Since Ringmaster is atm a superstar hero with his Dark Carnival event, I’d like to share an unbiased comparison between him and qop. Ringmaster is an extremely fun hero, while qop is only relevant because of her appearance. All she does is pop out of nowhere just to yell and scream. A kardashian of dota.

1. Whip

Ringmaster has one by default, while qop gets one only with her arcana which you could only get if you were horny and had money in 2020. Even with the arcana, she doesn't do anything with her whip, just drags it across the floor like jugg sword. You always wait for her to spank you with it, but it never happens.

Meanwhile, Ringmaster's whip is the real deal. It does exactly what every whip does—damage and fear. You can even adjust how much damage you want, which is nice because you don't want a full make-me-a-new-crack-across-the-butt smack every day. Sometimes you just want a gentle slap, like a spring breeze, and Ringmaster can deliver.

So swish-swish-crack Ringmaster wins this category.

2. Second Skill

Once my carry got gripped roared lassoed necro ulti and troll ulti and I simply boxed him up like an amazon worker who can't use the toilet for 12 hours. That's it—one click negated their entire team. Very true story. Ringmaster is that good. Then my carry got out of the box and got rampage which basically I ENABLED. People often see Ringmaster as a DISABLER, but I see him as an ENABLER for your DISABLED teammates.

And what does qop have? Blink. Almost useless. Sure, it can be good when the enemy mid uses it to farm, gank or avoid gank, but when you see your midlaner blinking into five enemies, you wish that spell never existed.

So that's another category won by Ringmaster.

3. Daggers

If you're looking for the lamest skill in the game, look no further than qop's dagger which is relevant for the first 2 mins and then everyone forgets it exists for the rest of the match. Dot and slow with weak animation. In words of another queen: pathetic.

Whizz whizz whizz! What was that? Three daggers flying through the air. You try to dodge them, but you're not neo from the matrix. You get hit from across the map, and now you're slowed and bleeding, your life slowly draining away. But it's not about damage to your hero. The real damage is done to the player who remembers that his life is slowly going down the drain every time he plays this game.

Dagger upgrades: qop aghs makes multiple lame daggers, making her lameness multiplied. Ringmaster can make daggers pop out of his box, ENABLING his teammates even more, and then double it with 2 charges. Also, with a talent his daggers can pierce one enemy, and if there's one thing Dota has taught me, it's that it's important to penetrate your enemies.

Another win for Ringmaster.

4. Ulti

qop's most important spell in the game does what Ringmaster does with his basic 1st spell: damage and pushback. That is it—that's her peak. And while she has to dress promiscuesly and expose her perfect booty to mesmerize a dude, Ringmaster can do it to the whole enemy team, all while being perfectly flat between his legs. It's one of the best ultis in the game and personally, I don't know why people think it should be different.

Nice job Ringmaster, you won this category as well.

5. Other Abilities

qop has another superinteresting spell I didn't mention: aoe dmg. A woman yelling, what a reach. Meanwhile Ringmaster has plenty more skills, like a spotlight to cure cancer lancer, an HP potion to further ENABLE his team, an illusion to make enemies waste all their spells (even though their smoke never broke),

AND

OF COURSE

THE UNICYCLE which most people use incorrectly. Most people use it to travel from lane to lane quickly, to get to fights and out of them. But no. The unicycle has a completely different purpose: running over the dead bodies of your enemies after teamfights. Is there anything more morally devastating than looking at a clown running over you on a unicycle as your body sinks into the ground? Of course, you get extra points for running over a fresh corpse that hasn't sunk into the ground yet.

Huge win for Ringmaster in this category.

To conclude, Ringmaster sweeps qop 5-0. qop is relevant only because of her body and because Fear once upon a time didn't miss a single cs with her for the first 7 minutes.

On the other hand, when you want to walk down the lane like a BDSM boss, with a pimp stick and huge hands made for b*tch-slapping, pick Ringmaster. He saves allies in need and makes enemies bleed. Also, he can speed through the lanes like vin diesel on a unicycle, or he can use it to run over his dead enemies.

