Considering starting my solo ranked mmr adventure

Indeed troll and sniper will be bad if they are played by someone who doesnt know the hero.
I've had games where I could 1v1 them as a support and still win because they are simply bad with the hero.

The biggest deal with troll players is that they are used to getting deceny farm in lane and proceeding to manfight everything. If you take their early farm and kill them 1-2 times they will feed you a lot more.

Remember that the lower down the rankings you are, the more you need to play "pub style" rather than "pro style" DOTA.

That means:

1) Pick heroes who can fill multiple roles reasonably well (e.g. offlaner, semi-support, some scaling etc). You'll probably end up with much more/less farm than you thought, may end up having to ward when you shouldn't be etc. Expect it and deal with it, even if you're playing carry.

2) Don't pick any hero who relies on other players to follow up/setup effectively - as you can't assume they will. Pick the easiest possible combos to execute, complex ones rely too much on your team of low MMR strangers.

3) Big team fight is usually really useful, use it at the right moment and make it easy for others to do what they need to.

4) Heroes with good escapes can be really hard for low skill strangers on the other team to deal with, as they rely on co-ordination to counter.

Yeah, I think if and when I play ranked I'll probably play Crystal Maiden, or maybe Windranger both are my most comfortable heroes at the moment

I did try to raise my mmr like you. I started at 2k. What I could say to you by experience in the trench is that if you are able to do snowballing mid or carry, do it. Shadow Fiend is the easiest way to raise your mmr.


But since I know you are support, your team will want you to be useful in teamfights (most of them don't even want wards) all I can say is that you should pick teamfight supports like skywrath, es, cm, lina, etc.

They won't benefit from a chen, is what I am saying:p

Windranger is really a good hero for you to go into ranked for the first time too, since she can be the flexible semi-support/semi-carry, counters the meta heroes we were talking about ( Sniper, Troll Warlord, and other annoying people) and is rather independent in her playstyle (you can either go mid, offlaner or dual/trilane support). I would advise you in that case to seriously consider doing the rat thing, since if you are cautious enough most people will not be able to catch you and low mmmr games usually lack push potential - people want kills and forget the towers.

Go Aghanim's Scepter, Blink Dagger, Mjolnnir and/or Desolator and/or Daedalus] and watch creeps, towers and heroes alike melting before you :D

But CapnDaft is right. Don't go Chen, don't go Io xD use heroes that can cope well on their own, or it will be too painful.

Unfortunately, you will come across players below 3k who don't know how to Farm...or even Last Hit. Sadly, they all tend to be Carry players. T-T

Well... 1 tip I can give. Don't play ranked too early, like I did. But you said that you've been playing for a year or so, in my opinion that's enough expierence to try it out!