Learn Dota 2 League Rules and Season Walkthrough

This will serve as both a list of league rules and an explanation of how a standard LD2L season progresses. Feel free to contact the league admins via Discord if you have any questions or if any rules need clarification.

  1. Signing Up
  2. The Draft
  3. Team Management
  4. Regular Season
  5. Playoffs
  6. Broadcasting and Spectating
  7. Standins and Free Agents

Signing Up

  1. Signups for all LD2L divisions and events are handled via the League website using your Steam account.

  2. Your handle on the League website defaults to your Steam handle, and should be something consistent and recognizable to the league admins and other players. This can be edited on your profile page if necessary by clicking on the edit icon on your profile next to your name.

  3. The player statement portion of the signup should be used to provide information to potential captains such as your availability for team practice and preferred positions. Keep in mind you may be drafted to play a position other than your preferred one depending on team needs.

  4. In order to be eligible to participate in the regular LD2L season either as a drafted player or as a standin/free agent you must:

    • Be below 4000 MMR
    • Have public matchmaking data exposed on dotabuff/opendota with historical data filled in.

The Draft

  1. Each regular season team will have five fixed players consisting of a captain and four drafted players. The captain is responsible for all official communication with the admins and other captains.

  2. Captains will be selected at the end of the signup period depending on the number of draft eligible players.

  3. The draft pool will consist of four players per captain, ensuring everyone in the pool will get drafted.

  4. The draft pool will be determined by signup date on a first-come first-served basis. Remaining signups will compose the free agent pool. Players who do not meet the requirements to be draft eligible (outlined above) will not be included in the draft pool.

  5. For auction draft, all captains will receive an amount of money based on their signup MMR and the MMR of the draft pool. For specific details, ask on discord or look at the source code. Each round, the captains who still need players will be sorted by money at the start of the round and nominate players to be drafted in descending order. Captains who have drafted all four players will not nominate or bid in the future, even if they were originally scheduled to nominate in the current round. After each round there will be a brief break before the next round of nominations begins.

  6. For the purposes of the draft, standins, and freeagents, all players below 1000 MMR will count as having 1000 MMR.

Team Management

  1. Captains will receive an automatically generated team name. They can change the team name on the team page. Inappropriate team names will be removed.

  2. Captains must also create a team within the Dota client and add their players to it. This team should be used for all league matches, and the name of your team on the website should be edited to match the in-game name.

  3. There are no player trades, swaps, or package deals.

  4. Players should, in general, abide by their captains' decisions regarding lineups, roles, draft, etc. Captains should, in general, take players' wishes into account when making these decisions. Conflicts should be handled internally where possible. If conflicts cannot be resolved, admins should be contacted via PM. Discussion of internal team conflicts in public league Discord channels is strongly discouraged.

  5. Disbands, kicking players, and leaving teams are strongly discouraged and may result in being banend or losing Captain permissions for future seasons, depending on circumstances. Admins must be consulted regarding any of these actions. Unless a substantial reason is provided to the admins, the standard penalty for abandoning a team will be a ban for the rest of the current and all of the next LD2L season.

  6. Captains may, if they wish, recruit friends or community members to help coach their team. Coaches may not communicate with team members during the draft or game, but may communicate with team members between games. If a captain would like a coach but doesn't have anyone they can ask, they should make a request on the Discord server. We have lots of high MMR community members and associates who may be happy to help. The admins do not, however, promise to provide a coach for every team.

Regular Season

  1. The regular season consists of seven weeks of match play.

  2. Regular season matches are played in a best-of-2 (bo2) format on Sundays at 5 PM Eastern on the USEast server.

  3. Matches may be played on another server if both Captains agree. If no other agreement is reached, the match should be played on the default server. Alternate server matches must be confirmed to the league admins by both captains via Discord.

  4. Matches may be rescheduled if both captains agree. If no other agreement is reached, the default time is binding. Reschedules must be confirmed to the league admins by both captains via Discord.

  5. Rescheduled matches may be completed earlier in the week of a scheduled match, or no later than 30 hours after the default time (i.e. Monday night at the latest).

  6. Each won game in a match is worth a point toward playoff seeding. Wins by forfeit or bye count as wins for playoff qualifying purposes.

Pairings

  1. Pairings will be released on a week-to-week basis via the league website, typically on Mondays unless matches have been delayed.

  2. Parings are determined by a modified Swiss-System. We use the same pairing library as RD2L. Teams will be paired against teams with a similar record avoiding rematches.

  3. Bugs may exist in the pairing library. If unexpected rematches are noticed early, new pairings may be generated, but if they are not caught before Thursday or Friday then the pairings will be binding. We may account for pairing issues by manually adjusting playoff rankings at our discretion.

Match Rules

  1. Matches are expected to start on time. If a team does not have enough players at start time, they should request a standin from the available pool.

  2. Teams who opt to wait for a late player or who do not have their standin arranged on time will be given increasing draft penalties for the delayed game:

    Delay Draft Penalty
    5-10 minutes -30 seconds
    10-15 minutes -70 seconds
    15-25 minutes -110 seconds
    25+ minutes forfeit

    Both games of the series are forfeited after a 25 minute delay.

