blue arrow?”.

Advanced Options

On the Advanced Options page there are only a few things to point out:

1. Summoned Unit Auto Attack

This setting should be set to “Always”, simply because you’ll always want your

illusions to attack, especially when sending them to push lanes.

2. Smart Attack Move

Personally, I prefer this setting to be on simply because it allows you to more

accurately target an enemy, since you will place your mouse cursor on the spaces

near it.

Fundamental In-Game Skills In this section I will talk about a series of in-game skills which form the basis of

playing good Dota. Without them, you simply cannot become a better player and

increase your MMR.

Last Hitting

This is the most important skill to have for the laning phase, at least when playing

a hero who is supposed to farm. At the start of the game, creeps are your main

source of gold. The better your last hitting skill, the faster you will grow and

accumulate gold to buy important items.

A great way of learning how to last hit is by playing with bots at the “insane” level

of difficulty. These bots are very good at denying creeps and stealing your last hits,

so this type of challenge will force you to improve the timing of your attacks and

your last hitting skill. Select a hero you want to train with and give yourself an

item challenge. For example, “buy Phase Boots before the 5-minute mark” or “buy

a Blink Dagger before the 15-minute mark”.

Tips for last hitting:

1. Get a Quelling Blade for melee heroes to increase your damage output.

2. For ranged heroes, move as close as possible to the target you want to land a last

hit on to reduce the projectile distance and the chance of having the creep denied

by your opponent.

3. Use the Stop (S) hotkey for timing your attacks. Whenever you sense that you

attacked too early, use this key to cancel your attack and then hit the creep just a

fraction of a second later.

4. Don’t leave your creeps within deny range (below half health) and then move

away from them. If you do this, your opponent might just take away your last hits

by killing these creeps before you get the chance of getting close enough to attack

again. An often- made mistake is nuking the creep wave at the beginning of the

wave instead of doing it after the creeps have taken some damage and can be killed

with the nuke. Heroes like Lina, Windranger and Death Prophet are often misused

in this way.

5. Draw the enemy creeps towards you and closer to your tower be sitting close to

them and using the Attack hotkey (A) on your opponent. This will make his creeps

chase and attack you, and you can simply back off and let them get away from him.

This way you can last hit more easily because of the distance you placed between

the enemy creeps and the enemy hero.

Denying

Whenever a friendly creep is below half health, you can attack it yourself and try

to kill it in order to deny this creep from your opponent. This way he will lose gold

and experience (50% of it). Attacking and denying your own creeps will also

prevent your lane from being pushed, thus making it safer for you to stay in lane

and focus on last hitting. Denying creeps is not an absolute must, but it is a good

practice. As a rule of thumb, focus on last hitting more than on denying, but

whenever you can, try do get denies as well.

Creep Blocking

The main purpose of creep blocking is to ensure that your creep wave meets the

enemy’s creep wave as near to your tower as possible. That’s because in general,

the closer you are to your own tower during the laning phase, the safer you are.

Similarly, the further you are from the tower, the more susceptible you are to ganks.

Enemies will rarely gank you under your own tower at the very beginning of the

game, so staying close to it may discourage them from trying to gank and kill you.

In the middle lane, the two sides of the river (which constitutes a portion of low

ground) form portions of high ground, giving superior vision and the uphill

advantage. Ranged heroes who attack uphill have a 25% chance to miss.

Furthermore, in the absence of an observer ward or friendly creeps placed on the

high ground, the hero from the low ground cannot see the one sitting on the high

ground. This is due to what is called fog of war.

Blocking the first creep wave for the middle lane will make it so that the two creep

waves (yours and the enemy’s) will meet at your high ground, putting the enemy

hero at a disadvantage and forcing him to play from the low ground.

When blocking the creeps, it is not recommended to use the Stop (S) hotkey while

moving in a straight line. This is because the creeps might move around and get

passed you. In order to block the entire creep wave, you need to move in a zig-zag

manner. This technique utilizes your hero’s turn rate to slow down the creeps and

prevent them from passing you by. Note however that it requires practice, so use

the Hero Demo mode for improving yourself.

Harassing

Harassing is another key skill that you must learn and apply during the laning

phase. Attacking the enemy hero and giving him a hard time in lane will let you

farm more freely, because if he doesn’t have the HP to stand your harassment, he’ll

have to stay back and wait for you to finish farming each creep wave before

coming closer to get last hits. He will also waste precious gold on Healing Salves

and Tangos.