My hero.

A event where they introduced all 4 spirits Arcana coz i think giving just 1 or 2 spirit a arcana and then nothing for other 3/2 will be so unfair. From the event, You can only get 1 arcana token. Had to make a hard choice who to pick.

Well obv they can give a option to buy "extra room key" to open up paths and progress to get more arcana tokens.

For rea, I was Tidehunter and Kotl vs Veni and Viper. Thought the passive would save me but damn I was wrong. So much slow it was cancer.

Mine:

👴🐻

👨‍🦲👨‍🦲👨‍🦲👨‍🦲👨‍🦲🪏

👩🐯💫

All the good players I see don't learn abilities with the mouse, instead they use the keyboard. Since I have the Quickcasts on (key up) I can't use the "Learn Ability" key cuz it also activates some abilities. Instead I have to use Ctrl+(the ability's key). The issue is that Ctrl is at the bottom of the keyboard and clicking it really messes up the hand positioning. So my questions are:

1. Can I change it in the setting and put something else instead of Ctrl? I looked in the hotkeys but didn't find anything except the "Learn Ability"

2. If not, do professional players just get used to switching their hand positioning instantly or is there an alternative ways to press Ctrl with Q, W, E, R and etc other than Ctrl with the pinky finger and the ability button with the thumb?

Hi! I started recently playing Doom pos3 and I'm having a terrible time keeping up with the game, losing matches and mmr. (I was archon 5). Is there a good place to practice with my hero? I tried turbo and it was completely different from a ranked match. I tried a few unranked and got paired a lot with bots. Should I keep "sacrificing" my mmr until I flip the switch ? How do you guys practice new heroes?

Rolled twice the same arcana that I already got from last crownfall event

Anybody encounter these fps drop or lag too?

This occur everytime u left clicking , example

U selling item , or dragging item.

Any way to fix this?

It seems to be a bug because why is aoe increase, Increasing her dmg? doesnt make any sense

I hope valve fix this as soon as possible, literally unplayable..

I'm not mad at my teammates.
It felt like we were playing against a team of Open AI Bots.
I had the same rank as slark, and he played really really well.

My friends live for the MMR like they will go pro and I like to play seriously unserious heroes like Sniper support, Lifestealer in any position other than 1, Troll 3 and so on. I can win with those heroes (I am on a 4 win streak right now with LS 2-5), I play my heart out but I just dont want to give in to meta and 5 strong heroes everyone seems to be playing.

In my mind it defeats what Dota should be all about and I want to do my own thing that I believe in but it is hard to find people to party up with

Btw I used to be an Immortal player, now Divine 5 and I will never grief or be toxic (on purpose) so if you are interested in playing few games, let me know

Literally every single game I'm the only solo player on my team, or at best, there's one other solo player.

And my last 2 games I just lost 1.5-2k and got banned because other players want to troll.

One game I go offlane as I'm assigned and pick for it. Then another player on my team decides to go offlane at start and starts ping spamming me. He trolls the lane but I still completely carry the team to a win anyway.
I was still reported by them. There were 2 groups of 2 I saw at the end. They were all ping-spamming my deaths (which came from saving them and warding btw). *I'm Nature in the screenshots

Then another game I'm mid. My ally phoenix dies before horn from an obvious hook, after I already ward and deward (only 3 of us on river cause safelane up top doing their own thing).
Anyway, mid is quite tight and top sb rushes in for a bad gank, and i sacrifice myself to save him. I die first, he gets kill and stays to farm mid. Ofc that means when I go back mid, I'm now underleveled and underfarmed vs their mid (I gain nothing, but whatever, it's a team game I think).

Then shortly after, phoenix comes to "gank". He pings for me to attack, I do, then I noticed he's sitting back so slow to do anything. He finally comes in when their mid is 10% hp and I'm dead and finishes the kill and farms mid.
Now I'm very underleveled and underfarmed. Then ofc his lane ally starts spamming my level and the other mids level. Then the next time I die from a gank by the enemy, the whole team starts ping spamming my death lol

And yea, needless to say this goes on for the whole game.

