Cover-Credits:
Former League of Legends pro player Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi has been playing Dota 2 for a few months now. Sneaky has been grinding Dota 2 ranked slowly and was tasked with unfortunate moments in his matches along the way. However, after playing ranked for a considerable amount of time, Sneaky has finally reached Ancient 1 rank in Dota 2, around 3,800 to 4,000 MMR, in under 300 games. It is always exciting to see League of Legends players, pro or otherwise, trying their hand at Dota 2 and vice versa since most players try and stick to only one of these multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games.
Sneaky’s Dota 2 ranked journey
Sneaky almost exclusively played carry heroes in his ranked games, making his climb very impressive since the carry role in Dota 2 commands years of experience. He started playing and streaming Dota 2 with his friends who were ranked Archon, ranging from 2,000 to 2900 MMR. Notably, before Sneaky moved to League of Legends esports, he used to play Dota 1 against bots while he was professionally competing in World of Warcraft.
At first, Sneaky calibrated at Archon Two.
He played with his friends till Legend One, 3,000 MMR, and soon after this, he was reportedly placed in Valve’s smurf pool. Following this, Sneaky was placed in the Ancient tier in the game, which translates to low tiers of Diamond and high tiers of Platinum in League of Legends ranked queues.
One Redditor wrote, “His [Sneaky’s] first hundred hours or approx 120 games were unranked, I believe he calibrated Crusader 5, reached legend 1 with his duo and trio, played solo for a bit, got placed in smurf queue and reached Ancient 1 in 6-7 games. He might still be in smurf queue so might climb fast.”
While Sneaky did not calibrate at Crusader Five as the original poster said, he is still in the smurf queue and gaining more points per win.
After the game that placed him in Ancient One, Sneaky noted that he got around 60 points and added that he was 3890 MMR, as he checked his stats. He said, “So I got 60 points for that game which is 20 x 3 because you normally get 20 points for a party win.” According to Esports Tales, as of October 2022, 87.78 percentile of Dota 2 players are placed below the Ancient 1 rank and one can confidently state that Sneaky is well on his way to the top tiers in Dota 2.
Another Redditor said, “Sneaky stands out mainly because other LoL pros have gotten into Dota before and didn't even last 10 games. This dude gets to Ancient 1. Does that mean we're getting Crystal Maiden Sneaky?” subtly joking about Sneaky’s cosplay career.
Sneaky is not the only League of Legends pro to move to Dota 2. Last year, veteran player Paul "sOAZ" Boyer, who has played in teams like Fnatic and Origen, spoke about how Dota 2 offered creative freedom when it came to playing style, making it more enjoyable. He also noted that he played a ton of Dota 2 before making the switch to League of Legends.