Heroes that are either ranged (Rubick), or have long range spells (Lina), or can

easily deal AoE damage (Kunkka) are good for harassing enemy heroes. If you

face a lot of harassment yourself, consider buying a Poor Man’s Shield (on melee

heroes), HP regen and armor giving items.

Changing Creep/Tower Aggro

The term aggro refers to triggering aggression from enemy creeps or towers

toward yourself. Changing aggro simply refers to getting these enemy units to

switch focus from you and start attacking something else within their range.

Creep aggro is drawn whenever you attack or try to attack an enemy hero while

sitting close to his creeps. However, this will not happen when you manually cast

an attack modifier ability (such as Viper’s Poison Attack or Huskar’s Burning

Spears).

Aggroing enemy creeps is not always bad. In fact, you can use it as a technique to

draw the creeps closer to you and farther away from the enemy heroes (as

described in point 5 of the Last Hitting section). Once the aggro disappears (it only

lasts for a few seconds), the enemy creeps will be closer to you while your own

creeps will be closer to your enemy. This allows you to farm more safely because

the enemy heroes now need to get passed your friendly creeps to get to you, and

any attempt to attack will make these creeps attack them. The reason why ranged

heroes are very good harassers is because they can attack while having enough

distance between themselves and the enemy creeps, which means they can attack

an enemy hero without infuriating his allied creeps.

Tower aggro is activated when you’re an enemy tower’s closest target, or when

you attack an enemy hero while sitting in his tower’s attack range. To dismiss a

tower’s aggro, either get out of its attack range or use the attack hotkey (A) on an

allied unit.

Neutral Pulling

Neutral pulling is the main source of income and experience for supports and it

refers to the practice of getting neutral creeps from the jungle to chase you until

they meet your allied creep wave. When this happens, your friendly creeps will

start attacking the neutral ones and follow them back to their camp. This allows

you to farm these neutrals, getting gold and experience.

This term should not be confused with stacking, which is the practice of drawing

neutrals out of their camp just before their respawn time, in order to allow new

ones to respawn, thus increasing the total number of neutrals in that camp.

Another benefit of neutral pulling is that it will get the enemy creep wave closer to

your tower, allowing your carry to farm more safely.

Timing is the most important thing when it comes to pulling. The best thing to do

is to look at the map and see where your creep wave is, and then attack the neutral

camp around three seconds before your creep wave arrives at the juncture point

where you intend to have the two groups of creeps meet each other. Once you get

the timing right, you can remember the exact number of seconds on the clock at

which you need to start pulling in order for the maneuver to be successful.

Laning Phase

This phase represents roughly the first 10 minutes of the game and it can easily

decide its fate. This does not mean that you cannot come back when you lose this

phase, but winning it often leads to winning the entire game, while losing it will

most likely lead to a defeat.

During this phase you must ensure that the creep wave is always close to your

tower, and pay attention to the mini-map in order to avoid potential ganks. Also,

you must warn your teammates about missing enemy heroes and communicate

with them in order to organize ganks of your own.

Core and support heroes have different roles in winning lanes and getting an early

advantage. Ideally, your carry will be focusing on last hitting and denying creeps,

while the supports will be harassing enemy heroes, pulling creeps, stacking camps,

warding, dewarding, smoke ganking and teleporting to save core allied heroes

when they are ganked.

If the carry needs help in the safe lane, the supports should harass the enemy

hero(es) out of the lane and secure his farm, while at the same time denying the

opponent’s farm and experience. On the other hand, if he’s doing fine on his own,

the supports should not stay there doing nothing and leaching his experience. They

should make themselves useful elsewhere on the map.

A common mistake during the laning phase is diving towers for uncertain kills.

This is a bad idea because potentially, one or more enemy heroes could teleport to

help their teammate, leaving you in a bad position where you have to deal not only

with these unexpected forces but also with enemy creeps and towers. This sort of

thing can also disrupt your carry’s farm and potentially get him killed.

Quick Buying Items

You can prepare the items you want to buy, and their components, and place them

in your Quickbuy bar. You do this by opening the shop, finding the desired item

and then left clicking the item while holding the Shift key. This will place that

item’s components in the Quickbuy bar and whenever you have enough gold for

one component, you can press the Purchase Quickbuy hotkey in order to buy it.

