Analyzing The Difference Between 2k And 5k Supports
Looking at stats to tell the difference between certain skill levels is difficult for many players. The easy conclusion always seems to be “high skilled players just do x better,” even though the analysis can go much deeper than that.
Vision
Low MMR supports do a good job at purchasing Observer Wards. There is no denying that. Disregarding whether or not they actually place them well and use them to their fullest potential, the fact that they purchase them in sufficient amounts is good. It's a basic element of the game after all.
As important your own vision may be, decimating the enemy’s vision is just as important. Playing a game in total darkness, with next to 0 information outside of tower range is difficult. Vision means information, information can lead to security, and security allows one to take action, such as farming or ganking. Take away the vision, you take away everything that’s needed for farming or ganking in a safe environment. Surely you have experienced how difficult a game of Dota can be, when you have absolutely zero vision on the map.
On average, a 2k MMR player will buy roughly half the amount of Sentries a 5k MMR player would. If we now consider the amount of Observer Wards (8 average per game) purchased, it shows that the amount of Sentries purchased is not sufficient to reliably deal with the enemy's vision.
Item Efficiency
The lower the MMR of the support, the more farm they take away from their carries. The GPM that they have is partly the GPM their cores should have. This is not to say that the supports actively try to take away the cores farm. It’s natural for lower rated players on core positions to not farm efficiently, thus leaving farm left for their supports.
That said, supports in lower brackets do play greedier. Often times, supports will hold onto gold to purchase bigger items, instead of purchasing basic necessities for the team. Most of the time, the courier upgrade should have priority over Boots, something low level supports often don’t realize. Delaying an upgrade for another 1-2 minutes can decide the outcome of the other lanes.
There’s a reason why some pro players are famed for playing a “6th-8th position” support. They starve themselves out of necessity for the team, making sure to enable the rest of their team.
Arguments can be made that a poor support will hold the team back and that a Lion for example needs his Blink Dagger to function, and that is very well true, within reason. A Lion can very well go 20 minutes without a Blink, if he’s a solo support. Lower ranked players fail to understand the state of the game and when being starved is a natural thing, or whether it’s due to one’s own inefficiency.
Generally speaking, if there’s only one support, that support will, if the game isn’t a complete stomp, be rather poor and that is okay. Of course, the carries can help with purchasing items for vision, but that needs to be communicated.
Deaths & Gold Fed
Because lower ranked supports tend to be more farmed, the gold they feed upon death increases. Of course, almost every hero feeds more gold in the lower bracket; it’s natural granted the increasing amount of deaths. That said, supports have more responsibility in the lower bracket to not feed away that gold.
Everybody’s familiar with the phrase “space created.” It’s commonly seen as a meme/joke for whenever somebody dies, they created space. That is very well true in many cases, especially the higher skilled the player is. A player dying in the enemy backlines, providing information, drawing back multiple heroes, wasting a lot of the enemies’ time and barely losing any gold--that is how you truly create space. As a player, every death should have a reason behind it, and that reason should not be carelessness.
Dying to place an Observer Ward is less than ideal and should be prevented. Dying, because you were farming is the absolute worst for a support. Sure, that Blink Dagger or that Force Staff is important, but with proper map awareness, a support should be able to minimize the amount of times they die while farming. There are exceptions of course. Say the enemy just picked up their Blink Dagger for Batrider and decided to go for a smoke gank. Then you, as a support, want to be the target of that gank, if there needs to be one. There are also split pushing supports for example, such as Visage or even Shadow Demon, and this would very well fall under the category of space creating. Dying on the opposite side of the map from your team only counts as space creating though, if your team can actually use the time and space you bought.
Looking at the table to the right, it becomes obvious why dying as a support is so much more impactful in the lower brackets than in the upper brackets. Not only do supports die more, they also feed more gold per death.
Using stats to improve
Dota is a complex game, where everybody advances differently and everybody has different weaknesses to work on. While the patterns here may not apply to everybody, they do illustrate general problems that everybody can address--maybe not within themselves, but at least with teammates.
If, as a support, you feel you get a lot of farm, invest it wisely. Purchase defensive items that allow you to be difficult to kill and that can help teammates escape sticky situations. Be aware, that you are still a support, no matter how much farm you have. Don’t neglect warding and vision in general.