  3. The winner of the in-game coin flip has choice of first pick, second pick, radiant, or dire.

  4. The second game in the series is expected to start within 10 minutes of the conclusion of the first one. After that, draft penalties begin to apply:

    Delay Draft Penalty
    10-15 minutes -30 seconds
    15-20 minutes -70 seconds
    20-30 minutes -110 seconds
    30+ minutes forfeit

  5. The loser of the first game's coin flip has choice of first pick, second pick, radiant, or dire in the second game.

  6. A team may not use more than two standins for each game. If a team only has two players present they must forfeit the game or series.

  7. Players may not pause during the in-game draft. If the captain needs to step away during the draft, they should pass in-game captain to a player who is able to continue drafting. If a pause is still necessary once the draft has reached strategy time a reason should be provided to the other team.

  8. Each team is permitted up to ten minutes of pause time (up to 20 total) for technical or connectivity issues. A pause may be initiated at any time outside of an ongoing teamfight, and a succinct explanation of the reason provided in all-chat. BM pauses, tactical pauses, etc. are not permitted and will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

  9. Resuming from a pause is permitted once both teams have acknowledged they are ready to continue. If the team that did not initiate the pause is not ready to continue, their pause time is used for the remaining duration.

  10. If a team does not have pause time remaining, the match should be unpaused at that time. If pause is abused after time has expired to continue delaying the game, an admin will determine if a forfeit loss is to be awarded.

  11. If a player disconnects before first blood and cannot reconnect, the game can be remade with a fresh draft replacing the disconnected player. Suspected abuse of this rule will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

  12. All chat unrelated to a pause or concedinga game is allowed but discouraged. Bad manners, including but not limited to excessive flaming, chat macros, harassment, racism, sexism, or other discrimination, are not permitted in or out of game, and punishment will be decided on a case by case basis ranging from individual warnings to being removed (even mid season).

  13. In game use of features provided by Valve such as tips, sprays, voice lines, Frostivus effects (such as snowballs) are permitted so long as they do not have any game impact. Abusing a bug such as killing a Frostivus summon for souls for Shadow Fiend is not permitted and will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

  14. Fake, tactical, or taunting ggs are not permitted. If a Captain calls gg it is binding. If a player inadvertently calls gg the opposing Captain may request an Admin review after the game to determine if it impacted the outcome of the game.

  15. In general players should not litigate rules violations in game. To whatever extent is possible a game should be played out and the issue raised in Discord with the admins after the game. Do not refuse to play because you are mad about a rules issue, because if you are wrong about it, your team will receive a forfeit loss for the game. The outcome of a game can be changed after it has concluded until the next round of matches has been generated.

Playoffs

  1. The single-elimination playoff bracket will be posted the Monday(ish) after the conclusion of the regular season.

  2. Two way ties for playoff seeding will be settled first by head-to-head record, then by a tiebreaker score based on the team's "strength of schedule" (i.e. their and their opponents' regular season results).

  3. Three or more way ties for playoff seeding will be settled as follows:

    • If a team 2-0ed all other teams in the tie, they are ranked ahead of the rest of the group, and the rest of the group is treated as a new tie.
    • If no team 2-0ed all other teams in the tie, the tie is ranked by tiebreaker score.

  4. More complicated tie situations will be dealt with on a case by case basis.

  5. Playoff matches are played in a best-of-3 (bo3) format on Sundays at 5 PM Eastern on the USEast server.

  6. Reschedule/alternate server/match rules are the same for the playoffs as for the regular season.

  7. Should a third game be necessary, a new coin flip determines who has choice in the third game.

Broadcasting and Spectating

  1. Player experience is more important than broadcasters, streamers, or other observers. Captains are not required to consider caster availability when scheduling.

  2. Spectators, including broadcast slots, are permitted at captain discretion for friends.

  3. Teammates and friends may not communicate through any means during a game. If you suspect there is an issue with this, treat it as any other potential match rule violation. Play the game out and then raise the issue on Discord after the game.

  4. "Official" or otherwise admin-sanctioned spectators are always permitted in broadcast slots unless it causes technical issues.

  5. Streamers, whether playing in the game or in an observer slot, should set a minimum delay of 2 minutes.

  6. All chatting is not permitted by spectators, broadcasters, etc.

Standins and Free Agents

  1. If a player needs to be replaced for a single game or series, their captain may request a standin. If a player needs to be replaced for the remainder of the season, their captain may request a free agent.

  2. The initial standin/free agent pool is composed of players who signed up too late to make it into the draft pool and players who signed up requesting standin only status.

  3. Players who sign up and are added mid-season may join the standin/free agent pool.

  4. Players who miss two series over the course of the regular season will be considered to have abandoned their team, and a free agent replacement will be assigned.

  5. Drafted players who abandon, quit, or are removed from their teams may not stand in or become free agents.

  6. Players drafted to other teams in the same division may stand in only if no other replacement is available. Admins must be notified of all cross-team standins.

  7. Players drafted to teams in other divisions may stand in if they do not have a concurrent match and they satisfy the MMR requirements.

  8. A permissible standin is one whose recorded MMR is less than or equal to the MMR the team player was drafted at plus one star. If there is reason to believe a standin's MMR has increased substantially from when it was recorded (e.g. their badge has gone up significantly) the Admins may request an updated MMR screenshot and adjust their recorded MMR accordingly.