Also, if you want to prepare more than one item, you can hold Ctrl together with

Shift and then click on a desired item. This will add the components of that item to

the Quickbuy bar after the rest of the items that are already there.

TP Scrolls

You should always have TP scrolls on you throughout the game unless you have

Boots of Travel. A TP scroll can be an emergency exit mechanism for situations

when teleporting is the only way of getting out alive, or an emergency rescue

mechanism for when you need to defend a building or save a teammate.

Try not to use a TP scroll just to get to a place more quickly when there’s no other

reason involved. Always justify its use and ask yourself why you should use it.

Since it has an 80 second cooldown, you should view it as an ultimate ability. Here

are some of the situations where you may want to use a TP scroll: for

reinforcement, escape, pushing, and fast farming. As a general rule, prefer walking

to teleporting and save your TP scroll for important or emergency situations where

you desperately need it.

Double Tapping Items

Apart from the function of using the item on yourself, double tapping can be used

with TP Scrolls or Boots of Travel to teleport your hero back to the fountain.

Double tapping on the Blink Dagger will get you blinked in the direction towards

your base.

So use it when you are in a critical situation for escaping.

Move While Attacking

This is a technique used for repositioning yourself closer to your enemy while

attacking. You achieve this by using the A hotkey to attack and then right click to

move. Press A again, then right click to move.

This allows you to stay close enough to your opponent in order to attack him

multiple times while he’s attempting to escape and leave you behind. This

technique makes use of the time your hero spends between successive attacks and

employs it for movement.

Checking Your Enemy’s Items

Clicking on enemy heroes and checking their items from time to time allows you

to better prepare for whatever they may attempt to do next. For example, when a

hero like Axe gets his Blink Dagger, he will try to reveal this item by making a

successful gank. Knowing about this item and warning your teammates before

someone gets killed removes the surprise advantage that your opponents have in

such a situation. It also allows your team to prepare accordingly.

When playing invisible heroes such as Riki or Bounty Hunter, always click on

your opponents and check if they have dust or sentry wards on them. Otherwise

you may wrongly assume that you can easily escape after an initiation and end up

dying instead.

When deciding what item to buy next, try to find out what items your enemies

already have and what they are building. This will help you make a better decision

about your own build because often times by purchasing an item (like Monkey

King Bar) you will counter what your opponent has already bought (a Butterfly for

example) and nullify his advantage.

What to Do While Running for Your Life

When trying to escape enemy heroes that are trying to kill them, many players

panic and simply spam right click as if this would help them run faster. When

faced with such situations try asking yourself what you can do while running away.

Maybe you have some items in your inventory that you can make use of. Or spells

that could help you survive. Maybe it’s possible for you to TP out without the

enemy being able to stop or kill you in time. Or maybe you can hide in the trees

and juke your way to safety. If you’re near a tower, running in circles around it

while it attacks an enemy melee hero could even turn the situation around and help

you get a kill instead of dying.

Chapter 2: Climb Higher! Strategies for Increasing MMR In this section I will talk about concrete strategies that you can use to increase your

MMR.

Pick Heroes That You Can Play Well Start with heroes you are good at and enjoy playing. I began my climb with my

initial favorite hero – Luna. At the time I was more interested in experimenting

with the possibilities than in serious boosting, and knew nothing about the game

mechanics described so far in this chapter.

Eventually I got bored of playing Luna so I started picking Juggernaut. I was

around 800 MMR at that point. With this new hero I began to learn the game

mechanics, the items and so on. Once I got good with Jugg, I moved on to playing

Phantom Assassin.

When you begin your MMR climbing journey, pick heroes you enjoy playing and

learn them thoroughly. Once you’ve mastered them, they will serve you well.

Learn How to Play Support Heroes Even after I had learned the three carry heroes mentioned above, my MMR stayed

almost the same (~950). Looking back at my match history, I discovered that I was

not playing supports. The only support hero I could play at the time was Lion, and

it was not even a hero that I liked. Browsing through the hero list I discovered Lich,

and with it I learned the basic support mechanics such as warding, dewarding,

pulling and harassing. Being my favorite support hero, Lich helped me get to 1100

MMR.

