you're right. it's a team game...you're just 1 person out of the 5 on your team. It can definitely be a coinflip.
That said, last game I played, which was just on the pbe, so not a big deal, I was playing Soraka, where both top and mid lost lane. My team wanted to surrender, and I was like, "huh? we can easily win, I haven't lost yet". lol, I mean, it's only been 6 games so far on the pbe, but regardless, they shut-up about it, and we won at the 20 minute mark no less. Then I got honored by my entire team. Feels good.
I mean it sucks you got a bad coinflip. It's going to happen.
edit: actually the lanes didn't necessarily lose. Everyone thought that the enemy Yi getting fed was going to lose us the game. He was getting pretty big, and he did get a triple kill on us in bottom lane. I screwed up hard, and fudged my equinox and flash, but I knew without a doubt we could win, and yes, EASILY. I knew as Soraka, I would be the difference between a win and a loss vs a fed Yi. The enemy team had no coordination, and the fed Yi always focused me. He'd be foolish not to, but regardless, that's also why he lost, because I was always with the team, and my summoner spells/equinox was always on point from then on. If he just tried to pick people off one by one he'd have a better chance at winning, but going for the support usually means a team fight. I guess they thought that since the Yi ran down all the lanes killing everyone, that we couldn't win...some people just don't know how much different the game can become once lane phase is over. I think this is the problem with most people who give up. They don't understand that even if you lose lane, you can still at LEAST try to minimize the damage done and hold out. Like, I understand it's not always possible to simply "play safe" when they can just turret dive you...like, sometimes all it takes is for a single turret to drop for lane phase to be over, and bot lane will come save you. Before then, maybe just help the jungle gank a different lane, swap lanes or even roles in the middle of the game might help. The game isn't supposed to be so straight forward, roles don't mean anything beyond lane phase. I mean, of course you're going to be limited to what your champion and items are capable of...but "mid" "top" "jungle" "bot" "support" only really tell you where to go at the beginning of the game. 10 minutes into the game roles mean jack-shit. I'm not saying this is why you lost, but I'm telling you if more people understand this simple concept within the game, they'd be less inclined to just sit at their fountain or aggressively type at the opposing lane. If more people didn't live and die by the lane phase alone, the game would be less of a coin flip.
Shit I started playing mobas in like 2004. Pubs of DotA Allstars had leavers literally every single game. The only way to have a full game to the end was to just play pro with TDA(the only pro dota lobby i knew of) at first, which i did every now and then. Later on, actually shortly before the beta for LoL came out, maybe a year or two earlier, a mod called throneit came out which introduced a kind of MMR to public games...which was awesome because every public dota allstar throneit game would be a 5v5 till the end, which was unheard of outside of the TDA lobby. I think people just cared about their win % or something i'm not exactly sure what made people want to stay till the end idk. I always stayed till the end no matter what lol. I mean, I could easily win 1v5s, I won 1v5s all the time. Shit I remember playing a 1v5 with Torturer(Leshrac) in the HoN beta(its beta came out the same time as LoLs), and no shit immediately getting an annihilation(pentakill) directly after my whole team left, it was absolutely hilarious. I didn't win though which is a shame. I guess they just figured out all they had to do was push wherever I wasn't. it's a simple concept. If they all attacked me at once, they'd just lose. Leshrac or Torturer as he's called in HoN, has insane aoe damage. Literally all of his damage is aoe nukes that just melts entire teams. If you get fed on him it's a big deal, he will just roll over a team. Leshrac/Torturer probably has the highest damage out of any hero in the games tbh. I mean, if you just look at the spells and their numbers, understand how they work, you'd get it. I can't count the number of teams I've annihilated as I'm just casually walking through them after an aoe stun. Other heroes might have higher damage to single targets or with cooldowns or something like that, but it's not like.. they have an ultimate that you can toggle for aoe damage around you. It's similar to old Swain, cept it didn't heal and the damage was more significant and it wasn't just up to 3 targets at once, it was everything. Hard part is that it consumes a shitload of mana, that's where the main difficulty is with him...especially the old leshrac where abilities weren't always on qwer for every champ. The mana issue is also the main reason I couldn't win the 1v5 with that particular hero ultimately. I mean, I could get the annihilation easily, but I couldn't kill them, push, defend, AND keep my mana now could i. lol. This game has always been kind of weird about resources. It doesn't treat resources very...umm...considerately. Doesn't seem like a whole lot of thought goes into resource management. It's a once and done kind of thing. You either have it or you don't. In DotA oh my god, what people go through to manage their resources. It's not uncommon for people to courier clarity potions in order to always have them restoring mana over time. Early game, most spellcasters or "intelligence" heroes, only have enough mana to use one rotation of their spells. ONE. You can't just blow through your spells like it's some "skill" shot that doesn't matter if it hits or not. In dota you get items so you can cast more spells. If you cast spells and it doesn't matter, why do you deserve items to cast more spells that don't matter? It's why in the beginning, all the noobs primarily played agility carries. If noobs went Intelligence, they would int because they were obviously noob. agi don't have to be that smart to carry.
Man this is a fucking rant the fuck nobody is going to read this.
IDK why i typed all this, I just got interested in my own memories. reveries I guess.
i tried to explain to her the reason she was behind a item and losing lane was because she had a support item, how did she respond? "i hate players like you who think theyre pros and try and boss people around, muted and reported" i hate this playerbase so much sometimes