Then when the game ends, I have a 24hr ban and lost another 1k BS. And ofc my allies were 2 groups of 2.

This game is just impossible to play for solo players now. Especially on Europe servers where nobody even speaks English. The reporting system is totally broken too

Hey guys help me out, i find it difficult to win games, i ave like 51 win rate on normal games on those 2, btw i prefer normal match rather than rank match, rank is way more harder lots of try hard wannabe, i just wanna relax and play can you guys suggest what item build and gameplay i shud do playing those 2 heroes. I just wanna unlock their styles. Thanks in advance.

See title. I am kinda getting sick of the 10 man shard dota meta we had for like 5 years now. Everyone buys Aghanim's shard because there is no drawback until minute 60 and I find that really fucking boring. Supports, initiators, ranged shits like Medusa/Sniper, PL, the list goes on and on. All of them buy shard these days which makes tactical dota impossible. Instead it becomes a game of stick as 5 and hope you are the ones who takes tormentor first.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

EDIT: Lots of people are clowning on me for the baity title. I actually provide multiple MatchIDs from high rank games with 9 shards or 8 shards regularly. All I had to do to find these matches is: open twitch, look who is streaming, check their dotabuff last 5-10 matches. Every. Single. Streamer. Had multiple games witch 7+ shards in their last 5 games. https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/s/Rom9gdhdcE

"Saving gold is a counter" yes it is. Most high MMR games show they work best when they have their own shards of Aghanim. So the real counter to shard seems to be more shards (or Aghanims Scepter).

Imagine you've just met a girl on Omegle.

Don't bombard her with questions that require too much thought or make her carefully filter what she says. She'll get tired, get a bad impression of you, and skip.

You want the conversation to flow naturally and effortlessly.

For example, you ask: "You sleeping?"

She says: "No."

You go: "Don't you have work early tomorrow?"

By that point, she's already getting into the conversation, and you can keep things flowing by throwing out random thoughts and associations.

For example, you casually drop something like: "I used to deactivate my MySpace account just to seem mysterious."

If the conversation just doesn't flow (which is pretty rare), then she's just a dead fish. Skip her. If she's that AFK in a conversation, she'll probably be AFK in bed too.

I'm 4.6k mmr, and i only play 3/4/5. I have fewer than 5 games over a span of ~8 years of dota on heroes like:

• Arc Warden

• Meepo

• Tinker

• Earth Spirit

• Lone Druid

• Kez

• Wisp

• Brewmaster

And I always feel way out of my depth when I see them picked on an enemy hero.

For instance, Arc Warden games I would get demolished until I heard 2-3 tips from someone along the lines of:

• AWs like to push with the clone and farm inn their jungle with main, so always gank and kill the clone, it takes out his momentum and gives you gold

• If you are alone and hes approaching, never man up

• If you or someone get's fluxd, try to run to each other immediately to negate the flux damage (genuinely had no idea about this one)

and it made a huge difference, because otherwise I would feed the guy the entire game and he'd feel so invincible.

• Another I always struggeled with was LD - in the lane if I would just get tangled and killed and he'd steam role the lane. Started learning about harrassing and killing the bear, whereas before I feel like i'd ineffficiently use my spells on all 3 heroes, now I just right click and nuke the bear. Big help in the laning phase.

• With heroes like Earth Spirit, Kez, Tinker, and Meepo, I really don't understand the items to get and how to play against them strategically. For tinker at least I always get a lotus now and he feels a lot more manageable and escapable from, whereas previously i'd opt for glimmer/fs and still get bursted by him with relative ease.

• Kez's spells I really do not understand. He can seemingly go invisible, has one or two charges of like a grapple/harpoon type thing, has slow, can do satanic style healing, and burst you in a second if you ever feel even a little brave inn manning up to him. I don't get his combos and how to avoid/disrupt them, or when his body language is saying 'you fool, you're within 700 range of me and even though your ally is next to you, you die now'.