In low MMR brackets, seldom will you see players pick support heroes. Most of

the time you get full carry teams who then blame each other for the loss or keep

spamming the phrase “We need wards!”, which is annoying.

I used to make the same mistake and prefer playing just carry heroes, but being in

a low MMR bracket forced me to take on the support role and this opened up an

entirely new way of experiencing and understanding the game. Today, I enjoy

playing support just as much as carry, especially when picking Lich or Earthshaker.

Become More Versatile I cannot stress enough the importance of being versatile and having a large hero

pool to choose from. Having a fair number of heroes that you can play well and are

comfortable with gives you the freedom to pick whatever your team needs in order

to succeed as a group against the enemy line-up. Having the ability to play any role

and a variety of heroes in each of these roles is a sure way to increase your MMR.

You will find that almost half of the times you win, this victory is a direct result of

the fact that you picked a role and a hero that your team required in order to do

well as a group.

Know Your Heroes Whenever you play a new hero, learn all you can about it: his abilities, various

skill and item builds that you can choose from, his strengths and weaknesses, what

you’re supposed to do with him during a game and so on.

Know his primary attribute (strength, agility or intelligence) and buy items that suit

him well. A hero’s primary attribute will grow faster than the other two when

leveling up, and each point in this primary attribute will increase the hero’s

damage by 1.

Strength heroes are often played as tanks because of their higher HP (each point in

strength gives your hero 20 HP and strength-based heroes have a larger increase in

this attribute at each level). Agility heroes are usually played as carries (each point

in agility gives them one point in damage, one point in attack speed and a little bit

of armor), while intelligence ones are often played as supports (every point in

intelligence increases their mana pool by 12, as well as their mana regen and spell

damage).

Recognize Your MMR Bracket’s Play Pattern After a number of matches in an MMR bracket you can spot the patterns which

characterize the playstyle of people playing in that bracket: the heroes they most

often pick, the items they buy, the way in which they spend their time around the

map, the mistakes they make and so on.

At around 1100 MMR I discovered that the people in this bracket don’t often read

about other heroes’ abilities and so they don’t really know what certain heroes do

and how to play against them. This allowed me to to jump from 1100 to 1400

MMR by playing Bristleback. All I had to do in every game was to provoke the

enemy heroes and then run away from them. They would chase and kill themselves

by attacking me without quite understanding what’s going on. At above 1400

MMR however, my Bristleback’s win rate stopped being as good because the

people in that bracket knew how to counter it by picking the right heroes and

buying the right items.

But, once again, I discovered another pattern that allowed me to keep climbing: at

this new MMR, people did not want to play support heroes and often lacked sentry

wards and dust. This created the perfect conditions for playing Weaver and owning

with it until around 1700 MMR.

Another pattern in low MMR brackets is the lack of smoke ganks. Players in these

brackets never use and never expect smoke ganks. This creates an opportunity to

take them by surprise and gain a valuable advantage.

No matter what MMR bracket you’re playing in, spot the patterns and the mistakes

made by people in that bracket and then take advantage of them.

Counter the Enemy Team’s Heroes Countering a team’s hero composition starts from the draft and continues

throughout the game. You need to know what items to buy against a certain hero,

what other heroes is he weak against in lane, what are his strengths and

weaknesses, and how he evolves as the game progresses.

I climbed from 1700 to 1950 MMR by playing Axe. I had noticed that at this

MMR people liked to play Phantom Assassin in the carry position. And being one

of my favorite heroes, I knew PA’s weaknesses very well. The combination of

Blade Mail and Berserker’s Call, plus the Counter Helix during the laning phase,

made Axe the perfect counter to PA. And this allowed me to win games quite

easily.

Buy the Right Items The items you buy have a huge impact on the game. Buying the right items in the

correct sequence is one of the keys and also one of the basic conditions of winning

a match. Pay attention especially to the situational items, because just one item can

sometimes win you the game. For example, a Heaven’s Halberd against a Phantom

Assassin who hasn’t bought a Black King Bar or a Manta Style. Or a Ghost

Scepter against a line-up that deals only physical damage and doesn’t have

Diffusal Blades.

Knowing which items are best for every situation requires you to know what items

are available and what the heroes do. If you understand how a hero is played and

what his strengths and weaknesses are, you will immediately know what items you

can buy to counter it. If it deals a lot of physical damage, buy armor or a blade mail.

