Dota 2 New Ranked System

The Dota 2 new ranked system went live with yesterday's matchmaking update. Valve is looking to change the way that ranked games are played, and it'll take some figuring out on your part. Don't worry, though, we've got your covered.

Dota 2 New Ranked System

Next time you boot up the game and try to start a ranked match, you're going to be hit with this:

What gives? Has normal Ranked fused together with Ranked Roles? Yes, kind of. We went into some detail in our breakdown of the matchmaking update, but we'll spell out the big changes here.

Valve seems like they're shrinking the number of queues, so solo and party ranked are now the same, and Ranked and Ranked Roles are a single queue. However, Valve has also decided that there is a big enough difference between core and support gameplay that they'll track your rank separately depending on the role you choose.

Maybe you love playing mid. You play Invoker like a god and you tear up the map every time you play Ember Spirit, but you've never really played support. Well now when you queue up, you never have to worry about getting stuck in a support position if you don't want to play it.

The real selling point of these changes, though, is that you can experiment and try roles that you're less familiar with without being punished for it. If you only play core roles and you want to learn support, you can hone your skills in a ranked setting without killing your core mmr — or the other way around.

Cover Image Courtesy of Valve Corporation