That's just the MOBA experience. There is a lot of DOTA DNA in Deadlock and unfortunately you just have to power through that initial period of suffering. Is it worth it? I don't know that I would condone picking up a MOBA in this day and age since I care about others' mental wellbeing, but it is a good game.

Best time to play as a new player is during these big updates since more new are playing.

I'm slower at these games and it took me around 100 hours before I kind of knew what I was doing, and im still executing it poorly. Most of learning was just understanding who all the characters are and what the people playing then tend to want to do.

Only way to learn that is constant limit testing and failing. And you have to not get upset when things are going bad. You can't just grind 8+ hours a day and expect to get better, you have to only play when you want to or in a good mood. I only get 2-3 hours where I can play and be fully into it, after that my brain stops remaining in full focus, and I just build bad habits and start playing it like a brainless call of duty shooter. Know when to call it a day, you learn and get better by doing something daily for at least 15 minutes. Its about consistency not pure hours.

I haven't played in forever, but tried again when they released the aram equivalent and that really helped me learn the new updated items, and get a feel for team fights with less pressure. In the real game team fights are hard to read what's going on and when someone is trying to engage, when you are trying to check mini map, worry about other lanes, urn, mid boss, etc.

You have to have one hell of a mindset to play mobas, and then also at minimum a decent aim for the hero shooter aspect. I played league of ledgends more than CS go so I tend to play more utility players, or will build more spirit power with characters who have good poke and rely heavily on bullying from a distance in lane phase with geist, or seven. It gives me slightly better odds of not getting my ass completely stomped and I can at least come out neutral on the laning phase.

lol now try an extraction shooter like Marathon. Fantastic game but the genre intentionally puts you through loss after loss, especially at first. It's a lesson in detachment.

Hero shooters can be like that too, but it's not core to the genre I think.

They've created separate casual and ranked play options now, so that problem is basically solved.

Even before the discord, I put my friend code in a comment here and got an invite the next day (and it only got scraped by 1 bot)

its steam forums are literally nothing but posts for giving invites