If it deals magical damage or has a lot of disables, consider buying a BKB, a

Linken’s Sphere or a Hood of Defiance. No matter what you’re going up against,

the game places at your disposal the tools required to deal with it. For every

“Superman” hero in the game there is a “Kryptonite” hero or item. You only need

to know about it and use it appropriately.

Go for Buildings, Not Kills I’ve been in a lot of matches where players liked to dive into the enemy base just

to get some kills instead of focusing on destroying buildings. This is usually a big

mistake, since the opposite team benefits from a lot of advantages when defending

their base: the ability to heal quickly and rejoin the fight, armor buffs from towers,

the high ground advantage and the tower themselves which will attack you and do

significant damage.

You need to understand that Dota is an objective based game and getting kills

won’t necessarily win you the match. Going for structures instead of heroes is a lot

safer and smarter and is almost always the right approach to winning the game.

Don’t Delay As a general rule, your team should try to end the game as soon as it’s possible and

the winning conditions are met. If you delay, your opponents might scale better

into the late game and become strong enough to turn things around.

Chapter 3: Mindset In this chapter, you will learn a few key things about the mindset you should have

when playing Dota 2.

Know what you want to do Get your mind clear about what you want to do in the next match. Perhaps you

want to play a new hero. Or try a new build on a hero you already know. Or maybe

you want to play a certain hero just for fun and personal satisfaction. People tend

to play normal matches and pick Pudge or Invoker with this goal in mind. This is

especially recommended if you’ve lost MMR recently and started to feel like

playing Dota has become a stressful activity instead of a pleasurable one.

Playing a normal match instead of a ranked one is also recommended when

learning new heroes or testing new builds. The thought that a potential loss won’t

matter in terms of MMR will help you to relax and experiment with the

possibilities.

Play to win Play ranked matches only when you feel like giving your best to win. When you

set out to perform at your highest level of skill, and are serious about winning the

game, you will be surprised at what you can achieve. Previously learned skills and

strategies will come to your aid, even without you being aware of this. From the

hero-picking phase to the end of the match, you will unconsciously analyse what is

going on in every situation and devise ways of winning the game.

Taking the game seriously (also known as tryharding) can help you to achieve

amazing results. However, there are times when things do not turn out as you

wanted, even if you give it your very best to win. And in these situations, most

players will get angry and frustrated. In a later chapter I will discuss this problem

and how to handle it.

Winning comes from making good decisions. Beginning with the hero you pick,

the items you buy and the actions you take over the course of the game, every

single decision you make will influence its final outcome. In this long chain of

decisions, the initial ones tend to have the highest impact.

Some of the key decisions you need to make can and must be made early (for

example, what hero to pick against a certain line-up). Others can wait, or should be

made on the fly, according to what your enemies are doing. If the enemy carry is

building a butterfly, you should decide on the fly that the correct damage item to

buy is Monkey King Bar. Such situations must be analysed during the game and

the decisions related to them cannot be pre-planned. That’s why you can’t go with

cookie cutter builds every game and expect to succeed.

An important thing to note is the following: Dota 2 is a team game. This means

that apart from your decisions, you should seek to influence your teammates’

decisions and steer them in the right direction. This requires good communication

and patience on your part. In lower MMR brackets, people don’t often know why a

certain option is good or bad for them. Quickly explaining why choosing that

option is detrimental or helpful to their team could save you the game.

Always have a plan and try to assess the current situation and what must be done in

order to move the game in a winning direction. Fully utilize the planning phase and

early stages of the game to formulate such a plan and think about what must be

done in order to defeat the opposite team.

Try to be aware of the limits of your current understanding of Dota, and the

strategies you employ at the moment to win games. What works in a given MMR

bracket might no longer work in a slightly higher one. As you climb higher and

higher in MMR, you should take note when your strategies stop working and

improve upon them, based on the new play patterns you spot in your current

division.

Be prepared Winning and playing to win requires you to be well prepared. This preparation

includes everything that was discussed so far. The more you practice a hero or

apply a strategy, the more automatic it becomes. So take some time and practice in

normal matches.

Watching professional players and tournaments on Twitch is equally important.

Learning from the best can definitely help you to improve. Often times you’ll see

one of the top players building a hero in a certain way and instantly realise that an

item is amazing on that hero or that a skill build is extremely effective.

