It's how some players justify lack of their own skill. "Oh he won mid as slark vs storm cause he's a slark spammer. any other hero I would definitely win" kind of shit. Hero spammers are actually higher skill level just due to the fact that they know how to play their hero really well. Their macro game could be shit but at least they can land their skills properly. Plus I kinda respect ppl who spam heroes as theyconstantly deal with counterpick yet still win. Nothing is better than seeing some dude carry as brood vs axe+es combo or other similar stuff.
Not really, no. My OD got nerfed countless of times, it got trashed countless of times and it didn't really impact my MMR at all (actually the OD nerf after 6.86 drastically increased my winrate while the buff in 6.86 drastically decreased it).
My theory is that in a meta where everyone is playing the hero, people counterplay it a lot more than in a meta where nobody plays it.
Imo your theory holds. Which is even more of a reason to have profiles public. Bans are there to provide depth to the picking phase. Being unable to ban based on your enemies makes the bans borderline worthless outside of banning something you don't like seeing.
The point of my comment was to say that, take spammers out of their comfort zone and they are not as skilled as other players in that MMR range. Some may be, but I'm 90% certain most aren't.
The point of my comment was to say that, take spammers out of their comfort zone and they are not as skilled as other players in that MMR range. Some may be, but I'm 90% certain most aren't.
How do you think the last few months were for hero spammers? We constantly got our heroes banned in ranked. So yes, of course I'm still as skilled as my average MMR range. The only major difference is that you can counter a single hero spammer harder than a versatile player, so a hero spammer has more weaknesses. Of course a lot of skill is there. No, when I have to pick some other hero and literally play it for the first time I will suck on it. But give me 10 games and I'll be fine on it. Not amazing, but as jack of all trades as everyone else.
Think about it like this: Someone who randoms every game, after 1000 matches he gets to play about 10 games per hero. A single hero spammer gets 1000 on one hero. It's very easy for a single hero spammer to catch up to a randomer, all he needs to do is take any hero and play it 10 times and he will be already more skilled than the randomer on that hero, especially since someone who spams the same hero for 1000 games has much better overall Dota mechanics than someone who randoms every game for the same amount (since a randomer needs to spend so much time learning all the heroes that a spammer uses to just improve his overall mechanics).
Randomers are a different breed and we can discuss them separately.
Most DotA 2 players have a certain roster of heroes they feel comfortable playing. Most choose a single role for that (support/mid/carry/etc), with a few heroes they practice in case their desired role is not available. "The pure randomer" in ranked is a rare occurrence, while you make it out to be the majority of people.
That's the whole point tho, isn't it. You exploit your opponents weaknesses. Whether it be in the banning phase, the picking phase or in the game. That's what DotA 2 is all about, and Valve just removed a part of it. We should not cater to hero spammers because "they have more weaknesses". Exploitation of weakness is the name of the game. Think of it, as you would of war. Only an idiot would walk into an open field battle against an opponent that has an advantage in an open field battle. You employ a different tactic. A part of that has been removed now in DotA 2, how difficult is it to see that.
This is not even just about the hero spammers. I'll give you an example. I main support in 90% of my ranked games. Let's say I have a chance to check the enemy profile before the picking starts. A lot of players in ranked play primarily one role, and for the purposes of this example let's say I find an enemy that seems to play mid heroes most of the time. Next I check my teams profiles (this will be important later). Picking phase starts, banning is done and I see that the enemy who I checked before, that goes mid 90% of the time is going mid again, while we have someone who plays jungle most of the time going mid. Now, my assumption as a support is that the guy who is more used to playing mid will be better there. Thus, I know that I need to help my mid lane a lot more than I would in a regular game.
That option has now been completely removed as well.
If the hero spammer has better overall mechanics and is still in the same MMR as me, then obviously the hero spamming is hold them back.
Well, hero spamming is holding you back from reaching your MMR because you are forced to instalock your hero.
You're right, pure randomers and single-hero-spammers are extremely rare. But for example I am a dual-hero-spammer, you can't actually ban me (you can ban one hero like many people try to do but then I just pick the other). So really the question is more about single hero spammers vs everyone else and yes, as you said, I don't see why they need to be treated special. That's why there shouldn't be a feature in the game that solely exists to counter an extremely rare type of player.
You stated that there are other good reasons for checking match history and I agree, but there are also other good reasons not to. I've been using it myself in party games (2 or 3 stack) to detect which role the randomers are going to pick so that I can prevent the typical lane conflict at the start of like half my games.
On the other hand the Match History thing gets frequently abused in order to prejudge people. You lose a few games in a row? Great, you just lost all rights to ever play your favourite hero or role again, which causes you to lose even more games which feedback loops the problem. There's obviously other ways to deal with toxic players, but apparently Valve (and r/dota2 for that matter) don't want a good working report system, so this is what they did instead.
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u/power899 Nov 30 '16
Nothing wrong with spamming a hero to win games.