What low priority means and how to escape it in Dota 2

William Davis Published 19/09/2021

It may not have any real impact on your Dota 2 account, but a stint in low priority can cause long-term psychological damage.

Low priority is one of the most dreaded punishments in Dota 2. There are multiple ways to earn a stint in low priority matchmaking and there’s only one way to get rid of it. If you’re trying to figure out why you can only queue for single draft, we have the answer as well as how to fix it.

Don’t worry, we won’t ask how you got there. We’ll just assume your router dropped a few too many times.

You can earn low priority in two different ways. The first is mostly innocent and involves leaving matches too often. After you’ve disconnected from a Dota 2 match, a five-minute timer starts ticking down to an abandon. One abandon just gets you a temporary matchmaking ban, but two abandons within a 20-game period will trigger low priority. It’s also possible to get low priority from mass reports or grief detection.

In low priority, players are only able to queue for unranked single draft, one of the worst game modes in Dota 2. Players only get three heroes to choose from in each main attribute. Combine that limited selection with the type of players that frequent low priority and five-carry lineups become a common sight.

Each low priority sentence comes with a minimum number of single draft games, usually three. The worst part of it all is that only victories count. Losing 15 single draft games in a row won’t get you any closer to regular matchmaking. If you want the best advice for how to escape low priority, check out our tips below.

How to get out of low priority in Dota 2

There’s no simple shortcut for getting out of low priority in Dota 2. The only option is to win a certain number of single draft games, but that doesn’t mean that certain techniques or strategies can’t speed up the process.

The biggest tip to get out of low priority is to play ganking support heroes. All five of the opponents are going to play single-player Dota 2, so heroes that enable fast ganks like Lion, Lina, Nyx Assassin, or Hoodwink are excellent options. Remember that the enemy players are also in low priority and tilting them can give you a free win.

If you don’t have access to fast gankers in your single draft pool, look for cores that can take towers by themselves. Heroes like Windranger, Leshrac, Jakiro, and Troll Warlord don’t need their team to take objectives. Split-pushing strategies are very effective in single draft because the enemy is nearly guaranteed to make mistakes when they respond, assuming they respond at all.

Lastly, try to abuse the enemy team’s lack of coordination. Invisibility tools such as Shadow Blade or Silver Edge are especially useful in low priority. It lets you get cheeky solo kills and forces the enemy team to discuss buying Dust of Appearance. Anything that forces the enemy to actually work as a team can result in another free victory.

William Davis

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