Once you have enough preparation, your confidence and ability to play the game in

a focused way will skyrocket. You’ll be able to play every match feeling that you

will win. And this will show in your MMR.

Chapter 4: Motivating Factors In this chapter, you will learn how to motivate yourself and stay focused during the

long journey to your desired MMR.

The desire behind the number Before I began my MMR journey, I made it clear to myself that the actual reason I

wanted to get to 2000 MMR was to prove to my friends that I could break out of

the 1000 MMR prison. They were sure at the time that this would be impossible

for me to achieve. I simply replied with “challenge accepted!” and went on to

prove they were wrong.

Clarify to yourself what is your desire behind the MMR you want to achieve. Why

do you want to have this MMR? To prove yourself? To play at a higher level of

skill? To play at a professional level? Or maybe to establish some credibility and

start streaming on Twitch.

Lock yourself in a room, spend some time alone, in silence, close your eyes and

look into your heart. Find out what it is you want, and then let this desire motivate

you to reach your target MMR. Remember this deep desire throughout your

journey, and it will keep going. Whenever you feel frustrated, wanting to give up,

or get angry at a loss, recall the reason you started and it will help you focus on

your final goal.

Imagination In order to keep your desire burning and get continuous motivation, you will need

to imagine that you’ve already achieved the MMR you want. Imagine what your

feeling will be when you finally reach your goal. Will you feel satisfied, joyous,

proud of yourself for having succeeded after a lot of hard work?

Whatever your goal may be, imagine that you’ve already reached it and let it

motivate you to work hard every day. Take this motivation with you in every game

and play the best Dota that you’re capable of. I personally learned this powerful

motivation method from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” and I find it

extremely useful for turning dreams into reality.

Goal setting Every goal should be broken down into smaller objectives. For example, let’s say

you want to save $10.000 by the end of this year. It’s a big goal, but you can break

it down into smaller, daily, weekly and monthly objectives that you can work on.

This applies to MMR as well, and to Dota in general. If you want to increase your

MMR by 2000, break this goal down into smaller, weekly objectives such as 100

MMR per week. If you want to learn a new hero, devise a way of making

incremental progress towards mastering it.

Using this technique you will not get scared by the immensity of the task ahead of

you. A small, achievable objetive per week will get you focused and give you a

feeling of joy upon reaching it. By slowly but steadily achieving every subgoal,

you will get the motivation you need to get to the MMR you desire.

Breaking your MMR limit You will surely face this problem multiple times on your journey. This is due to

the fact that progress happens in cycles of peaking and plateauing. So you raise

your MMR by a few hundred points, and then you stay around that new level

(sometimes losing, other times winning) until you manage to learn everything you

need to know in order to move to he next level. By comparison imagine that you’re

climbing the very abrupt MMR mountain and after every 200-300 meters you need

to camp, rest and figure out a way to climb higher. Sometimes this will take more

than you desire, and you will stay at the same altitude for a significant number of

weeks. Don’t get discouraged though, everyone goes through this.

When I had to camp at around 1900 MMR it was very frustrating. All the strategies

I used didn’t seem to work. I was stuck at this level for several weeks, until one

day I watched some replays of my games and discovered the culprit: I was getting

emotional and was losing my cool during games. This was affecting my judgement

and decision making and was causing me to make mistakes and lose games. The

frustration was not only coming from the fact that I was stagnating at 1900 MMR,

but also from feeling that I was approaching my skill limit.

In most cases, your MMR limit is also a reflection of your skill limit. The harder

the matches become and the closer your win rate gets to 50% (which translates into

stagnating at a certain MMR), the closer you are to your skill limit.

In my case I knew I was getting frustrated and so I decided to take a break from

ranked matchmaking. For a while I watched replays and tournament matches.

Upon returning to ranked games, I challenged myself to reach 2000 MMR,

knowing that this would equivalate to attaining my goal. With new motivation and

focus I got a good winning streak and reached my peak: 2000 MMR, my highest

MMR until that point.

Whenever you feel that you’ve reached your skill and MMR limit, take some rest.

Free yourself from any negative feeling. Then, use your imagination to reinforce

your motivation and remember why you wanted to reach the MMR you set for

yourself and the start of the journey. Also, focus on the matches themselves, and

not on their result. Challenge yourself to play as well as you can, in order to get

closer to your goal.

