When Malady was asked to assess the situation in BetBoom Team, he said a line that deserves a closer look. According to him, moving from support to core doesn't work: he can't remember a single professional for whom such a transition turned out well. But going from core to support, he added, is something you can do without trouble. Hence the conclusion: Save- needs to be returned to position four, and the roster needs to add a mid laner or wait for gpk.
This is the opinion of one player, and it doesn't prove a law. But the intuition behind it is clear, and it applies far beyond a single team. Let's break down where this asymmetry comes from.
What a Role Actually Gives You
Positions in Dota 2 are usually numbered from one to five. Carry (position 1) and mid (position 2) are the core of the team: they take the main resources, that is, gold and experience, and by the late game they have to turn them into damage. Supports (positions 4 and 5) play for space and information: they place wards (observer items), create windows for attack, and sacrifice their own item development.
Different skills follow from this:
- Core is responsible for farm and tempo. You need to know when you left the jungle camp, when you made it to the fight, and how not to lose a minute on an empty walk.
- Support is responsible for decisions without resources. They need to play with an incomplete set of items and still influence the fight.
Why Going Down in Resources Is Easier Than Going Up
The logic is this. A player who is used to the core role already knows how to read the map, understands the value of items, and knows what a fight looks like from the point of view of the one who needs to be protected. When he moves to support, he loses part of what he's used to (resources, farm), but keeps his understanding of the game. He needs to learn to share and sacrifice, and that is more a matter of discipline than of mechanics.
In the other direction it's harder. A support is used to seeing the game through the lens of "how to help" and usually lacks the automatic farming reflexes: when to approach the creeps, how to combine the jungle with lane pressure, how not to sit idle without gold. In addition, in a fight a core has to take responsibility for the result, not for position on the map. This is a different style of thinking, and it is hard to pick up in a couple of weeks.
There is a caveat here: I am describing a general logic, not specific cases. Exceptions are possible, and Malady himself says "I don't know, it seems to me," meaning he does not claim absolute knowledge.
What to Do About This in Ranked
For an ordinary player, several practical things follow from this.
Don't change roles in the middle of a season because of one bad streak. If you're used to playing position four and aren't climbing, the problem may be in your decisions, not in the position. Changing roles will add one more variable.
If you still want to try another position, start with a neighboring one. Moving from core to support, by the logic above, is easier than the other way around. Moving from position four to five and back is easier still: you stay within the same style of thinking, and only the degree of sacrifice changes.
Assess your resource reserve. If on your current position you regularly end up without gold, and on another you want to receive it, first check whether you know how to manage it: look at your recordings and count how many minutes you actually farmed, rather than simply being present in the lane.
What Else Malady Said
He also noted a more general point: changes are good when last year's results were unsatisfactory. Replacing the coach, in this sense, is in his opinion the right decision. But the logic of the roster itself remains: if a player is stronger on position four, then he should play there, and the missing positions should be assembled around him. As for how TORONTOTOKYO will affect this, he says he doesn't know, and that is an honest caveat: the influence of a new player on the team structure cannot be predicted in advance.
One question remains that can't be resolved from someone else's remark, but that is useful to ask yourself: if you were moved to a neighboring position tomorrow, which three habits would you take with you unchanged, and which would you have to relearn from scratch?
