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New Dota 2 ranked season begins today with medal changes

Get ready to (match)make with a few new changes to the ranked system

By Victoria Rose
Valve

Six months have passed in the new Dota 2 Ranked system, which means the first season has already elapsed. Introduced in November, it brought a new way to show off your matchmaking accomplishments and skill. And, hopefully like your MMR, the system is evolving with time.

One of two main changes will be that instead of starting with no stars, each medal will have one to five stars instead. While it’s unknown how this will change MMR corresponding to medals, you’ll only have to grind up five stars instead of six.

If you’re skilled enough to be the top of the ranks, you’ll get the other new perk this season. Players that make leaderboard will get a new “Immortal” medal, designating them as the best of the best for the rest of the season. Much like Divine 5, instead of a star showing, it’ll just show your rank.

Similar to before, the rest of the medals will go as follows:

  1. Herald (1-5 stars)
  2. Guardian (1-5 stars)
  3. Crusader (1-5 stars)
  4. Archon (1-5 stars)
  5. Legend (1-5 stars)
  6. Ancient (1-5 stars)
  7. Divine (1-5 stars)
  8. Immortal (Leaderboard-ranked)

Once again, the medal that will show on your profile doesn’t indicate your current MMR; instead, the medal reflects the highest MMR achieved. Once an Ancient, always an Ancient — at least for the rest of the season. And if you aren’t doing as hot this season as last, everyone will know you aren’t lying about reaching Legend, as last season’s medal will be displayed on your profile.

And if you’re not satisfied with last year’s rank, the new season begins today, meaning you’ll get a fresh shot with ten more calibration matches.

One of the coders in charge of the re-calibration, Jeff Hill, reached out on Reddit to share some insight on the re-calibration process:

For the seasonal re-calibration games, it only uses wins or losses, the relative team rank balance (match fairness) and the estimated uncertainty on your rank.

You will not get additional calibration credit for your performance in the game beyond simply winning the game. For example; hero damage, kills, assists, wards placed, creep score, gpm, hero choice - those kinds of things do not inform the re-calibration system today.

This means that, unfortunately, if you want to see your score improve, your matches are all or nothing. Best of luck this season!

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