Chapter 5: Feelings and Emotions In this chapter, you will learn how to handle your feelings and emotions so that

they become allies instead of enemies of your success.

Handling defeat Losing can bring out the worst in people. It can generate feelings of anger and

frustration, especially when you played your best but still lost because of your

teammates. In turn, these feelings might make you want to win the next game or

games, but they’re very different from the burning motivation described in the

previous chapter. They create a tainted motivation which can cloud your

judgement, further increase your frustration when things don’t go according to plan,

and extend your losing streak. This process can quickly snowball out of control

and escalate to the point where all you want is to uninstall the game.

After a bad loss, stay away from ranked matchmaking and simply do other things

until your bad emotions have cleared and you are cool-headed again. This is the

best way to prevent a losing streak and the frustration generally associated with it.

Try to watch replays of your own games (especially the ones you lost) and figure

out what was the cause of losing. Note it down and learn something from it.

Sometimes you will feel good after a defeat. This happens rarely, and usually in

cases where the game is very close. Both teams are giving their best to win, the

odds are about even and your opponents manage somehow to emerge victorious.

Such games are so exciting to play that a negative result doesn’t bother you

anymore, and you simply want to thank all the players for their performance and

for giving you a good game. With this type of excitement you can go on to the next

ranked game right away, because it doesn’t taint your motivation to win.

Winning streaks Winning a game gives you a feeling of joy and satisfaction (unless the victory was

too easy to obtain). And, just like defeats can create a negative momentum,

victories can create a positive one. That’s why you should keep playing (if your

schedule allows you to) after winning a game, as you will benefit from the positive

feelings you got from your recent victories. Of course, try not to fatigue yourself in

the process by playing too many games in a row. This can be detrimental to your

overall journey.

In-game emotions There are multiple factors that can affect your emotions during a game:

1. Your team’s performance. When their team falls behind, some players

unconsciously give up without even realising it.

2. What your teammates and opponents say to you. As the saying goes, “words are

swords”.

3. Your teammates’ behaviour. For example, support players not buying words or

leaving their carry unprotected during the laning phase is enough to tilt some

people and make them give up. The same goes for stealing farm, runes and kills

from each other.

I could go on and on. When sensing that you’re getting angry and losing your cool,

stop and take a deep breath. Don’t do anything stupid such as feeding couriers to

the enemy team. This will simply make the situation worse! Your teammates will

continue to flame you throughout the match, you will get a lot of reports (and

possibly a low-priority punishment), and you will end up wanting to uninstall the

game. Focus on how you could bring your own team back into the match. Don’t

think about yourself, think about winning. This will help you to think in

constructive ways.

Also, remember to think about other people’s feelings too! Don’t do the things you

despise seeing other people doing. If you hate it when teammates feed, don’t feed.

If you don’t like it when opponents are trash-talking at the end of a game (saying

“ez” or “ez mid” and other similar things), don’t trash-talk. Keep a positive mental

state at all times and only engage in constructive actions and communication.

Chapter 6: Communication In this chapter, you will learn how to communicate with your teammates so that

you can work together and win as a group.

Guiding your team Every team needs a leader to guide it throughout the game. Without leadership,

people just do random things on their own and nothing good comes of that.

You should take charge and lead your team when nobody seems to assume this

role. This doesn’t mean that you want to show off in some way. It simply means

that you want to unify your team in order to achieve the necessary team work

required for success.

Begin your leadership from the hero-selection phase, so that your team can draft a

good line-up that counters the opposition. Also, try to bring into discussion the

strategy you will adopt for the game and how you will lane in the early stages.

During the game, you will need to help your team achieve a good level of

coordination when defending, pushing, ganking and taking objectives.

Apart from leading and steering your team towards a victory, you should also build

a relationship with your temporary teammates. You can do this by praising them

when they did something good, or apologizing when you’ve made a mistake.

Without this level of communication, some people might think that you are an ego-

driven player who only knows how to give orders without caring about other

people’s feelings. And so they’ll simply ignore you.

Giving suggestions Providing suggestions is everyone’s responsibility. If you have an idea on how to

counter a particular line-up, or think you have a better solution than the one your

teammates are planning to use, you can suggest it to them and bring arguments to

support your statements. Remember, you are suggesting, not accusing or giving

orders! And your attitude should reflect this fact. So your communication should

sound like this: “Slark, I think you should go for BKB next because...”, not like

this: “Slark! Get a BKB you idiot!”.

