Calibration Guide: How do I get calibrated for Dota 2 Matchmaking?

Complete Dota 2 Calibration Analysis:

Everything you need to know about Dota 2 Calibration games: What does really matter and how to improve your seasonal calibration rank? Let’s find out!

What are Dota 2 Calibration Matches?

Dota 2 has multiple matchmaking features, one of them is ranked matchmaking. Ranked matches are entirely dependent on your MMR. Whenever Valve resets the MMR, or a player creates a new Dota 2 account, then a player has to complete ten matches. After that calibration phase, a player can participate in the ranked matchmaking system! The player gets an MMR value which is nowadays displayed as a Dota 2 rank medal in your profile.Each rank medal had 5 and now 7 stars (0-8 stars) that means, each rank has 8 stages right now. Based on that you can make progress and rank up and down. Calibration matches are a type of “lock”, that have to be unlocked! If you win more calibration matches your MMR and rank medal will be higher!

Find the full Dota 2 mmr ranks table here:

Which Factors are important for Dota 2 MMR Calibration?

When playing Calibration matches, it is like a normal MMR match: You try to win, but in these matches you put even more effort into it, because it means more: The effect of the calibration matches can be extremely high, speaking about your Dota 2 career, so keep the following factors in mind to make the best out of it!

Important Factors for Calibration:

• The Dota 2 Average Hero Performance Graph: This is the most important thing to achieve, always try to be on the right side of the infographic, especially if you are in the second right field this is a 100% positive sign that you have been better than the pseudo MMR of this match and will probably go higher if you reach that in many games. No matter if you are in the loser or winner team, try to be on the right green side. 😉
  On this image I played Ancient Apparition (AA) as you can see the following factors are getting counted for the analysis: Gold per minute (GPM), Experience per minute (XPM), Kills, Deaths and Assists.

• Your KDA counts a lot (explained in detail below).
• End game statistics: Hero damage, building damage, healing amount.
• Last hits and denies compared to the average player.
• APM (actions per minute).
• Stacking & Pulling Behaviour.
• Support Amount (Wards placed, Courier, Support items). Find a complete Dota 2 support hero guide here.

Factors that are not Important:

• The ranks of your friends you are playing with are no direct factor, the system wants to make the teams equal anyway.
• Skins and cosmetic items are beautiful but do not improve your calibration games or rankings in Dota 2.
• Battle Pass levels/Compendium levels do not count, they are just a Dota 2 meta/mini game.
• The Steam Level and also the Dota 2 Level does not help with the Dota 2 rank.
• The total hours spend for Dota 2 does not have an impact.

Dota 2 KDA Calculation – Impact of the KDA:

KDA in Dota 2 stands for Kill Death Assist Performance inside a single match: You can count your kills and assists together and divide them by your death count.

The Dota 2 KDA Formular is: (Kills + Assists) / Deaths
Example: (10 Kills + 20 Assists)= 30, now divide the 30 by your Deathcount: 30/10 = KDA of 10.

The KDA is quite important for the Dota 2 calibration games, always keep an eye on it, try to die less and keep the death count below the average. Do as many Assists as you can, this will easily improve your KDA. You can pick tanky supports who can easily spread damage and get simple assists without doing much. Of course, just playing good, will help and boost your KDA, it’s a relevant and honest number of your real performance of skill.

How to check your Dota 2 MMR while getting Calibrated?

If you are not yet calibrated with MMR and a Dota 2 rank and still have to play placement matches you can already make an estimation of your supposable final rank:
Dota 2 seperates matches into three parts:

The game brackets will determine your rank, of course, you can have some matches inside different brackets, this is just an approximately method which has proved to be right quite often. Like this, you have an estimation of the final MMR and if you lose or win a lot of these games you know that you go a bit higher or lower.

What you can also do is, do simply check the ranks of your teammates if you play solo calibration matches: If the average ranks after a few matches, for example, is Legend, you know that you will definitely be ranked at least between the Legend rank and the Ancient rank!

What is the highest possible Calibration MMR in Dota 2?

The highest possible MMR is a high discussed topic, especially if it’s about considering creating a new Dota 2 account to reach a higher MMR rank.

The Highest possible MMR after Calibration is around 4000-4600 MMR, that means the highest possible rank after calibrating are the upper Ancient tiers (Ancient 6 or 7) or Divine 0 or 1. It’s maybe possible to go even higher, but it’s not likely to happen to anyone whose name is not Miracle. 😉

Is it worth creating a new Dota 2 Account for a better Calibration?

Scenario: If I have an account with an Archon rank right now, how much effort would I need to reach Ancient, compared to creating a completely new account?

The downside definitely is that you have to complete 100 Dota 2 games first before you can calibrate and oh boy, 100 games are a ton of games: If you play 3 games per day, you would still need over a month.
But if we assume now someone is agreeing on this tasks as well as the hassle with a new steam account (adding all friends and losing all steam games and levels) then how good would it work?
If the player thinks he has the skill of an Ancient player would it be worth it? To answer this I can say it depends: It can have a positive effect since the frequency of going up and down in the rankings is quite slow. To reach a higher rank in a short time you have to play a lot and still have to perform well. This is a tough task! If you plan to create a new account it could definitely work, but only if you are much better than your rank. If you are closely higher it’s useless to do it.
In addition to that, a fair amount of Dota 2 players think, they are better than they are, but reality shows: The MMR ranks in Dota 2 are quite accurate and in most of the times all of my friends got the rank they are supposed to have! 😉

What’s the Impact of Calibration Matches on my Dota 2 Career?

After receiving the temporary rank, it is time for you to decide whether you want to increase your medal or decrease it after calibration. There are a total number of 10 calibrations matches in each category. Each win gives +100 MMR to a player, and each loss takes -50 MMR. For example, your temporary Rank is Archon 3 (2500 MMR) after winning all ten games your MMR would be 3500. You will receive Legend 7 title instead of Archon 3-4.

The almost same mechanism applies to the Running accounts as well. When the MMR is reset, the previous MMR of the user acts as the Temporary MMR. For example, the prior MMR of the user is 3000, then the calibration will start from 3000. If you lose all the calibration matches, your new MMR will be 2000 (Crusader 2-3).

Advanced Guide How to Rank up in Dota 2:

After the calibration you will always have to deal with your current rank.

To make improvements checkout this detailled guide, which is focussed on moving forward. It’s not an easy task to change your rank, find all the necessary researched information in this article. 🙂
View MMR Rankup Guide

Dota 2 Calibration Tips and Tricks:

• If you are making a new account, in your first 100 standard matches play with your best heroes.
• Practice with bots and then go for the Calibration matches.
• Spam your best heroes during calibration matches.
• Focus on a win instead of kills or having fun.
• Do not make a calibration game long because the enemy will get fat, and your chances of losing will increase, finish games fast and get a good understanding of the power curve: When is your team stronger and when should you push to win this game?
• Select which MMR you want to Calibrate First, solo or party.
• If you are losing too many matches in your selected option, shift to the second one. For example, you selected solo matches and lost 6 out of 9. Do not play the tenth solo game. Start playing party matches.
• Join a cooperative and professional team and play in a party with them. A good party increases the chances of winning by 40%.
• Stop at the ninth match and compare with the solo matches. If you have won more matches in Party then go for the party calibration otherwise you only have one choice left, solo calibration.
• According to professional players, it is better to play support during calibration matches. Good support players lead their team to win.