Behavior score in Dota 2: why it holds your MMR back and how to raise it

The question came up in the live stream chat: does low behavior make it harder to climb MMR? It does, a lot. And it is the kind of problem almost nobody sees, because it does not show up in the replay. You play the same match as always, just with a worse team.

This guide shows where to see your behavior in full detail, how many points each thing costs (measured on a real account and compared with what other players reported), the rules Valve published and what to change to make it go up again.

Why behavior affects your MMR

Dota splits the queue by behavior. Players with high behavior get matched with high behavior players; players with low behavior get matched with people who abandon, flame, buy items to troll and throw games.

Look at what that does: you can play exactly the same and win less, because the average quality of your teammates dropped. It is an invisible tax on every match. And it feeds itself: a worse team means more angry losses, angry losses mean more reports, more reports lower your behavior, and low behavior puts you on an even worse team.

That is why raising behavior is not about "being nice". It is about removing a weight from your matches that no mechanics training removes.

What each band unlocks and blocks

Since the 2023 summer update there are two scores, both from 0 to 12,000 (official Valve announcement): behavior, which measures your actions in the match, and the communication score, which measures chat and voice. Besides the queue, each band turns a feature on or off (Liquipedia table):

In other words: below 3,000 behavior you cannot even queue ranked, and below 6,000 communication you cannot type.

Where to see your real behavior

The number shown in the game client is only the summary. Steam keeps the full history on a page that only you can open:

Open my conduct history on Steam

Open it logged into the same Steam account you play Dota with. Each row is a Conduct Summary, the summary the game closes every 15 matches. The columns that matter:

At the bottom of the page there is a Load More History button that brings older summaries. It is worth clicking it until it runs out once, to see your whole curve.

To follow it summary by summary without doing the math, paste that page into My behavior: the site keeps each summary, draws the curve and marks where you dropped.

Shortcut without opening Steam: the last summary is also saved in a game file, at Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\game\dota\cfg\latest_conduct_1.numbers.txt.

What a real history shows

The numbers below are from Astini's account, from May to October 2026. The difference is how much behavior changed in that 15 match summary.

There are four lessons in this table.

1. Going up is slow. A perfect summary is worth 100 to 180 points. That is 15 matches to earn it.

2. Going down is fast. The week of 07/06 cost 1,054 points. Recovering that at the pace of a clean summary takes about six summaries, close to 90 matches. In June the account was at 8,749; in October, four months later, it still had not come back.

3. Abandoning is the worst deal in the game. A single abandon, in a summary with no reports and 42 commends, took 339 points. The commends saved nothing. That is the same as throwing away two perfect summaries.

4. What weighs is how many different people report you. One isolated report barely moves it. When reports come from several people, across several matches, the drop speeds up; past the limit, the game closes the summary right away and marks Excessive Reports.

5. After a bad stretch, climbing gets slower. Liquipedia lists the most a clean summary can pay: 750 points below 3,000, 375 below 7,500 and 225 below 12,000. On Astini's account, between 7,300 and 7,900, a clean summary paid 150 to 180, less than half of that ceiling. On the Steam forum, players describe the same thing: after a run of reports, the account spends a while earning less per clean summary. Valve does not confirm it, but the numbers match.

What other players reported

Besides Astini's account, we looked for reports with numbers on the official Dota forum on Steam. They are player reports, not Valve data, but they tell the same story:

The pattern repeats in all of them: the drop comes in days, the climb in months, and almost every big drop started in chat.

How to raise it: what to change in your settings

The cheapest way to stop getting communication reports is to take away the tool that gets you reported.

1. Remove the chat wheel. In the settings, under hotkeys, leave the chat wheel unbound. The chat wheel is the easiest communication report in the game: "Well played" after a death, laughter, a sound on top of a teammate. You lose no useful information, because map pings do the job.
2. Mute the enemy chat. Arguing with the other team wins no match and creates reports on both sides.
3. Turn voice off if you blow up easily. If you usually get angry while talking, play with pings only. You can make every important call without opening the mic.
4. Mute whoever annoys you, right away. You can mute a player from the scoreboard. Muting is not weakness: it removes from the match the argument that was going to cost you a report.

How to raise it: what to change in the match

• Never abandon. Not in a lost match, not with a trolling teammate, not "I just disconnected for a second". If your internet drops, come back as fast as you can. According to the table above, no habit costs more than this one.
• Do not argue about picks. The draft is over, that is it. Complaining about a teammate's hero at minute 1 is an almost guaranteed report and does not change the hero.
• Do not spam pings. Repeated pings on a teammate read as provocation and turn into a communication report.
• Communicate to help, not to blame. A useful call earns a commend; blame earns a report. The difference is in the guide on communication and mindset in ranked.
• Stop after two angry losses. The match right after a loss played in anger is the one that generates the most reports. Getting up from the chair protects MMR and behavior together.
• Commend your teammates at the end. It builds the habit of looking at what the team did well, and people who leave the match on good terms with you tend to commend you back.

More mechanisms that help

These come from the game's own rules, not guesswork:

• Play the role you picked in the queue. "Role abuse" became a report type in 2023. Queue as support and take carry, and the report is legitimate.
• Recover in All Pick or ranked, not Turbo. According to the Liquipedia table, Turbo pays about half per clean summary (180 versus 375 in the band below 7,500).
• Too many pings count as toxic chat. The report category itself includes excessive pings and alerts.
• Do not swear, not even disguised. Since 2023, reported chat is analyzed on the spot: if it is toxic, you are muted for the rest of the match, and being silenced by the game weighs heavily on the communication score. Words the game replaces with asterisks raise the chance.
• Use Dislike and commends in your favor. Since 2023, people you commend are more likely to land in your matches, and people you dislike, less likely. Dislike whoever gets under your skin: that is next match's argument you avoid.
• Play in a group with friends. The people who report you are the strangers in the lobby. In a party, there are fewer strangers on your team.
• Overwatch does not wait for 15 matches. An Overwatch punishment updates the summary right away.
• The lower you are, the faster it climbs. Below 3,000, a clean summary can pay up to 750. The hole is deep, but it has a bottom.

How long it takes

Do the math with the numbers above: 100 to 180 points every 15 clean matches. Someone a thousand points below where they want to be needs about 90 matches with no reports and no abandons. There is no shortcut.

The good news is that this path is the most controllable thing in Dota. You do not control your teammate, the draft or the opponent. You control whether you abandon, whether you use the chat wheel and whether you argue. Open your history on Steam at every new summary and check it: if the Reported Matches column is at 0 or 1, you are on the right track.

Sources

• Valve: 2023 summer client update (behavior and communication scores, Dislike, new report system)
• Liquipedia: Player Behavior Summary (bands, ceiling per summary, local file)
• Liquipedia: Report and Commend (report types, automatic silence)
• The Steam forum reports are linked in the table above.