If you struggle to have money, put the need of the team first still. As long as you don’t put yourself at risk of dying too easily--walking around without Boots the entire game--it’s perfectly fine to starve yourself to enable your teammates. If you do wish to save up for a key item, communicate it to your teammates, inform them that you would prefer skipping a set of Wards & Sentries for a Force Staff etc. Not only will it keep them on alert, it will likely prevent you from seeing the dreaded “>We need Wards.”
There are many more things we can learn from raw stats about the differences between 2k and 5k players, and even more by looking at individual performances. It’s up to each player though to realize which of these things apply to themselves and where they can and want to improve.
im 2k and i always support because thats how i grind my mmr to 3k
and about 2k supports not buying sentry? i feel meh
but i like how you do not generalize because i dedicated myself as support but it depends if my support doesnt need farm and as in 2k bracket always (if not always) last pick is support and i have knowledge in countering which in bracket doesnt know
if you want proof, trying watching these
MATCH ID : 2674557952
2672753600 both as Keeper of the Light
Nothing worse than a carry who sucks at laning, but being supported to victory going apeshit with spamming "ez, fucking noobs, ez lane" and the likes. Or its russian counterpart.
2k mmr? no game sense..thats enough said!
Саппорты в играх с низким рейтингом очень хорошо покупают варды, отрицать это сложно. С другой стороны, вопрос о том, ставят ли они их в правильных местах и ставят ли вообще остается открытым. Сам процесс покупки уже является большим достижением, особенно если сравнивать с Дотой несколько лет назат. НАКУРЕНЫЕ?????????????????????????????????????????
I play carry & support in the <2k, though I try to avoid supporting now because I usually can't influence the game enough early, and then I can't win it late (sometimes I'm the best player on my team, but I'm usually not the worst).
There are so many issues with supporting in my mmr -- I start with no idea if carry knows how to last hit, or even play the hero. Will he want jungle wards? will he just actually jungle most of the time? should I pull, or will that just get him killed to enemy creep wave (OMG, this happens...). Where do you put the wards? Well, that depends on how team wants to play. Team usually behaves randomly, and takes random (generally bad) fights. Good luck predicting where to ward. I always ward rosh because it's always useful, after that I concentrate on keeping our jungles safe until we push, then try to ward behind the target tower. Smoking is usually a waste of time. Getting people to rosh at the right time is key. Don't be Bane, it will take the entire game to teach them how to "not hit the purple balls." Ditto for ET, Echo Stomp is incomprehensible. I have had some luck with CM and maxxing aura asap, if you can do that, ward, and not feed, your team SHOULD have a major adv. early/mid game. Slark/CK/Sven are all different and much scarier laners with level 3 mana aura at minute 4. Not to mention Mirana and SS and basically anyone with early game mana problems with is pretty much everyone.
As a carry, I try to tell the supports what I want/need without being a dick, but freq when I ask for wards in a certain spot I get flamed (or the worthless wards we have are pinged). Still, usually once the supports realize I'm marginally competent and want to win, we can team up, ward at least half the map, and have a chance.
58th :)
Ofc 2k supports have issues, but the major problem of 2k are the carries.
When you are supporting a Battle Fury Sven, you have to go greed. This article forgot about it :)
2k carry often [actually always] don't know what they are doing and supposed to be doing. If you look at their last hit accuracy before the 10 min marks, it's usually below 40 which is very bad[40 is only a passed for being qualified as carry if your support is doing what he is doing].
Support in 2k usually believes no hopes among the carries since their carries is in lack of [basic] mechanical skill set and late game team coordination.
look at all these 2k supports having high gpm cuz they spend their time farming.
@ Irekutoroni
The whole point of this article is to show that 5k supports buy similar number of sentries as observer wards on the other hand, 2k supports buy half the number of sentries as observer wards (out of all games, not just with invis). You basically fit perfectly into the 2k category with the numbers you provided.
Oh, 2k sup... It's all about me :/
^ glad you know that
@Jukerlaw maybe he got smurf and improving his skill from there i know its hard thing to do now, but friend of mine told me that if you deserve 6k you can just murder those 4k-5k cancers, i also have a 3k friend who got 6k on a smurf. He was calibrated at 4,8k
FeelsBadMan 🔫
2k dont usually support anyway they usually play carry .. all team carry
The thing about wards is that at 2k there will be only 1 support in the team, whereas in 5k there is 2, so 5k supports actually buy 8 wards EACH, so there is actually ~16 wards placed each game at 5k.
im always a top supports at 1 k mmr. now im 3 k mmr XD. have gone to 3.5 k mmr and will be 4 k soon... its really hard winning the game at 1 k mmr with support where u feel like u are fighting 1 vs 5 on your fucking own
спс за статью! топ
Am I the only one who finds it sad that crystal wardbitch is still the stereotype for bad supporting? =(
(1k support, SEA Server)
Ok first thing first this is a fun thing to do. Except when your carry blame the you for feeding while they hav probem with farming wth.