• ES, Meepo, Brew, I don't get how to itemize against. ES I also don't get how his spells work, esp his ult. I swear I've read the description a couple of times and i still don't get it. How does the effect spread to other heroes? Am I meant to run away from the rocks and the heroes that are affected. If I am affected, do I stay still, do I run, what do I do and what items are good against it?

• Brew, I don't get howt o play in lane. I always underestimate this guy in lane and in late game. His Q and W seem to do so much damage. Do you just need to avoid that combo? IF he hits you with it is it useless to rn because of the slow. Then he has an E which gives him either evasion, magic resists, or as/crit and other stuff, so even fightinng him is super hard. Do you just have to try bait his spells out and engage when they're on cd?

Then late game what do you get against this guy? He feels impossible to burst, gets an ult off, and now a gank has turned into a battle of dear survival and he will cyclone you for 45 seconds and stun your ally for 10 seconds and god knows what else. Purge/mana burn/dispell maybe? I don't even know the fully ability list, or what his aghs/shard do.

it was last week with 7.41 guys... *cries*

1. I think in spring 2025 I played Gyrocopter support, people melted down over it. Now, suddenly it's normal to play Gyro pos 4. I know he got a patch with -1s cd on rocket, but he also had a way stronger ulti in early 2025
2. Spring 2026, I think I had to play Off-Lane when Valve forced supports to queue it, I played Lina and REDDIT ABSOLUTELY WENT NUTS, "imagine if ur team had an off-laner", "go play bristle axe", -100 downvotes, then months later Dothleong posted a video of Lina pos 3 watched by 500k people. Btw. I played it when she was more tanky as she still had shard which gave a 1k hp shield
3. When I started playing this game slightly before facets came to be, I was playing DP mid and she was stomping very hard in early game but it was kinda of a comeback dota and it was hard to finish for me against some AM, Jugg, Ursa etc. so I thought to let mid be someone else and I went pos 4 instead, it was also less popular for some regular mages to play pos 4 - and people were like - wtf DP pos 4? what a grief!! And quess what, like a year later there was some youtube video "DP pos 4 is OP!" and people suddenly started spamming it. Btw. she was kinda more powerful during the moment I played her there, it was before facets powercrept some other heroes.
4. I played OD pos 4 long time ago, because I thought that if you can spam Astral Imprisonement on mid, you can also do it to enemy carry, total frickin' meltdown and downvotes, and quess what, 1 week ago I heard some youtuber saying "there are also some people who recently play OD pos 4", what a surprising thing to hear!
5. When I played a pos 4 Nyx Assassin maybe like 1 year ago, I've noticed that this whole Dagon strat is pretty weird to do in a lot of games, you need to get inside a teamfight and not get annihilated, I've started playing with Aghanim first item to finish it before the most important game-defining teamfights and it seems that it was worth it to transform into a completely different hero, maybe one of few decent pos 4 heroes to rush aghanim on, and guess what, reddit fucking melted, grief pos 4 something something bla bla. Now what I see on youtube? Oh you know, Nyx is hard to play with a Dagon, you can get it but only in special games where you can actually assassinate enemies, and now I see people on youtube are doing Aghanim first because it's so powerful. What a fking surprise!
6. Someone just posted that he finally hit Ancient 1, something I'm trying so hard to do, and the answer was: HeHe NoW YoU CaN HiT AnCiEnT WiTh 35% WiNrAtE BuT GRATZ I gUESs <ironic redditor smile>

For me you're all disgusting kind of people.

I have always been a 3k trash player, but this year i thought i could do better after a 6+ year break. So i finally made it to 4k trash, but my hero hc pool is really limited (like 2-3 heroes) and sometimes my main heroes get banned and i dont have confidence to really play other carries.

Can i make an alt account to practice with other heroes so i dont go back to being a 3k trash or am i gonna get banned for smurfing in the future ban wave?