Your match history already knows your position. This tool reads it.
DOTA 2 PICKS is a free Dota 2 role finder: it reads your real match history and shows your best Dota 2 role. Enter a Steam ID and the Role Shuffle mode pulls your games from OpenDota, scores your comfort at every position from 1 to 5, and shows where you actually win — carry, mid, offlane, soft support, or hard support.
It is built for players stuck between roles, stacks arguing over who mids, and in-house lobbies that want everyone on their real position. Add all 10 players and Role Shuffle assigns positions 1-5 across two balanced teams, so nobody gets forced onto a role their history says they cannot play. No download, no account needed for basic modes.
The five Dota 2 roles are: position 1 (carry, safe lane, highest farm priority), position 2 (mid), position 3 (offlane), position 4 (soft support, usually roaming with the offlane), and position 5 (hard support, laning with the carry). The numbers rank farm priority — position 1 takes the most gold and experience on the team, position 5 takes the least and buys most of the support items like wards and smokes.
Hard support (position 5) is the best role for most beginners. You are not responsible for last-hitting under pressure, so you can focus on learning the fundamentals: map awareness, warding, positioning in fights, and item timings. Your team loses less when you make mistakes, because your hero needs little gold to be useful. Playing support also teaches you what carries need, which makes you a better core later if you switch.
The role you play best has the most impact on your MMR — consistency beats theory here. That said, core roles (especially mid) give you the most direct control over a game: position 2 gets a solo lane, early levels, and the ability to snowball the map. Supports influence games through vision and tempo, which is real but less visible. If you are deciding what to queue, check your win rate by position; the data usually settles the argument.
Position 4, also called soft support or roaming support, is the fourth farm priority on the team. A pos 4 typically starts in the offlane alongside the position 3, then rotates: securing runes, ganking mid, stacking camps, and creating space. Unlike the hard support, a pos 4 gets some farm and often plays tempo heroes that need a few items to function. It is the most improvisational role in the game — high mobility, high game sense, low farm dependence.
Soft support (pos 4) roams and plays for tempo; hard support (pos 5) protects the carry and owns the vision game. The pos 5 lanes with the position 1, buys the majority of wards, smokes, and dust, and sacrifices nearly all farm. The pos 4 starts in the offlane, rotates aggressively around the map, and scales slightly with items. If you like ganking and improvising, pos 4 fits; if you like enabling teammates and controlling the map, pos 5 fits.
The tool analyzes your real match history from OpenDota: which lanes and positions you occupy, which heroes you pick most, and how often you win in each role. From that it builds a role profile — a comfort score for each position from 1 to 5. Unlike a personality quiz, it measures what you actually do in games, so the result reflects your genuine strengths rather than the role you wish you played.
Yes, DOTA 2 PICKS is completely free. Every mode — Role Shuffle, Auto Balance, Captain Draft, Seeded Shuffle, Fill Missing, and Random Shuffle — works without payment, download, or installation. It runs in any modern browser on desktop or mobile. The tool is built and maintained by Rivals Gaming (rivalsapp.com).
No account is needed for the basic modes. Open the site, add players, and generate teams immediately. Role detection needs a public Steam match history so the tool can read your games through OpenDota, but that is your existing Steam profile — there is no separate sign-up on this site.
It uses match data from OpenDota and the Steam API: your recent matches, the positions and lanes you played, your most-played heroes, win rate per role, and your rank medal (Herald through Immortal). Your profile must be set to public match data in the Dota 2 client for the analysis to work. The tool reads this data to build role profiles; you do not upload anything manually.
Yes, that is exactly what Role Shuffle mode does. Add all 10 players and it assigns positions 1-5 on both teams, giving the most specialized players their best roles first so every position is covered by someone who actually plays it. The result shows both rosters with assigned positions plus a balance score — 85% or higher means a fair game. It is the fastest way to end the 'who plays support' argument before an in-house match.
Play the role where your win rate is highest — at low MMR, consistency on a comfortable role gains more MMR than switching to a theoretically stronger one. If your match history shows no clear winner, hard support (position 5) is a strong starting point in low-MMR lobbies, because vision, pulls, and smart positioning are undervalued there and cost little gold to execute. Check your win rate by position before you queue; the data usually settles the argument.
Yes, and most players should: maining two roles keeps queues flexible and protects your MMR when one role is contested by a teammate. Pick adjacent positions that share skills — positions 4 and 5 both revolve around vision and supporting, while positions 1 and 2 both demand farming efficiency and last-hitting. Pairing distant roles like position 1 and position 5 is harder, because the habits conflict. The role finder shows a comfort score for every position, so your natural second role is easy to spot.
Yes. Random Shuffle mode deals all 10 players into two random teams instantly — no role profiles, no rank data, pure chance. Seeded Shuffle runs the same kind of random draft reproducibly: the same seed always produces the same two teams, which is useful for settling disputes or re-creating a lobby. If you want teams that are fair rather than random, Auto Balance builds them from rank and win-rate data and reports a balance score.