General DiscussionNormal, High, Very High Skill

Or just add more brackets?

think old brackets were much higher, they wont revert it

it's not 'fixed' mmr, it's based on the percentile and the values that people post are only estimates

From what I understand it's based on valves info about the game not actually dotabuff.

They are not based on MMR. Valve creates them and they are based on a rough percentile.
I would not put much stock in the "MMR Ranges" people tout them to include due to MMR inflation. Longterm I hope we can provide accurate MMR ranges for the skill brackets that update with live data. Until then I can't really confirm ranges.

bottom 75% = normal
Next 15% = high
top 10% = very high.

So everyone who plays on very high skill bracket are included in top %10? That seems a bit wrong :P

didnt relentless say something ages back about it being like 85/10/5 before they hid skill brackets or something? also i know that every one of my friends who were in high before they hid skill brackets are now in very high and all the ones who were in very high are 4.5k+ now

@lawliepop

As for normal vs high - the cutoff has been said is about 3200 or 3250, something like that. I can vouch for bouncing between normal and high, and our average mmr (i stack with irl friends) ends up being 3300 sometimes, 3100 sometimes, and the the high/normal brackets seem to mirror that. I can't give you exact numbers, but they're around there.

So for the normal to high bracket barrier, the numbers I've seen people throw around are spot on.

I will keep an eye on the average mmr displayed when playing and see when high and normal pop up.

Edit: When I solo queue I get thrown in normal, high, and very high, but those might have all been unranked.

i should clarify those %'s are based on match volume, not necessarily player base. The top 10% of matches are in very high, as an example.

No idea what other people may have based it off of in the past. I am speaking from a place backed up by data. Maybe you guys are underestimating how many low skill players there are?

@Atremis - idk what the MMR range people throw around is based off of so I can't comment on it's validity.

It's also worth mentioning that Ranked and Normal MM have different (but often similar) MMR's . It's possible if a player plays 80%+ of their matches in ranked and only occasionally in normal they will get a different skill bracket.

@lawliepop

Fair enough. Any idea how someone could be placed in all three brackets (within a single day/week) if it's based on percentiles?

Bad matchmaking? lol

I have played 3 games in a row, in 3 different brackets...

So if I understand this correctly 75% of all matches fall into normal the next 15% of matches fall into high and only 10% of all matches fall into very high? If that's the case what distinguishes the categories if it's not based on MMR?

oh im not saying your data is wrong, just that skill brackets may have been different before what they are now

Well it is possibly based off the match's relative average MMR or something like that. But it isn't based off a set MMR range.

While it possibly has MMR Ranges I can't tell you what those are right now... maybe in a couple months when we get to it.
Any MMR ranges for the brackets could easily become outdated after a few months due to inflation as well.

So unless someone has MMR data with a sufficient sample size... it's probably best to think of it as a % breakdown of match volume.

@sneakykind
nah thats right
long ago when ranked MM didnt exist i accidently found some steam staff old post that states that actually 4200 mmr is higher than 99% of players. in other words, you are in top 1% with just 4200 mmr that sounds not very intuitive, eh? the problem is that once we reach relatively high mmr, we forget that there are tons of people playing in 1-2kk brackets, a huge amount of newfags, etc. ofc the amount of ppl playing on ~5k is rather high, but dota is a very popular game and comparing to its overall audience 5-6kk scrubs are close to not even exist: their share is very small.

Ya on forums and sites people tend to think the average mmr is a lot higher than it already is like trip said there is tons of 1ks out there, if I had to guess 1k would have the most and after that Maybe 2k then under 1k bracket then 3k and so forth.