Talking to people in a positive way makes it easier for them to listen to you and

consider your suggestions when making important decisions. On the contrary,

yelling at them or being rude simply causes them to ignore, mute and report you.

So try to avoid making angry demands and starting blame games within your team,

especially when things are not going well.

Another way of making people listen to you is to casually educate them about the

various aspects of the game. Say: “hey, did you know that Mask of Madness and

Desolator don’t go well together, because they both have Unique Attack

Modifiers?” instead of: “Omg! This noob bought a MoM on top of a Desolator! gg!

I’m done with this game! Reported!”.

If your suggestion is not accepted, you can ask people about their reasoning. Other

players may have a better plan to win the game. And by asking them to tell you

why they did a certain thing, you may learn something new.

Praising and evaluating instead of finger

pointing This is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your chances

of success in a game. As difficult as it may be, try to stay positive and talk calmly

to your team. Avoid sarcastic remarks like “Well played!” after losing everyone in

a fight without killing a single opponent. Avoid pointing fingers and saying things

like “please guys, report this stupid Invoker for ruining the game!”. Say “hey,

Invoker, you can do better than this. Try to play safer and not die so much.”. Say

“hey, try not to go there again. They clearly have vision of that area.” instead of

“Omg you dumb noob! Wasn’t it obvious they had a ward there?!”.

Reassure your teammates and use in-game phrases like “Relax, you’re doing fine!”,

“That just happened!” or “Don’t give up!”. When you’re the one who screwed up,

apologize and let your team know that you’re aware of the fact that you’ve made a

mistake. Give your teammates a “Well played!” when they succeed at killing an

enemy hero or tower. Little things like these can maintain a positive atmosphere

within the team and win you the game!

Politeness and friendliness go a long way. When the atmosphere is good within a

team, people tend to give their very best to win the game. They focus entirely on

this objective and as a result, they play better. Unfortunately, it’s rare nowadays to

get such a team. I certainly hope that one day, people will be able to enjoy every

game because of the harmony created at their team’s level through politeness and

friendliness. I have once been in a match like this, where everyone was so friendly

that even when someone disconnected, the two teams waited patiently, joking in all

chat. And even though my team lost in the end, we enjoyed ourselves so much

throughout the game that we ended up partying for a few more games afterwards.

This is what I wish to see in the Dota 2 community in the future.

Speaking of being friendly, there are more don’ts than dos. The first one on the list

is this: don’t abuse the wheel chat or the ping! These were meant for

communication purposes and not for letting everyone know how frustrated you are.

The mic shouldn’t be used to blame and scold your teammates. Its purpose is to

allow your team to communicate complex ideas and strategies more easily. Besides,

don’t turn on your mic to “share” your music, as not everyone has the same tastes

and most people will get annoyed by this. Probably the worst thing when turning

on your mic is to have a noisy background sound, such as people laughing and

talking to each other.

All of these things are distracting when trying to focus on the game and I’m glad

that Valve made a mute function for dealing with such scenarios.

In addition to the list mentioned above, speak an international language! Use

English when you have a team made up of people from different countries. Writing

or talking using your native tongue is impolite for obvious reasons, and some

people will be triggered by such behaviour.

Final Words Embarking on your MMR boosting journey should be fun and enjoyable, not

stressful. Succeeding at gradually climbing to higher brackets is the result of

improving your skills and playing abilities. So, whenever you achieve a weekly

objective, stop for a moment and congratulate yourself on becoming a better player.

Remember to always keep improving by reading guides, watching professional

tournaments and practicing by yourself or with friends. Spend time to watch

replays of your own games in order to spot mistakes, figure out what areas you

need to improve in and learn what works for you. Always expand your hero pool

so that you can have enough options to deal with any situation.

Anyone who learns and applies the skills and mindsets described in this book is

sure to increase their MMR and get to the skill bracket they desire. Be faithful to

yourself and never give up! Stay on the path and plan every step that you are going

to take. At the end of it, you will find that not only your MMR has improved, but

also your skills. Someday soon you will look back and won’t believe how far

you’ve come. Until then, enjoy this wonderful journey! Good luck and have fun!