Your mmr is based on two things. An estimate of your skill and the error in the estimate. As you play more games the error decreases and it becomes harder to change your mmr by winning matches. On her old account, she probably played a lot of games while she was bad and therefore the system has reduced the error in her mmr to the point where it thinks she's definitely normal/high standard.
On new accounts it is much easier to change your mmr because the system is not sure of your skill yet (high error). Therefore when she made the new account, she found it much easier to increase her mmr to very high.
This means that if you have a high number of games already and suddenly improve a lot in a short amount of time, it is still hard to increase your mmr to match what your new skill is.
While it is somewhat more difficult to change you MMR dramatically when you have an established account it is really not so hard that it can't be done. Let me be more specific.
During your first dozen games or so MMR will move more on each game. Because of this you could move from the "beginner" starting point to Very High games in about 5 games if you win them. If you have an established account with 100+ games and play always in Normal it takes a win streak of about 10 games to get to Very High. So yes it is harder...but not that hard, to get an old account into Very High if you really deserve to be there (ie can get it on your own by solo wins).
Now if you can only achieve Very High games by stacking (maybe you really should be in High) then your new account could easily go to Very High right from the start and stay there with stacks. If you later go back to solo queing and cannot support a Very High MMR you will drop down into High when you lose about 5 or 6 games in a row. But if you keep stacking and continue to win about 50% you will stay in Very High indefinitely.
So it sounds like your friend would be in the middle of High bracket if she just solo qued and only gets into Very High games because of a stack. Very High que is mostly populated by stacks. Only the very best players really get there on their own. Maintaining significantly over 50% winrate means that sometimes your team is the best in the que (ie #1 in the region for that 3 min or however long it is). It is extremely difficult for 1 player to have an impact on the game so large that they consistently cause their team of random people to be the best in the que.
^Its possible to get 55% solo wr, I done that, my winrate actually went down since I started stacking (which I do now all the time).
Its not possible to always be good in solo, but if you are a good enough player, getting into very high or 50-55% range shouldnt be too much of a hussle.
I'm not convinced that stacks are better than solo queue for increasing winrate unless you stack with players at the very top end. I agree with Relentless's last paragraph completely.
Yes, its possible. But if YOU can do it you may not realize that almost every dota player cannot.
If your solo win rate is higher than your stack, then your stack is players much worse than you who are dragging you down. Even if your stack were players near your skill level but a bit less...even then they would increase your winrate. Coordination wins games more than anything else.
Its all about the timing. The fact is there are only about 6 trolls and if you hit a time when they are not on it just goes through without incident.
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Here's the thing. An amigo goes from her old account she got muted on, to a smurf account so she could play non-low priority/muted etc.
Her old account is normal-high with a couple very high. Her new account is almost 100% very high and she has remained there past 300 odd games.
Why does it automatically move people with new accounts into very high and keep them there. Early on I can understand why an experienced player would excel but it seems to just stagnate the player in one tier without moving them up.
This is an actual question and I am looking for intellectual answers here just to understand why it up queues so fast for new accounts but the old accounts remain stagnant and a lot of them just remain high and normal.