Hi everyone,

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I've made quite the bold claim in the title, so I'd like to share some data with you guys.

I took a Gold 2 account with ~50% winrate into 10 deathmatches. I played all of them (to my own misery) and then went ahead and checked the rank of the players in those matches. I think the results will be quite polarizing in this thread, but nonetheless here it is.

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On one hand, I can see the argument that playing against better players will inevitably train your aim to be better for the subsequent competitive matches you will play. This is a totally valid point, and I completely understand the "weighted bat" effect. That being said, I feel like this isn't the case many times. The fact of the matter is that many players get frustrated in deathmatch. From my experience, the people I play with get discouraged if they are constantly getting headshotted in a brutal deathmatch. I should also point out that I played against more Radiant players than Silver players. That is not a difficulty curve, that's an aggressive skew into higher ranks. The rank that the account was actually in was the third least appearing rank in those matches. That's mind boggling.

A warmup is supposed to be a care-free routine that gets your muscle memory in check. Unfortunately, I don't believe that is the case in an environment full of Diamond players. Although you may think it's totally reasonable for a Gold 2 player to practice against Plats, I remind you that there was a Silver 1 player and a Radiant player matched in the same frickin' lobby. That's not a warmup, that's capital punishment. You are not warming up when you are being put in these tremendously unrealistic engagements.

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In summary, when you are playing deathmatch and begin getting frustrated, think about this data. You are probably not playing poorly, you are just getting rolled by substantially better players.

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That is all from me. Feel free to drop your thoughts in the thread. I always make these posts for the sake of discussion so go ahead and share your opinion.

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Some disclaimers regarding my data collection:

• I know 10 matches may not be considered enough data, but I was going insane after 5 of them. I also believe 10 matches is enough to get a rough visualization of what's going on.
• I was not intending to win the matches. I'm not sure if deathmatch uses MMR to match you with other players, so I just stayed in the middle of the leaderboard as best I could.
• A good portion of the profiles were private, and thus I could not see their rank. I don't think this is distorting the data in any meaningful way, but that is a point I thought I should note.

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Note: An overwhelming number of people have given negative feedback because they believe you are not supposed to win deathmatch, it is just for practice. I completely agree, and I think many people have missed the point of this post. I believe many lower elo players are simply unable to warm up in Deathmatch due to the skill disparity in their lobbies. This post is less about me, and more about the players who have a hard time warming up in deathmatch. Just some observational data, nothing more than that.