I used to be Ancient V 2 years ago when I stopped playing. Recently I started to play dota2 again, but I was calibrated to Archon 1. After many games I’m fluctuating between Crusader V and Archon IV…
Even though I’m at much lower level than 2 years ago, I noticed even CRUSADER people are incredible. I mean people use aggro all the time, they use manta dodge(!), when I’m playing hoodwink and throw my 1st spell to bushwack the enemy, the enemy destroys the tree in that 0.3 second, they deny eachother or themselves at neutral camp if possible, they carry dust, they cut waves(!), etc.
As I see the main problem in this bracket is the urge to overextend and dive like crazy, not playing for objectives and lastly bad target priorization. As a support player I always try to help my team making the right decision, but this rarely happens. Apart from this, I’m really surprised how mechanically advanced people are in the crusader bracket.
As I was missing for 2 years, I would be interested in your observation. Are players this much better on avarage, or am I really getting old and bad? :)
MMR Inflation > Skill inflation, at least in the upper brackets. A better answer is that after not playing for 2 years, it’s a combination of both rustiness + playing in different circumstances (different map, different meta heroes, lots of things to re-learn).
I would take people’s testimonies saying the opposite with a grain of salt, since there’s an incentive to jerk themselves off and think them being 3k now = 5-6k a few years back.