Gaming
Gaming
The 10 types of Dota 2 player
As you climb the MMR mountain you’ll meet many players – give these ones a shove.
Once Dota 2 gets its hooks into you, there chances are it will be hundreds, if not thousands of hours before you get anywhere near the upper echelons of the MMR scale, and even then most won’t make it past 3-4K.
While the quality of play and understanding of the game may increase as the MMR count rises, there are some things that every Dota player will experience, regardless of if they are in the 1K bracket or pushing to hit 9K. There will be throws, incredible comebacks and loads of Invokers (at least while 6.86 is still around). However, the one thing that Dota players will experience more than anything is other players, and these are 10 of the most common types you will find.
Whether you want to hug them as they save you from a gank or curse them as they tilt their way to another victory for your opponents, you’ll have encountered each and everyone of these in pubs.
The perfect player
Quite possibly the most annoying type of Dota 2 player in the world, the perfect player truly believes that nothing is their fault. If they go for the first bounty rune alone and die, it was because the team wasn't with them. If they get caught out in the opposition jungle while farming, it was because there weren’t any deep wards. When the team gets wiped it’s because the supports didn’t lock anyone down. Their delusion is so bad that if they give up first blood they assume there is no way the team can win without their star player being ahead from the start, and will call “GG noob team” in all chat. Then if the team manages to win, they tell everyone it was all because they did so well, despite ending 2-12-3 with only boots and drums on Spectre.
The slightly disappointed support
The nice guys of Dota, the disappointed support has a mindset of “I will pick a hero that the team needs” and always ends up having to pick a support as the other four players have selected four carries and are currently fighting over who goes mid. Disappointed supports dream of the day where their team-mates pick a good support pair straight away and leave them to be the position one, but the chances of that happening are less than the chances of Arteezy and Kuroky joining forces to win The International 7.
The rage against your machine
Dota is a game that makes even the most rational of gamers act in irrational ways. Someone who is by all accounts an amicable person face to face can turn into the most angry person in the world when they load into a game, even if things are going their way. “Oh my god! Where were you team!?” will boom through your headset as the angry one gets picked off in an unavoidable situation that won’t change the outcome of the game. What makes them worse is that even when a teamfight seems to go perfectly, they will take umbrage with the fact that one of the supports got a single kill, stealing it from them.
The tower diver
Anyone who has even played one full game of Dota knows that towers hurt, especially in the early game, and should generally be avoided. Now, there are times where diving behind a tower to secure a kill is a good idea, but the tower diver takes this to a new extreme, running past a tier-three tower at six minutes to secure a kill on a position five Crystal Maiden. Unsurprisingly, things generally don’t go well in this situation, but instead of learning from their mistakes the diver does exactly the same thing four minutes later. Regardless of how the game goes chances are they will have more deaths as a result of diving towers than due to the other team playing well.
The god of gamblers
There is a time and a place for picking a random hero when playing Dota, but randoming as a last pick in a ranked game when your team already has positions one through four locked in is seldom the best idea. Inevitably the other members of the team will ask why they randomed, and the only response they will receive is “I need to learn all the heroes”. Well that's great and all, but some people actually want to occasionally win a Dota game, and hitting that random button and locking in Meepo when you have never played him before really screws your team over. Unless you are actually a god, in which case, fair play, but we’ve not seen many of those on mere mortal pubs.
The journeyman jungler
While Chen and Enigma are two of the most effective junglers in Dota, the journeyman jungler will pick heroes such as Axe and Legion Commander, because they only play carries. That’s how hot they are. Of course, if they had their way they would be in the safelane farming, but being left with the fourth of five pick meant they had to pick a jungler because supports are boring and having more than one support is pointless when there are neutrals in the jungle to farm. Sometimes their pick will work out, but often they will show up to mid-game fights with boots and an Iron Talon, or won't show up at all because there are still neutrals to kill.
The ping spammer
One of the most important mechanics in Dota is the ping. When used effectively it can convey almost any piece of information, but the ping spammer seems to value a ping more than destroying the ancient. If a hero is spotted going for a rune, they will ping, if a hero leaves the lane for a second they will ping the lane instead of saying the hero is missing and if they want Zeus to ult they will ping the hero, despite there literally being a chat wheel option for “Zeus ult now”. By the end of the game you will most likely have tinnitus from the pings still ringing in your ears, and expect to hear one whenever you see a person walk round a corner on your way to work the next day.
The smurf
The smurf is clearly too good to be playing in your MMR bracket, so they must be on a smurf account. Or, you know if we think about it, they could just be having the game of their life. Either way they will carry any team to victory, and ruin their opponents day, ending with some ridiculous KDA on a difficult hero. More times than not they will be humble about it, but as they sit there admiring their stats post game you can’t help but be annoyed by them; after all, you wanted to be the centre of attention when you joined the game and they took that away from you.
The panic attack
We’ve all misclicked and accidentally popped our 10 second BKB while fighting against kobolds in the small camp – but it was an accident and a rare occurrence. For the panicker though, this happens all too often; once they sense danger or a fight kicks off their fingers become uncontrollable and mash every key possible. This usually results in all their abilities going off on the wrong target and accidentally starting to TP when they wanted to blink. Often their mistakes can be forgiven, but when they finally hit the perfect five man Black Hole only to self cancel it because they panicked, the inevitable facepalm emotes are more than warranted.
The silent support
“We need wards” is the bane of the silent support’s life. Every game they pick a support and every game they buy and place wards, yet “we need wards” is still constantly spammed in the chat, even though there are four of on the map and none left in stock. But despite the constant reminders to buy wards and questions of why they got picked off when trying to place a ward they remain silent throughout, choosing to avoid conflict and keep the team as peaceful as a pub team can be. They may feel annoyed inside but when they ‘accidentally’ stun the enemy carry a second too late so he can kill the person who has been demanding wards, everything feels much better.
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