In 1k, you don't deward, zoning, pull creep and other stuff because of many reason.
DEWARD
(And warding thingy)
In 1k, the opposite team will not have a support and if they do, they dont ward lol. And if they ward, they place it on the river. ONLY the river. Why? because 1k mmr carry will always move through the map using the river, the mid player will come t gank using the river, if you do place an aggressive ward at enemy's jungle, your team will not come to gank that LC eventho we have vision on that area *facepalm*
ZONING
In 1k mmr, zoning will have two consequences. 1. Enemy heroes will response to your zoning aggressively and 2. Enemy heroes will back off. But the first one have more probability to happen.
if the first one happen, your carry will probably go help you, aggro the creep, tanking and taking damage and both of you will die coz you cant run away coz if you do run, your carry will die and you will be blame for running away.
If the second one happen, they wont make any different coz our carry is not good enough in farming and the different in net worth isn't worth it.
PULL.
They don't realize that you are pulling and die.
(Yes they die that easily.)
Most of 1kmmr carry doesn't even know how to farm a pulled creep wave.
They begun to tank the creep and ended up taking damage from creep. And die from enemy heroes.
If they even manage to avoid tanking creep and take play safely at tower, they don't even know how to last hit with tower attacking the creep.
Or they are too afraid of the creep wave and too noob to aggro and the creep and enemies heroes begin to destroy your tower.
Or maybe they see you pulling and they also come to you to get the last hit coz they don't know what pulling creep does and by the time you try to tell him its too late coz your tower hp been reduced to half by then.
STACK
don't stack in early game coz it is too risky and probably enemy heroes will get your ancient before your team does and your team does not know how to guard the ancient safely.
Well you see, I'm a normal skill player so this comment is free to flame.
I usually focus on utility item such as force staff to make me my carry harder to kill or help em in anyway possible.
Don't feed and always have ward on. (Yes they do ask for ward even it is on cd or we r defending the high ground)
They will blame you if we are losing coz kda is what matter to them.
Also, for them Necro is a support.
personally i think the biggest difference between 5k and 2k supports is the draft stage, did they draft to add synergy or to counter meta heroes? More than likely that 2k support will just play what they want, 50% of the time it will work out well, 50% of the time that pick will be useless or fodder for the enemies. Secondly communication is a massive disadvantage as 2k games would benefit the most from good communication, in a 5k you can sort of trust that everyone knows what they should be doing, and where their team mates are at given timings, but in a 2k game often the carry will not expect the supp to back off ready to pull/stack.
The laning stage is a partnership where both players need to be in sync with each other and understand not only what is happening right now, but what will happen in the near future, is it 1:45 on the clock, can i get a gank at the rune? can i pull and stack the 5th camp?
I think better time awareness is important, but in reality this will just take time and breaking a lot of bad habbits
So I'm on my road to 4k right now (3200 - 2700 - 3200 again in a week), and this really does speak to me. Typically each game I get is 4 core line ups and Im the solo support. I typically farm starve myself pretty bad to get wards and other items to assist my carries (buying a salve/clarity so my carry doesn't have to leave lane, wards, etc.). I'll sac myself and play retard magnet to bail my carries out. I always buy courier at 3 minutes and skip boots if I have to. Majority of the time its always a the carry that cant farm properly, or people ganking before I can try to get offensive ward vision.
Sometimes it isn't enough. Sometimes you have to realize that maybe you need to say "Fuck my team, I'm getting my Aghs" and just KS and farm for days until you can be the game changer.
It's getting better though now that Im back at 3200. My CK in lane asked me who stuns first, and how to stack our stuns right so we could get kills. I have people follow up on my initiations and get kills. Its looking up, but when I dipped below 3k, there was no team cohesion and everyone blames the support non stop.
although you support as good as you can, your carry sometimes just like a shit and blame you. that is problem 2k mmr in SEA. fyi, if i play support i upgrade courir less than on 5 minutes game started. observer ward usually 10 - 15 every game.
Mhmkay!
You play support, buy wards and sentry overtime but your carry has been failed... Thats why 2k support mmr always be a carry..
2k supports playing Io ? Really ?